User:Dragonclaws/Vulcan

SPARTAN-III Vulcan Team

Icarus IV, Near Covenant Base “Merciful Repentance” Icarus System 9.1.2552

The problem now was not lack of firepower, but excessive firepower, sufficient to vaporize the target and the majority of UNSC soldiers in the immediately vicinity. Such tactical conundrums remained unresolved in the mind of SPARTAN-G288, Senior Chief Petty Officer Daniels, as an engorging, fiery whip of light and fire resolved into full bloom before him: an activating energy sword, a sphere of plasma expanding in milliseconds and contouring to the electromagnetic field that encapsulated it. It was the antithesis of the darkness in which its wielder had cocooned around himself: a temporarily stealthed Special Operations Elite, one of the black-armored bastards. Yet, the Spartan-III’s reflexes were superior, as evidenced when the enemy’s full body armor began to waver into the visible sight range, camouflage generators being overwhelmed by the MA5K assault rifle’s armor-piercing 7.62mm high-velocity projectiles. The active camouflage was fully vanquished as the armor had a slight wreath of sparks encircling its breastplate: the automated shield recharge system activating. No chance in hell, bastard.

Before the energy sword could fully activate and be brought in a low saber sweep that would sever his armored legs from his torso, and then transverse backwards to eviscerate the human’s heart, the butt of the MA5K ICWS rifle was brutally brought full onto the enemy commando’s chest. The alien’s tri-ventricled heart went into temporary arrest and his eyes glazed, muscles only remaining tense from years of training and combat that had hardened them against cardiac arrest. The maneuver, however, was too weak to be a killing blow, but instead, was what Daniels had intended it to be: a delaying move. The sword hung slack by the Elite’s side for a second as a second melee attack with his cut-down stealth variant of the standard-issue MA5B rammed its way home again into his enemy’s breastplate. The sheer force ruptured the organs cased by the jet black armor, and caused massive internal bleeding and organ lacerations before the shields could recharge.

The soldier fell anticlimactically, energy sword lying beside it. Daniels briefly appropriated the sword, and then, almost as an afterthought, fired a quarter of his clip into the Elite, a vengeful action for the three UNSC Marines that were scattered around the corpse, slaughtered by needler rounds.

Then, he pivoted angularly, and addressed the far more lethal problem, now that his opponent had been dispatched and the UNSC fire team avenged: a Scarab battle walker striding through the evergreen forest of the equatorial continent of Icarus IV. Its massive bulk made it impossible for one to miss. As his visor locked onto the target, it automatically uploaded the tactical data on the Scarab: range, wind conditions to target, and the current status of the walker: virtually unharmed.

A Pelican barrel-rolled, diving towards the massive walker, arming the missiles underneath its wings…it was the compliment of the UNSC Navy, but, the Admiral could not be dissuaded from wasting a dropship. As two trails of vapor raced forth, a heavy cannon on the fore of the walker was unsheathed like Excalibur, and metallic covers that protected the weapon revealed the death within with the innocence of a rose unfurling its buds. Before the eight other rockets could fire, a titanic blast of viridian light, looking like ghastly radioactivity for all its sake, consumed the Pelican. There were no remains.

Daniels belatedly watched the two launched rockets impact the burnished armor plating of the Scarab: no go. There was carbon scoring, but little else.

He grimaced, even though it had been the expected result of the suicidal attack, even if the two Pelican pilots hadn’t known their impending death beforehand. “Vulcan Team, rendezvous at my position. Over and out.”

Four LEDs at the periphery of his HUD - acknowledgement lights - winked green. His SPARTAN-III group had acknowledged his command. TACMAP automatically displayed four ghostly green “ghost” images in the shrubbery, each the wireframe of one of his team-mates, and tiny digits beside their helmeted heads scrolling down; their range and ETA.

SPARTAN-G107, Kruger, Vulcan Five, the beastly one of the team, was the first to move to the rally team. His psychologically unstable demeanor completely contrasted with the gentle rays of sunlight penetrating the rain clouds above with the swiftness and awkward dutifulness of sperm breaching egg cells: his active camouflage on his Mark II Semi-Powered Infiltration (SPI) armor. With a slight rustling sound, an indicator of poor maintenance of the stealth system or recent battle damage, he rippled from the air like a bead of dark oil. “Sir, SPARTAN-G107 reporting as ordered at Rally Point Alpha.”

Kruger was the maniac of the squad, but enshrouded his lunacy with a façade of military formality. It was always sir or madam, and never Kruger reporting, but SPARTAN-G107 reporting. Yet, his brutality was an asset. His bloodlust was probably the instigator for his specialization with heavy weapons: rockets, explosive charges, grenades, even commandeered Brute Shots or Fuel Rod Cannons. That was an understatement. Every SPARTAN-III was extraordinarily proficient in every combat technique: sniping, heavy weapons, medical, communications, leadership…more so than their Elite aggressors or the finest UNSC ODST commandoes. However, in their specialty fields, the SPARTAN-IIIs flat-out kicked their enemies’ collective asses.

Next was Angelina, “Angel”. “Ready to go, sir.”

Angelina was SPARTAN-G152, Vulcan Three, and the sniping, and also, countersniping, specialist. She had even bested both Lieutenant Commander Ambrose, who was the (de facto) legendary god of sniping himself, complete with a set of holy, untouchable laurels. Therefore, when Angelina had won seven out of ten matches to the L.C.’s own three, the entire Gamma Company didn’t see Ambrose for a week, probably skulking that he’d been bested by a twelve-year old. A rather pummeling embarrassment. When he’d returned and sentenced her to a hundred push-ups on a single fist without her SPI armor, it had been totally expected. Yet, her appearance was deceiving. While she held her BR55 rifle in her gauntlets, her customized SRS99C-S2 AM Sniper Rifle over her back like a Japanese ninja’s samurai sword, the Foehammer of Vulcan Team.

