Fanfic / From Harvest to the Ark

From Harvest to the Ark is a Pseudo-Canonical Fic set in the Halo Universe, which provides a first-person account of the life of UNSC militiaman (later Marine, later ODST ) Albert "Alley" Garris, who, through an impressive combination of badassery and sheer luck, survives nearly three decades of fighting across the bloody battlefields of the Human-Covenant War, from First Contact at the remote colony of Harvest, to The Fall Of Reach, and from the discovery of Installation 04 to the the final showdown on the Ark.

It makes a point of emphasising just how much it sucked to be an ordinary guy fighting against the fanatical, genocidal Covenant in a constant, slow curbstomping of a war, and is also notable for paying particular attention to military organisation and slang.

Authored by TheAmateur, all 110 chapters of this Completed Fic are avaliable on FF.net, and a rewrite has begun on Inkitt.com, however only 14 chapters have been completed thus far and the rewrite is currently on hold.

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From Harvest to the Ark provides examples of:

• Action Girl:
  • Sophie Devereux is described as extremely pretty, while being every bit as capable a fighter as any other Marine in the 9th Force Recon.
  • Alley and Sophie's daughter Samantha-G113 and her SPARTAN-III comrade Emma-G132, by virtue of being biologically enhanced juvenile supersoldiers.
• Aerith and Bob: The real first names of Archangel Squad are Patrick, James, Wesley, John, Albert... Virgil and Lucullus.
• The Alcoholic: Alley, shortly after joining the UNSC Marine Corps, but this also applies to Celt, and Devereux, who has to have a cloned liver replacement due to it. However, they all have rather legitimate reasons for doing this.
• Anyone Can Die: By the end, pretty much every single major character apart from Alley, Celt and Apache is dead.
• Badass Bystander: While holed up during their Last Stand in the Battle of Kiev, Alley and his ragtag group of UNSC survivors are accompanied by Nic, a guitar-playing Ukranian civilian who doesn't engage in any actual combat, but remains ice-cool in the midst of intense fighting.
• Badass Normal: Alley is an exceptionally good sniper who manages to impress an Elite - a species of eight-foot-tall Proud Warrior Race Guys who can tear your average human apart with their bare hands - by fighting it almost to a standstill in hand-to-hand combat.
• Bar Brawl: Alley and Dempsey get caught up in one while on leave on New Harmony, after a drunken marine decides to kiss an unwilling comrade.
• Boot Camp Episode: The first eight chapters focus almost exclusively on Alley's Harvest Militia training.
• Born Lucky: While Alley is certifiably a Badass Normal, surviving almost thirty years of fighting in the brutal Human-Covenant War against a genocidal enemy that takes no prisoners is probably down to this. Applies to Dempsey too, and Devereux to a lesser extent. Discussed on Reach between Alley and Dempsey, after the former bemoans his luck.
• The Cameo:
  • Archangel Squad is tasked with extracting a classified research project, and a team of scientists lead by Dr Catherine Halsey from a UNSC facility on Irivet V.
  • Emile and Noble Six save Alley and the 9th Force Recon's asses in the shipbreaking yards on Reach.
  • The Master Chief gets two, first appearing briefly in Alpha Base and sharing Alley, Apache and Celt's Pelican on the Ark.
• The Captain: Downplayed with Captain Delucci, The Handler of Archangel Squad. He's a naval captain who's somewhat of A Father to His Men and certainly a Reasonable Authority Figure, putting up with his squad's griping and personally flying to the surface of Salamis II on the Albatross Heavy Dropship sent to rescue Scar, Apache, Cajun and Alex. However, as befits an agent of ONI, he's a lot more reserved and morally pragmatic than most examples of this trope.
• Continuity Snarl:
  • Sgt. Johnson was one of Alley's instructors during his Harvest Militia days, yet he somehow never encounters him on Alpha Halo or the Ark.
  • Sophie Devereux's eyes are described as blue in one chapter, and brown in another.
  • Even though the Master Chief is already a Living Legend among UNSC personnel by the time of the Fall of Reach, Alley doesn't recognise him on Alpha Halo, yet somehow does on the Ark.
• Contrived Coincidence: Whoo boy, a long string of them. Somehow, Alley and Sophie's daughter Samantha not only survives the glassing of Emerald Cove, but has the neccesary qualities to be 'recruited' into the SPARTAN-III Program. She also isn't one of the members of said program who was sent on a suicide mission and never returned before the Battle of Earth took place, ends up fighting in said battle in the same city as Alley, and just so happens to have fallen in love with Alex, the boy Alley rescued from Salamis II, who is himself a junior SPARTAN in the same unit.
• Crippling Overspecialisation: After almost 20 years serving in ODST Black Ops, Alley discovers that, while still useful, his Sniper Rifle is rather cumbersome during a normal infantry assault when he partakes in one during the Fall of Reach.
