Episode 1
The story
Before there was a nemesis, there was a valley. Two populations face each other across Blood Gulch, and neither remembers who claimed the empty ground between them first. Both are certain it was them.
Territory here is not won. It is borrowed, back and forth, over and over, by two sides that never once agree to stop. The population has its resident betrayer, who turns on his own allies so warmly and so often that nobody calls it betrayal any more, and somehow everyone still wants him on their team.
A three-ton Warthog rolls itself over without any help at all. A lone Spartan discovers that it is possible to feel completely alone while four grown men are trying to kill you. An accident is declared, denied and forgiven by the next round.
By the end of the night the scoreboard is not kind. And yet the squad radios in like conquerors. The pilot sets the rule the whole season lives by: in this species, that is what winning looks like.