Third was SPARTAN-G025, Rachael, Vulcan Two. She served as the medical and communications specialist. As with the rest of the squad, she had her eccentricities: a preference for the pathetic weapons of the Covenant over those of the UNSC. That had earned her considerable surprise from Ambrose, and also a single sentence about her physical appearance: “You’re a spitting image of Linda.”

No one knew who this “Linda” was, and it had been the source of considerable debate amongst the three hundred-some SPARTAN-IIIs of Gamma Company. Girlfriend? A former SPARTAN-III in one of the preceding companies? A SPARTAN-II? When Jennifer, SPARTAN-G272, Vulcan Three, who’d just arrived, had suggested back on Onyx that he had an invisible friend, almost immediately, four DIs known to be Ambrose’s pets entered the barracks, dragged her out. They heard her grunts and groans and when she returned, the red, splotchy handprints on her slender body.

Jennifer was the technical and security specialist, officially, but unofficially was the exclusive demolitions specialist, normally taking over part of Kruger’s domain. In her hand, she held a Covenant Carbine. She had blundered into a rough firefight a couple of minutes before, and had reportedly run out of ammunition for her Battle Rifle. However, since she was the antithesis of Rachael, a technophile for UNSC weapons, she was probably tempted to use her M6C sidearm instead of “that fucking Covenant trash”.

Now that they were together, Daniels began. “Any systems problems or severe injuries?”

A routine negative response. At the hands of the DIs, the SPARTAN-IIIs had learned never to report that they were wounded. That led to a deliberate lack of medical attention and further injuries impugned on them. Years of such torment had drilled that one rule into their minds. Furthermore, it would be an admission of weakness. One never revealed such before one’s team-mates, unless it was death itself, and it wouldn’t be a verbal declaration, it would be a gray symbol on TEAMBIO. That was the only admission.

Next: “Now, we have a problem. The Scarab walker is approximately fifteen minutes from attacking Base Tahoe to the southeast. We are about to lose all our advantages, according to HIGHCOM, that we gained from our strike on Base Merciful Repentance, or what ever the split-chinned freaks call their camp. Admiral Steinberg wants a solution, now.”

Rachael mused, “If those Pelican-mounted Anvil-II HE missiles can’t scratch that walker, the S19 SSM launchers we have or the 50mm machine-guns at base can’t do a thing. Perhaps an air strike? Orbital bombardment?” That was desperate thinking, as the squad had previously communicated over TEAMCOM about the feasibility of using a Fury tactical nuclear device. However, such would totally eradicate the UNSC forces attacking the Covenant base, as well as the target. Such friendly casualties had to imperatively avoided. Friendly fire was truly a contradiction in terms.

Kruger spoke in his gravelly voice, forged from scrapped machine-gun parts, “Sir, with all due respect to SPARTAN-G025, the fleet can’t spare even a single frigate from orbit to reinforce, and Archer missiles would similarly devastate our advancing troops.”

There was a pause. Jennifer spoke up, breaking the monotonous silence as they heard the metallic crackles of the Marines’ MA5B rifles in the distance, “We can’t defeat it without substantial friendly casualties.”

That was obvious; just a summation of the blatant facts.

Angelina was next. “Or rather…we can’t defeat the Scarab with conventional weapons or tactics.”

Rachael snorted, “What, you now want to send in SWAT?”

SWAT was an American Special Forces group back on ancient Earth before the advent of the UNSC. It stood for “Special Weapons and Tactics.” Its closest equivalent in the modern-day UNSC was the Orbital Drop Shock Trooper Corps, the renowned “Helljumpers”.

The two women locked eyes. The only privilege with a team of more girls than boys was that the women would scuffle in cat-fights for the boys. A slight smile creased Daniels’s lips beneath the polarized visor.

However, the mention to unconventional tactics rung a bell; it was not in vain. They had been cross-trained on such in Camp Currahee, yet, unconventional meant not unoriginal, new, which was why Ambrose and his pet DIs had such difficulty teaching them: it was a contradiction by definition.

The flyby of a Banshee pair was the final stimulator. Daniels disregarded the fumbling stupidity of his plan as he growled, “Banshees. Even though the Scarab can shoot down aircraft, as previously demonstrated, it won’t fire on friendly craft. Like co…”

Angel finished his sentence. “…commandeered Banshees.”

Rachael laid an armored hand on Daniels’s shoulder. “So what’s the plan, Boss?”

Icarus IV, Near Pelican Dropship Golf 916 Icarus System 9.1.2552

Minor Domo Elite Igon ‘Grakkan was a fury stalking the skies in his Banshee, termed Alpha Ten. His father was a Councilor, and was personally known by the High Prophets. However, instead of utilizing his bureaucratic privileges like an energy sword to cut through swaths of fuckery-muckery, instead of granting his youngest son a high appointment in the government instead of forcing him through the military to earn his rank like the Councilor himself did, he’d been consigned to the Covenant army regulars. Not even a commando unit. His only consolation was that he had been assigned to a Banshee, instead of trudging on the ground.

Some quiet voice whispered that Icarus IV would be his day of ascension, one where he could stitch the infidel humans with plasma until he killed one with high ranking…his audacious mind whispered, Yes, a Demon! You shall slay a demon and be pronounced dragon-bane.

He turned his eyes towards the plasma screen before him, which showed only boundless, slightly rolling hills carpeted with forest…but, a discontinuity! A clearing! Igon squinted, the sunlight gleaming off of the metal of his aircraft interfering with his vision as he turned closer to the fiery star. His HUD automatically compensated with auto-polarizers and a 2x magnification…a human dropship! Crashed! Could there be survivors? What if one was a Demon…what if…?

He clicked on SQUADCOM, “Ultra ‘Otaree, Excellency, Alpha Ten reporting. Enemy crashed dropship at coordinates thirty five-sixteen standard. I am making a reconnaissance pass…”

That lie stuck in his head, but he knew it was necessary. His heart raced as his maniacal lust of power overwhelmed his rational fear to lying to a superior officer, seizing him with madness as he cried, “Enemy soldiers! There’s…Demons! Yes! Three of them! By the Gods! They haven’t spotted me!”