• Determined Doctor: Athos Patrikos, the 9th Force Recon's battalion surgeon, who's sufficiently badass to survive the entire Human-Covenant War and continues looking after a gravely wounded Alley during the glassing of New Alexandria, ensuring he is evacuated to a fallout bunker beneath the hospital.
• Dented Iron: Discussed by Alley just before he lands on Reach, as he reflects on the fact that he's had to go through major surgery dozens of times during his long military career.
• Deus Angst Machina: Happens to Alley on Alpha Halo. See Trauma Conga Line below.
• Doomed by Canon:
  • Captain Delucci is toast the moment we hear that he will be commanding the UNSC frigate Grafton on Reach.
  • We already know most of the Marines crash-landing on Alpha Halo aren't going to make it off the ringworld, and indeed that Da Silva's attempts to capture the Truth and Reconciliation are going to end badly.
• Duelling Scar: Alley revives a distinctive thin scar across his face and eye socket after Iran 'Ovarumee slashes across his face with an energy sword on Verus III.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Zig-Zagged. Alley retires to a peaceful life after the war, which he thoroughly deserves, but precisely how much of a 'happy ending' this constitutes is open to deliberation, considering that Alley lives alone with pretty much everyone, bar his daughter and a couple of old squadmates, he ever loved or cared about being dead.
• Elaborate Underground Base:
  • Alley and the 9th Force Recon raid one that the Covenant have set up on New Harmony after a UNSC Frigate blasts a giant hole in the ground above it.
  • There's also The Forge, a cutting-edge UNSC research facility cut into the side of a mountain on Irivet V.
• Elites Are More Glamorous: Double Subverted. We first encounter Alley as an ordinary guy going through training to join the Harvest Militia — he then joins the UNSC Marine Corps (albeit as part of a Force Recon battalion) and this trope is finally played straight when he joins the ODSTs in Chapter 36 and remains part of this unit for the rest of the story.
• Elsewhere Fic: A Type 2- Much of the story takes place during canon events including the first Covenant attack on Harvest, the Fall of Reach and the Battle of the Ark, but the focus is almost entirely on Alley and other original characters and when canon characters do show up it's usually as The Cameo.
• Enemy Mine: Alley and a small group of marines form a very strained alliance with Elite Ultra Iram 'Ovarumee and his subordinate to escape the Flood on Alpha Halo.
• Fire-Forged Friendship: During Harvest Militia training, Alley considers Dempsey an irritating Jerkass. After fighting in, and surviving the evacuation of Harvest together? Not so much.
• Everyone Looks Sexier if French: The very attractive Sophie Devereux isn't technically French, but she hails from New Harmony, a planet settled primarily by Francophone colonists, so it still counts.
• Frontline General: During the battle for Keiv, General "Ironguts" Eckhart personally leads the attack on Moskocskyi Bridge from the back of a captured Covenant Scarab.
• Gunship Rescue: Happens about as much as you'd expect with Military Science Fiction:
  • A squadron of Longsword fighter-bombers drive back a Covenant advance from the 9th Force Recon's lines on Verus III using copious amounts of napalm.
  • Later on on the same planet, Iram 'Ovarumee's momentary hesitation in killing Alley allows for four UNSC Pelicans to save the day by showing up and shooting missiles everywhere.
  • Alley, Cajun and Apache and their M1 Dragon are extracted from Salamis II by an Albatross Heavy Dropship and a whole squadron of Longswords.
  • Alley uses a commandeered Covenant Phantom to pull this on Alpha Halo by saving Athos Patrikos alongside a group of Marines including Sergeant Stacker and Chips Dubbo, who are pinned down by Covenant forces.
• Hell Is That Noise: The skittering of the Flood becomes this for Alley. It creeps him the hell out when he first hears it on Alpha Halo and when he hears it again in Voi, knowing exactly what it represents, he FLIPS OUT to the extent that his behaviour is enough to convince his commander to retreat immediately.
• I Call It "Vera": Alley's ODST squadmate Cajun refers to his prized detonator as 'Julie'.
• Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: Inverted. During the raid on the Covenant's New Harmony underground outpost the 9th Force Recon relishes the opportunity to get their hands on plasma weaponry after capturing an armory, and use it to turn the fight (which was admittedly already going in the UNSC's favour) against the remaining defenders into a Curb-Stomp Battle.
• Little Hero, Big War: Pretty much the general gist of the story. Alley is an exceptionally badass soldier, but he's no Master Chief, instead playing a small role in many pivotal events during the Human-Covenant conflict.
• Love Interest: Sophie Devereux, a Marine who joins the 9th Force Recon on Verus III, becomes this to Alley.