Ultra ‘Otaree in Banshee Alpha One replied swiftly, “Hold your position, Alpha Ten. I am calling for several Wraith tanks to support you. Alpha Squadron, form up on Alpha Ten.”

Not even a well done from the Ultra Domo. That will change soon, he mused. His heart began to settle, as he realized the Banshee commander’s intent. “No! No!”

A full ground and air joint attack would give the credit also to the Field Master in command of the ground force. No, the glory must come to him. His desperation took him again. He’d kill Ultra Domo ‘Otaree and take the squadron…this way, no one would know of his lie. He’d just point at a random human body and tell HIGHCOM that was a lightly armored Demon that he, Minor Domo ‘Grakkan, had found. He’d demonstrated leadership in bringing in the squadron to attack, and it was his plasma shots that slew the anathema incarnate. And then I shall become an Ultra Domo! YES! It is the only way!

Livid exuberance took him, and sweat began to smear the underside of his cobalt-colored combat armor. That was when he realized Ultra ‘Otaree barking, “What is the problem with a joint attack, Minor?”

If his father actually treated him well and reprimanded all that offended him, ‘Otaree would have found himself in the ghettos before the battle ended in a Covenant victory. He snarled in reply, eyes blazing in fury, as if wavering fire was coming off him in waves, “WE HAVE SUFFICIENT FORCES! WE SHOULD NOT DIVERT WRAITHS FROM THE DEFENSE! OR ELSE, WE MAY LOSE OUR BASE!”

SQUADCOM silenced as all the squadron members glared at him (somehow, through kilometers of air). The Ultra Domo replied curtly, volume not betraying its maliceness, “Three Demons are worth more than any base, Minor. I trust your recent wounds haven’t dislodged all of your insignificant brain.”

His urge to challenge Ultra ‘Otaree in a one-on-one honor battle overcame him, and he even did so much as to wheel around to face the squadron leader’s incoming aircraft. The silence on SQUADCOM was not heard by ‘Grakkan, who heard only war drums beating. He resisted the urge to trigger a Fuel Rod Cannon shot at the vulnerable aircraft, imagined the radioactive debris falling…rational thought gained the upper hand, and he just remained there, seething.

He wondered how to seize glory again, and had it done for him. A single bullet lanced upwards, slaughtered ‘Otaree. His Banshee, uncontrolled, fell, chunks of blood-wreathed gore spread over the holographic controls. A Major Domo growled, “Sniper!”

Bloodlust surged in the now eleven-ship squadron, and ‘Grakkan seized the moment like a virtuoso politician (incompetent, worthless, and with a touch of insanity). “ALL SHIPS, SLAY THEM ALL!”

A war cry echoed, and the Banshees surged towards the downed Golf 916.

Icarus IV, Pelican Dropship Golf 916 Icarus System 9.1.2552

Angel’s sniper rifle still had smoke rippling from its specially sheathed barrel from the single shot. As the Banshee tumbled unaerodynamically towards the ground, the eleven other Banshees dove, for all in the world appearing to be raven vultures somehow dive-bombing their prey of carcasses.

The half-dozen surviving Marines in the trooper bay of Golf 916 huddled besides the two pilots, all bearing either MA5B assault rifles or M6C sidearms. A swift analysis from Daniels’s experienced eye assessed that the eight UNSC personnel would be liabilities, not combat assets. The two flyers, rookies from the 186th Dropship Force, were clad in light airman armor, olive green, but the rather laughable ways they held their M6C pistols betrayed their blundering at ground combat. The Marines of Gold Squad might fare better. Several had light injuries, and one was unable to move, capable of fighting from a fixed position, but the majority were combat-ready. Their leader was a certain Sergeant Newman, who appeared to have some semblance of combat proficiency and leadership. He would shepherd the Marines through the attack.

Kruger had first picked up the automated distress beacon of Golf 916 on his COM gear; garbled from damaged broadcasters and rather inarticulate. It was the perfect bait: a crashed dropship with apparently wounded survivors, no match for Banshee crack shots. Even before Angel had taken out the first Banshee, they were already charging, some in flanking positions incessantly spraying suppression fire.

Rachael murmured doubtfully, without resentfulness at Angel for her suggestion (they’d reconciled on the five-minute jog briefly), but at the probability that they would stop the Scarab with Banshees, and if they could even board the enemy-held low-altitude atmospheric aircraft. The current plan was for Angel and Kruger (armed with a sniper appropriated from a wounded Marine and in a flanking position) to snipe out the Elite fliers of the Banshees at they strafed the SPARTAN-IIIs (the Marines and fliers had been ordered into the Pelican for their own survival)...improbable, yet possible, since they’d be drawn to Angel, giving Kruger clear shots. Angel could also slip into darkness with active camouflage. Yet, in hindsight, Daniels realized that he should have let Kruger draw the fire and Angel do the flanking, as she was a better marksman. Markswoman. Marksperson. Whatever.

Jennifer was at the far side of the small clearing, shaded by a medium-sized granite boulder and the massive evergreens towering overhead, their acuminous shadows blending harmoniously with her SPI armor’s stealth systems to offer total invisibility. Braced upon her shoulder was the M19 SSM rocket launcher formerly wielded by Kruger. It had three tracking HE rockets, sufficient to destroy those that evaded the snipers and began indiscriminately spraying fire.

“No worries, SPARTAN.”

He affectionately laid an armored hand on Angel’s shoulder as the Banshees broke their elaborate formation, instead opting for...an arc approach? It was no matter. Kruger still had excellent shots. There was a hiss of static over TEAMCOM: Kruger. Even before his acknowledgement light flashed amber, he said curtly, “Negative, Kruger. Wait until they draw to close range...”

Plasma bolts surged into the fuselage of the Pelican a dozen feet behind them, and the superheated blue bolts were straying towards the trio of SPARTAN-IIIs standing guard before it...shadows arced overhead. “Kruger, hit them! Hit them!”

The two snipers opened fire in synchrony as Rachael and Daniels broke to either side with explosive speed, and the MA5K rifles opened fire, spilling a terrible torrent of 7.62mm rounds at the diving fliers. Yet, he was so immersed in his Angel grunted over TEAMCOM. That sound was worth more than a thousand pictures that she was badly wounded. Only in those circumstances would a SPARTAN-III concede a wound. He shouted, the plasma blazing overhead, “Gamma Signal! Abandon mission objectives! Fire! FIRE!”

Two rockets rode forth on plumes of smoky exhaust from Jennifer’s position, perfectly connecting with two Banshees that were executing aerials flips to make another run at the downed sniper. As Marines hurriedly moved to drag the smoking body into the Pelican, and a Banshee coursed from the left, stitching them with plasma...Kruger fired. An Elite fell, hanging limply over the side of the alien flier as it crashed into a field of coarse boulders just adjacent to the Pelican’s nesting place.

Now, three of the Banshees were lying in the clearing; Kruger had fired accurately twice before providing covering fire from Angel. As a bolt of fire intersected with his breastplate, and the ballistic gel underlayer burned accordingly, his assault rifle still wildly clattering, Jennifer loosed her last rocket at yet another aerial assailant, hastily discarded her spent launcher and fired her BR55 Battle Rifle. Even with the Banshee’s weaving, the Elite’s shields flickered and snarled brilliant cyan. The cobalt-armored pilot reoriented to turn the fore of his craft towards the hostile, and Kruger sluggishly opened fire. Two rounds missed, arcing behind the Elite. A last one hit on the right shoulder pauldron, driving its way through and gorily bisecting the upper internal organs. Blood splattered into the air, beads of death, and then the Elite leaned to the side of the craft, unbalancing it on its jagged path towards the ground, where it nosed into loamy soil. The body laid over the portside antigravity pod, appearing to be in an innocent sleep, if not for the gore splattered over its back plating.

Yet, their foes had not been vanquished yet: five Banshees still circled like vultures above the humans...but what were they waiting for? That enigma was abruptly solved when a sniper round intersected an antigravity pod on a Banshee, forcing the machine to stutter, as if caught bouncing between two invisible walls, and then slowly move towards the ground. The remaining Banshee flight tore towards Kruger’s concealed position on the grassy mountainside: an alcove of rocks amidst a jumble of disorganized boulders and tall grass and wheat. Profuse blue connected the alien craft and the SPARTAN-III even as Daniels, Rachael, and Jennifer opened fire with Battle Rifles and MA5K rifles on the vulnerable backs of the Elite fliers. It was futile for the assault rifle-clad Spartans, but not for Jennifer with her 2x scope. However, as she felled a single pilot, his back riddled with armor-piercing rounds, time slowed, all blurred as Kruger groaned faintly, and his biosigns winked a dark crimson...

*  *   *

Minor Domo Igon ‘Grakkan dismounted from his Banshee, carelessly allowing it to forcefully land to the side of the minor hill, setting off a slide of gravel that carried his aircraft downhill. It was no matter. Now, the only purpose was vengeance for a crime that his opponent had never done for him, to gain glory before the Covenant for the demise of a Demon. His blood surged through him and his biological monitor chimed, alerting him or an elevated blood pressure. To be expected. For before him was what would ascend him to rank of Field Master, or beyond...perhaps Honor Guard to the Imperial Prophets themselves, or even Supreme Commander? His thoughts raged rampant, his ambition possessing him like a hideous spirit. Slobber flowed from his jaws like a rabid Jiralhanae. It had been a pure coincidence that Demons had indeed been at the crash site...the divine exultation of him by the Gods themselves! His eyes were too disfigured from the adrenal hormones possessing his neural system to register the exact specification of the Demon before him. Instead, he grasped his standard-issue Plasma Pistol sidearm, held the trigger to accumulate a lethal sphere of plasma at its charge tips, aimed it at the green blur...

A moment later, an armored leg impacted him squarely in the helmet, and reflexology rightfully predicted that he instinctively let go of the trigger. A superheated tracking ball of death accelerated outwards into the sky as his lungs were explosively loosed of air. His mandibles twitched as he entered a rage. How had attacked him? The Demon? But the Demon had been incapacitated...

Nevertheless, the unholy creature continually surged at him like humans attempting to breach a Covenant fortress-world, a Jiralhanae in blood-lust with all its fellows slain. He could feel the electrical madness emanating from the Demon, and found it reciprocated and darkly glimmering in the tainted, vain mirror that was his soul. The Demon bared its shoulders sideways, angled its body, and attacked, ramming him.

Some transmission from a Banshee pilot urged him to move out of their fire zone, but he found himself paralyzed, toppled over like a domino from the raging Demon. Copious blood spilled upon his unshielded armor: the Demon’s! But there is no way that the Demon could sustain such systemic...

With another lunge and spinning kick directed to his chest, the Minor Domo’s prone body was tumbled over the slight crest of the hill, and triggered another cascade of gravel. ‘Grakkan gargled inarticulately...The Demon had nearly been slain! I had shot him with my cannons, and had come to seize the final honor when...when...

When SPARTAN-G107 fumbled with the Elite’s fallen plasma pistol, overcharged it in a single motion, eyes blazing with soulless fury, and stuffed it into the midst his flexing jaws and discharged the supercompressed plasma. There was the traditional static wash of the plasma’s nearly instantaneous impact, and then silence as Igon saw no more.

*  *   *

As Daniels maneuvered his Banshee upwards into the air like a prancing stallion surging for breath, his reticule found the lagging enemy Banshee, pilot too immersed within the horrifying slaughter of the Elite retarded enough to have engaged the wounded Spartan in one-on-one combat. His tactical portion of his mind distantly remarked, A rather unwise maneuver. Yet, his active mind, that of valorous defense of a comrade...but also, he grasped within himself, unable to clear the thoughts of blind vengeance for those that had wounded and nearly killed Kruger. Based on the sniper’s flagging biosigns, it would not be long...