• Now or Never Kiss: Alley and Devereux have this in chapter 22, while pinned down in Cedar Rapids and about to be blown up by a Wraith. Fortunately, SPARTAN-II Red Team intervene.
• Nothing Exciting Ever Happens Here: Said, sans the 'exciting', by Alley in the first chapter while describing Harvest. Of course, the Covenant show up within a few weeks.
• Pleasure Planet: Emerald Cove, famed amongst UNSC servicepeople for its beautiful sandy beaches, peaceful lagoons, and renowned brothels.
• Retired Badass: Alley becomes this twelve years after the end of the war, living in the small town of Riverside, in upstate New York and working as a sports coach for a local middle school.
• Shipper on Deck: Dempsey immediately notices the way Alley is looking at Devereux and repeatedly encourages him to make a move.
• The Squad: Two main examples:
  • Special Warfare Group Archangel, the ODST Black Ops squad Alley first encounters on Verus III and later joins, consisting of:
    • The Master Sergeant (John Caroll): The Leader
    • Pyro (Lucullus Jackson): The Big Guy
    • Virgin (Wesley Daniels): The Smart Guy / The Engineer
    • Apache (James Eyota): Combat Medic / The Quiet One
    • Celt (Patrick O'Shea): Sad Clown
    • Cajun (Virgil Buford): Southern-Fried Private / Demolitions Expert
    • Scar (Alley Garris): Friendly Sniper
  • And much later, during the Battle of Kiev, Alley meets the SPARTAN-III Team Rapier:
    • Tyrone-G83: The Leader
    • Emma-G132: Demolitions Expert
    • Robin-G221: The Smart Guy
    • Samantha-G113: The Sneaky Guy
    • Alex-G004: The Quiet One
• Stand Your Ground: Alley, Apache and a ragtag group of UNSC survivors pull off a truly epic one during the Battle of Kiev, using heavy machineguns, rocket launchers and freakin' Archer Missiles to fortify a random house in the city and blast the hell out of multiple waves of Covenant infantry, tanks and Scarabs before eventually making their escape.
• Stuff Blowing Up: Considering the setting, some of this this is guaranteed practically every chapter after the training segment.
• Surveillance Drone: The New Harmony arc features a rather impressive UNSC bit of kit called the ARGUS drone which can detect and track minute traces of any chemical compound: intended for tracking bomb-makers, but also usedful for sniffing out Grunts.
• Tank Goodness: The UNSC's non-canonical M1 Delta "Dragon" Heavy Battle Tank. It's armed with a 120mm main cannon as well as coaxial and front ball-mounted machine guns. And while many Real Life tanks may have similar armament, they certainly can't shrug off multiple hits from a plasma mortar.
• That's What She Said: Miguel Esposito, a member of Alley's original squad in the 9th Force Recon, had a habit of making these sort of cheap jokes. This is referenced as a Brick Joke much, much later on.
• Transformation Horror: Just as in the games, the description of a human/elite tranforming into a Flood Combat Form, is very, very unpleasant.
• Trauma Conga Line: Alley has what can only be described as a truly awful time on Alpha Halo. His ship is shot down and he's stranded on an alien world with little to no hope of rescue, and then his Love Interest Sophie Devereux is seriously injured, and decides to confess to him that he fathered a child with her, who she gave up for adoption, and was presumably killed when her planet was glassed. However, the Covenant attack Alpha Base, killing her and Alley's ODST squamate Pyro. Poor Alley then ends up having to fight the horrifying Flood, with an Infection Form latching onto his old comrade and Best Friend Matthew Dempsey, forcing Alley to Mercy Kill him, just as they were about to escape. And finally, just as Alley is about to leave [[spoiler:Halo, he sees the hijacked Covenant ship containing most of the surviving UNSC forces explode in midair, leaving less than a dozen survivors.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behaviour: Our first introduction to Alex, the 5-year-old son of Codename: ORION, Involves him very nearly shooting Alley in the face before following up with a good old Groin Attack. And after the finds out that the rest of of his family is dead he doesn't cry, he just gets angry. Really angry. This impresses Captain Delucci so much he offers Alex the chance to become a SPARTAN-III.
• Worthy Opponent: After getting into hand-to-hand combat with the Elite Major Iram 'Ovarumee on Verus III, Alley puts up a good enough fight that the alien hesitates in killing him, which allows for a timely Gunship Rescue.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: On Alpha Halo, Alley's Love Interest Sophie Devereux reveals to him that she gave birth to his daughter and gave her up for adoption on a planet that was later glassed. Exaggerated when Soph also gets killed, but ultimately subverted when he finds that his daughter is still alive... And now a SPARTAN-III.
• You Are in Command Now: Alley is first promoted to Sergeant on Verus III to replace his squad leader, Sergeant MacIntyre, who was injured by shrapnel and had to be medevaced.

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