He trigged a long-range salvo of plasma, causing him to break off into an elaborate barrel roll as his wingman moved to flank the Spartan. As long as the two Covenant aircraft were engaged, they couldn’t fire upon the prone, bloodied body of Kruger. Something deep within him aroused an image of the SPARTAN-III rising again amidst his injuries, arm his sniper rifle and fire. It was that indomitable spirit that he seemed to possess...when his biosign winked off the screen. He had been steeled by Mendez’s psychological therapists of death. Seven years had weathered him sufficiently to acknowledge Hades himself, but to not feel fear, but when faced with the cold blade of Running Death, to fight more furiously. Mendez had apparently not concerned with the death of team mates, though. Inaction and apathy strained into him, and his jaw loosened almost comically. His Banshee drifted towards the ground as the two UNSC-held Banshees weaved into elegant evasive maneuvers, while simultaneously barraging their counterparts with plasma. The light stitched the opposing fighters as Rachael screamed, “Damn it, Daniels! Get on Kruger now!”

His vision glazed, but instead of finding inability within him, his momentum dulled, he instead found fury. A war cry issued from his lungs as he recklessly tore at one Banshee, relentlessly firing and taking the enemy’s blows without thought. His hand glided over the maneuvering hologram, positioning his Banshee to ram his enemy’s. The armor plating screeched in protest of the hundred-kilowatt bolts, and his prow became superheated and serrated as the enemy continually found his mark. Yet, as his Banshee veered towards him, the other one spastically lurched out of the way. The Elite, however, found himself on the receiving end of a final torrent of plasma. His Banshee detonated and the fiery wisps of plasma swept his body away into vapor.

His mind again fell into a blank state, ignoring the harsh commands of Rachael (how ironic). However, momentarily, his mind transversed the span of twenty second in a single moment, unable to excise the mind-numbing coldness infringing upon his brain, how Kruger had died…Kruger has died…Kruger has died…the words echoed within a dank cavern within him, a monotonous voice intoning it with autonomous precision…a minute passed, and a SPARTAN-III with numerous burn marks over her armor plating suddenly appeared within his field of vision, as if she’d materialized there from Slipspace. It did not last for long as his vision transformed into a sniper scope, the circle of color processed by his retinas slipping further from his grasp, the periphery edging into elongated black lines, and he lost the coppery taste of blood draining from his nostrils and the faint touch of his body suit against his cooling skin…

Beneath the depolarized visor, the unidentifiable figure’s mouth moved, yet words did not appear. The world became a blur as her strong features melded into a melting-pot of flesh and piercing cyan eyes that trembled into arctic mountains…

*  *   *

SPARTAN-G272, Jennifer, tapped together two index fingers. The germanium semiconductors threading through her gauntlets temporarily connected and issued the signal to her communicator to further interface with the Senior Chief Petty Officer’s, collecting more comprehensive medical data. His biosigns were overlaid by a steadily flickering thunder bolt: not that of a flash priority transmission, but of shock. A creative way of depicting the condition.

That cleverness was lost on her as she horridly screamed at the marines, as if a midnight wraith, “SHOCK MEDS! NOW! DAMN IT!”

Her eyes were alit with madness and anger boiled off of her armored figure as the medic of Gold Squad hurriedly moved to Daniels’s fallen figure, fumbling with an autoinjector in his hand: a 0.9% isotonic saline solution impregnated with dextrose, epinephrine, and other chemicals: the standard anti-shock medication for rapid battlefield use. Jennifer relieved him of the device, threading it to a concealed armor port that connected to his cardiovascular system, and then plunging the trigger.

*  *   *

The darkness on the edges of his vision receded like Grunts faced by an advancing SPARTAN-II: a heated titanium carbide knife eviscerating butter with a burning malice. Her features softened for a moment as his eyelids flickered like dying power lines. “Sir?”

He shook his head, and upon feeling what was like sharp gravel embedded into his cranium, banged his helmet. The phantom pains cleared themselves, and he mechanically loaded a clip into his MA5K, clearing both his head and his rifle. He paused as his analytical mind rebooted and re-registered the tactical situation. He absently noted, No hostiles. One friendly down.

His helmet COM crackled, and the sender tag in the bottom right hand corner indicated it was SPARTAN-G025, Rachael. Her voice was slightly panicky and rushed: an uncommon sign of battlefield tension. Strange, considering the lack of plasma bolts scything the air. “Sir, permission to transmit to HIGHCOM?”

Daniels autonomously replied, “What for?”

Immediately, medical data on Kruger spilled across his HUD. “Kruger’s down, and bad. Organ lacerations, internal bleeding, and third-degree plasma burns all across his body...we need to operate.”

A standard reply, and then more emotion textured his bland voice as his emotional subroutines loaded themselves into his brain again. “Permission granted. Rachael, stay with Kruger. The rest of Vulcan Team...disperse. We’ll take down that Scarab.”

Less than a minute later, three of the alien aircraft were in the air, gravity pods gently alit. His hand automatically guided the holographic yoke as he opened a socket onto FLEETCOM Three. “This is SPARTAN-G288. Does anyone hear me, over?”

A crackle of static accompanied an errant plasma torpedo’s descent high above through the magnetosphere, and a reply back. “This is Op Com on the Washington, SPARTAN-G288. I’m receiving you on five green bars, sir.”

As his hand nudged the Banshee, blood splattered across its port canard and a profusion of bullet holes next to his inoperable right plasma canons, towards the Scarab. A minor course correction. Meanwhile, his jaw worked out, “I need extraction on the double for a wounded Spartan and eight Marines, coordinates alpha-foxtrot thirty-five sixteen, standard. Field Mobile Surgical Unit required. Be advised, Covenant air support in immediate vicinity. Over.”

The Scarab, its majestic titanic form encroaching over felled trees and its interceptor screen of six Banshees in standard defensive position around it, came into view. Credit to Jennifer and Angel for the lack of the sudden intake of breath. Meanwhile, there was a brief pause, a stronger spark of static, and the coordinator replied, “Yes sir. Dropship Golf 81 inbound, E.T.A. three minutes. Over and out, SPARTAN-G288.”

Convinced that Kruger would have at least a slender chance of survival with the FMSU-equipped Pelican inbound, he turned up the polarization as the clouds parted beneath him, and the star drove its jagged lances of brilliance like Apollo into his helmet. A crimson array of holograms winked: he was approaching maximum altitude and would begin stalling soon.

The ghost image of the Scarab and its interceptor escorts burned beneath the cloud they were over. “This is the plan, Vulcan Team. We dive in hard. Do not engage enemy Banshees. We’ll bail out close to the Scarab, and then neutralize the crew and set the self-destruct. Copy?”

Two acknowledgement lights burned green, and the antigravity pods that kept his Banshee suspended emitted unnatural shrieks. The negative energy coils within were fluxing, unable to maintain their field potential. “Go! Go! GO!”

The hanging Banshees didn’t even have a chance to respond. Alien communications scrolled across the COM panel of his flyer. The ONI interpretation gear in his helmet intoned serenely, “Incoming Banshees, what is your mission, over.”

The last wisps of low-density water vapor known as the cloud stopped clipping at his Banshee, and then they were free, like paratroopers on a HALO infiltration run. He imaged himself spreading his arms and legs eagle-style, maximizing air resistance and minimizing terminal velocity... “Incoming Banshee unit, break off your run now.”

Firing the plasma cannons at the crowd of Grunts and Elites gathered on the top decks of the Scarab would be a waste of energy. Their eyes raised towards the heavens towards the Banshees, and they found themselves blinded by the sun. Jennifer roared a thundering cry for the blood of her enemies, the bastards that had mortally wounded Kruger...

His eyes subtly shifted to Angel several seconds before jump. She was wounded, no doubt. Third-degree burns over her chest were Banshee plasma bolts had broken through her breastplate and tachycardia from cardiac damage. Yet, even wounded, her sniping assets would be worth the potential further injuries that would be incurred by her act-

“Alpha Strike! Tallyho!”

That thread of through came to an abrupt halt as his Banshee intercepted the Scarab neatly on the raised observation platform that was the apex of the walker. An Elite and two Grunts found themselves under the twelve-ton assault aircraft, limbs mangled irreparably. Daniels drew his MA5K like a sword from his belt at the form of a cobalt-armored Elite a foot away, his jaws gaping in a hysterically stupid fashion and his hand on a plasma rifle on his bandolier. The alien staggered backwards, shield absorbing the projectile impacts, and then began to gag as his armor was shorn away...and then he collapsed on limbs bent on unnatural angles.

Screams below him as Jennifer and Angel redoubled their efforts, and Grunts and Elites fell to the killing machines. A single diminutive Ultra Grunt clad in opulent white armor, however, escaped their tenacious fields of fire, grunting as it braced a Fuel Rod Cannon over its padded shoulder... Daniels raised his MA5K, fully bent on detonating the pouch of methane clamped over its rebreather mask...and was semi-horrified to find a solitary three rounds clip the Grunt’s armor. His rifle’s receiver clacked. Empty.

He jumped as viridian radioactive liquid fire parted the air, detonating near him and sending an intense plume of heat over him. Blisters formed on his skin in a millisecond as his biosigns beeped. The Ultra Grunt, formerly uncertain of its role, was injected with the serum of valor and bloodlust, uncommon for a Grunt.

I’ll be killed by a Grunt?

That thought drove him forward as he roared like a maniacal coyote, his seared body failing to connect to his peripheral nervous system as he drew the Energy Sword from his back, and it alit in its beautiful fiery brilliance. He saw the plasma reflected in the Grunt’s expanding irises, and the commando dwarf flinched for a moment, sufficient time for the sword to shear through his right shoulder and swivel upwards, decapitating him as his SPI Mark II armor was bathed in condensing superheating cyan blood.

Whatever was left of the Grunt fell as its blood coalesced into a vapor cloud over the corpse. Furiously, he discarded his MA5K with such force that the weapon went spinning over the sloping sides of the Scarab, and took the Fuel Rod Cannon. Its reassuring weight, driven in by Mendez’s and the Lieutenant Commander’s relentless cross-weapon training, lent him comfort as an overhead Banshee dove, intent on ramming the perpetrator that had just slain five of the security detail.

There was no use for the hexagonal zoom function. A billowing comet of radiation leapt forward from the weapon with uncommon speed, squarely intercepting the Banshee. Daniels could’ve sworn he saw the aircraft lit up against the sky for a moment, flaring with the excess heat and radiation for a moment before its plasma coils sparked and detonated. A clean kill.

The five others broke off of their strafing runs, and two silent cracks reverberated through the air, and two Elites fell from their Banshees, arms flailing helplessly, gnawing at the air as their broken bodies fell.

Daniels limberly jumped off the observation platform onto the main deck, and felt a thrum of pain ripple through his stressed bones from the gentle maneuver. A problem, but one that could be reconciled later. He glanced at Jennifer and Angel, and saw the bloodied corpses and discarded plasma weapons scattered across the deck. He nodded, and they reciprocated the sentiment. Angel, even wounded, had the strength to whisper through chapped lips, “Nice weapon, sir. Did it come with a discount?”

The Spartan team leader chuckled grimly, and then issued rapidfire instructions. “I’ll take point with my cannon. Angel will provide cover from the rear, and...”

The clamlike doors to the lower deck sealed shut, and the control adjacent to it burned crimson and projected a single line of text: SECURITY BREACH ON DECKS TWO AND THREE. Almost with contempt for an underling, a single Fuel Rod blast was sufficient to disengage the locks and transform it into sparking jags of curled metal, amorphous from the devastating hit.

“...Jennifer, get a hand on two Needlers. They’ll be useful if a Field Master or a high-ranking split-jaw is commanding the show.”

A grimace spread over her features, but she affirmed, “Copy that.”

As she policed two of the projectile weapons from the fragmentation grenade-style barbequed body of a Major Elite, one of the Elites in scarlet armor, a voice hollered from downstairs, ringing with authority, “Come Demons, to your end!”

Further jeers followed...almost juvenile.

However, they were just an element of psychological warfare, because as Jennifer cocked the weapons over the Elite’s body, she said tersely, “Three Phantoms inbound. We don’t have much time.”

The traditional sound of metal being scorched by plasma rang as the dropships fired a salvo of plasma. The metal vaporized, charred and disfigured. He grimaced. His Fuel Rod Cannon couldn’t take them all down before the plasma killed him. He made a hand signal, and began to covertly crouch and advance down the stairs...Go stealth.

Two acknowledgement lights.

As he curdled his gauntlet around the textured trigger of the weapon, a Grunt appeared at the foot of the stairs, giving a nervous laugh as he registered no contacts...and then realized the identity of the camouflaged warriors descending towards him... “Damn! Go aggressive!”

A single round blazed by his shoulder, taking the Grunt through the occipital cavity. The soldier fell. He instinctively retreated as one of the command crew primed a plasma grenade and tossed it at the Grunt’s chest. It would never work. The Covenant could continue grenading the sole vector to the Scarab’s controls until the Phantoms dropped off their platoon of reinforcements.

Or perhaps...Jennifer echoed his thoughts, because three fragmentation grenades appeared in her hand. Each of the SPARTAN-IIIs secured one, and then on an unspoken command, wrought from the near-psychic link forged in every one of them from years of training...they threw. Thunder blossomed, and they shrieked a war cry as Daniels descended and rounded the corner in a simple bound. The Fuel Rod Cannon’s internal mechanisms churned as he fried repeatedly. A haze of lethal green burned to life before him, and even as return plasma bolts seared the photoreactive panels of his SPI armor, all he could see in his fury-forged vision was an insidious cauldron of green...

After what appeared to be a millisecond later, a symbol flashed in his HUD: the current clip was out of ammunition. He instinctively reached for another set of clustered fuel rods on his waist as he realized that only a single hostile still stood, armor one of austere gold and bearing an Energy Sword in his hands...a Field Master.

The Zealot’s hand impressed upon a single control, and a garbled tongue whined, “The self-destruct. Demons, you have lost! Let us voyage to the abyss together!”

Angel punctuated, the ONI gear similarly translating the Elite’s final words in her helmet. “Wrong.”

A sniper round lanced through the Elite’s deflector shielding and then bored through his cranium, the exit wound a conduit for a widely-dispersed fine near-circle of blue-purple blood and cerebral fluid plastered on the command controls of the Scarab. The aural knife of the 14.5mm armor-piercing round was blunted by the suppressor, in this case, a series of concentric graphite sheaths.

Daniels hiked a thumb at the stairwell as a mechanized voice counted off the seconds. “Let’s go, Spartans.”

Jennifer, however, paused uncertainly, and upon observing the Zealot’s corpse, whispered traces of humor alighting in her eyes, “Wait, sir. I have a better idea...”

*  *   *

Ultra Domo Kawarr ‘Anataie distractedly waved Special Operations Team One down the stairs to the command deck as the Major Domo in command of the insertion team annoyingly made the “negative” hand signal, as if addressing a subordinate. “Another moment, Excellency. We are preparing the door breach charge.”

‘Anataie observed the shrapnel plastered across the main deck, interlaced with the body and blood of the Elites and Grunts that had guarded, or rather, attempted to guard the Scarab. The first security doors had been breached: an indicator of external hijacking. But the walker was not progressing forward...had the Demons been foolish enough to lock themselves inside the control room of the Scarab and not even have prior knowledge of how to use the holographic controls?

A buzz of static, and then, “Charges set, Excellency.”

The Major Domo turned towards ‘Anataie, who nodded approvingly. The Special Operations Elites of Team One grimaced themselves, unused to superior eggheads with little knowledge of true combat...the plasma bolts fly haphazardly, the human projectiles seeking to unravel the object known as your intestines, the continual chaos as nearby artillery repeatedly returned fire at foes that were never hit...some bastard that’d landed his position from a weapons manufacturer company...

The Ultra Domo said simply, “Go.”

Without further ado; a countdown, a flash of patterned lights, the E-3 type plasma charge detonated in an asymmetrical plume of fire, and there were shouts and prerecorded bugle tones sounded on SQUADCOM One. The cyan-clad Elites activated their active camouflage as they evasively rolled as they reached the foot of the stairs, plasma rifles firing in automatic firing patterns...

Major ‘Juae shouted hoarsely, “Team One! Cease fire! Damn it, cease fire! Excellency, the command deck is secure. All other teams, I repeat, the walker is secure. Checking for explosive traps now. I want HAZMAT down here with radiological sensors.”

‘Anataie suppressed an edging tentacle of resentment at ‘Juae for co-opting his operations command, but reserved it for later. The Demons had undoubtedly hidden one of their nuclear bombs aboard the Scarab...or were they still here in their camouflage? There had been disrupting reports of shadows trespassing the outer security lines...Demons in heretic umbrages of anathema.

He keyed his helmet-mounted microphone. “Teams Two and Three, disperse and scout for cloaked perpetrators. Phantoms One through Three, stay on station for immediate extraction.”

His heart beat was elevated as the HAZMAT specialists clad in their vivid bronze armor debarked from the awaiting dropships, mobile infantry-sized scanners in hand as they deployed on pre-determined positions on the Scarab, awaiting the trickle of neutron radiation that signified nuclear devices. ‘Anataie himself nervously shuffled to the gentle cyan light of the gravity lifts of the Phantoms, as if his proximity to the exfiltration craft would save him from a nuclear-charged demise.

A HAZMAT specialist, HAZMAT Four, was the first to reply. His body tensed, failing to notice, or rather, unwilling to notice the clawing jags of fear for Heretic super-weapons. He had been raised in a lofty family, and knew only political backstabbing and blackmailing, not death nor pain. Yet, the report was a negative. “No sign of radiologicals, Excellency. However, we have...something...on the command monitor. It is in Demon script. The translation software has it, and...”

Uncertainty and trepidation came upon the Minor Domo’s voice as the words, in boldface, scrolled across his HUD: “HAHA YOU’RE FUCKED.”

His eyes widened slightly in an oscillating pattern, first in fear that there was a sequestered nuke, then in incredulity that the humans could’ve shrouded the radiation signature, and then widening, striking upon the fact that they could’ve left other traps...not nukes ...plastic explosives? As he glanced at a discarded plasma pistol on the floor, the roiling light illuminating the grip struck through his head. Plasma. Beta radiation.

“All units, retreat! They’ve...”

The plasma coils of the Scarab anticlimactically detonated, first the power cyclers of the primary cannon in a rising plume of ionized gas that permeated the feedback loops in the rear of the cannon, laying waste to the command room of the Scarab and vaporizing the HAZMAT and Special Operations Elites stationed there. A moment later, the beautifully terrifying thunder ignited the primary coils of the Scarab, and it was awash in plumes of rising aurora borealis as the fire swept from every articulation point and armored joint. ‘Anataie was slain by the heat, his body armor melting in a millisecond and his cell cytoplasms flaring, as if struck by an energy projector’s direct hit. As he melted and then vaporized like his subordinates on the lower deck, the Scarab was fell like Goliath, and the four mechanical “legs” that bore its weight were cut out from under it as the self-destruct sequence activated the fuel cells in them. A moment later, the three Phantoms on standby were transformed into billows of death, hands of plasma stretching across the skies, proclaiming the death of the Elites like the God of Running Death himself’s messenger. A thousand trees were alit in blazes as three diminutive aircraft: Banshees, skimmed the flaming treetops, and arced away to the wreck of Golf 419.

*  *   *

UNSC Trenchant, Icarus IV Orbit Icarus System 9.1.2552 The three blips accelerated on the 3-dimensional matrix of the newly-installed holographic TAC display anchored in the vicinity of the command chair, and as if a devout martyr awaiting crucifixion and glory before God, the Cronus-class carrier Princeton, awaited the landing blows of the three kamikaze Seraph interceptors. The Princeton’s double-layered interceptor screen had been torn astray by the cross-bombardment of two CCS-class battlecruisers (which had been immolated by HORNET mines a fraction of a second before by the prowler Loki), and the carrier was alit in a dozen separate spots on its hull. As three UNSC escorts veered to launch Archer missiles in a vain attempt to preserve the renowned warship. A materialization of almost aristocratic wistfulness for tradition, and vain.

Have you seen a greatly slowed clip of a Mark II Magnetic Accelerator Cannon’s three-round burst, almost like that of a BR55 Battle Rifle? The Seraphs were like that, three glistening blurred spheres hanging in space, their glossy finishes and piscine teardrop shapes failing to resolve to the eyes of Commander Andrea Dunlap.

A year ago, after her graduation from the UNSC Naval Academy on Ganymede, the third moon of Jupiter in the Sol System, she would’ve been unable to restrain the tears burgeoning from her eyes, the patriotism that would well within her as another thousand crewmen were slain by the Covenant. No further. After the tragic Battle of Reach, where lanced UNSC ships littered the fortress world’s surrounding space like dead Confederate soldiers on the fields of Gettysburg after Pickett’s Charge. The blood that stained the farmland were globules of flash-vaporized titanium that instantaneously froze in the near-absolute zero of interstellar space, giving rise to unique crystalline structures.

The casualty rate for the UNSC Navy was eighty-nine percent: one ship surviving to flee like a guilt-ridden coward for ten bashed into submission. The scenes of the four-ship taskforce she was in as Taskforce One-Six retreated to nearby Tantalus VI came to her as readily as a holo-vid projector recalling data from its vid chip. The heavy destroyer hanging in space before them, the Archer missiles and pulse lasers stitching each other with mathematical precision, the bridge and engine core of the taskforce flagship, the destroyer Manassas, vaporizing from a focused plasma torpedo hit, and the three escort frigates jumping to Slipspace in an impulsive wavering transdimensional rift as the Covenant destroyer turned to attempt to neutralize them.

She had never recovered from the posttraumatic stress. She had abandoned hundreds of UNSC warships, thousands of living, sentient beings, to die above Reach. Her self-preservation instincts had gone awry, she had concluded. Her heart had been chiseled as she heard the reports of the destruction of the UNSC Gettysburg, a frigate over Reach. The home to her lover, Ensign Richard Klaus, a Slipspace mathematician in the Engineering section of the warship.

Now, she had erected barriers of defense. Nevermore would she feel affection for another, lest she suffer the whiplash of losing her lover. Death was routine. She even yearned for it, to reunite with Richard in heaven.

Andrea said autonomously, envisioning the dueling of the Manassas and the Covenant destroyer beyond the viewport, the Seraphs engulfing the human destroyer like phagocytes...those images blotted out the thermonuclear funeral pyre of the Princeton, despite the subatomic fury of the irregular sphere of fire as it depleted its terrible anger in the vacuum, unheard and useless, a waste expenditure of spiteful malice.

A rally point marker, an inverted isosceles triangle, winked to life on the TAC board. As it latticed in a web and the center of the matrix was being contracted by an invisible hand, UNSC starships reoriented themselves, recomputing firing solutions for moving trajectories. It was Vice Admiral Steinberg of the carrier Magellan, commanding a reformation of the dreadfully dispersed defensive open hex formation the UNSC defense fleet had started with.

Commander Dunlap spoke hoarsely, not taking her eyes off of the spectacle of the plasma torpedo’s corona plunging into the Manassas like a dagger of olden times betraying Caesar, its serrated edge heralding death, the fires blossoming over the UNSC warship..., “Rosen, get us to the rally position ASAP.”

As the Trenchant, a frigate, slid on a preordained vector to the Magellan’s battle cluster, a Covenant frigate, previously thought destroyed after a profusion of Longswords and MAC projectiles had holed it, rewarmed its engines. Its baffles failed to conceal the blue aura permeating the nearby space. An ensign muttered, “We’re screwed for sure.”

His superior didn’t even bother to correct that inexcusable breach of military conduct as Andrea looked on into the yawning maw of transdimensional space fluxing before her, and the Slipspace mathematics scrolling across her command monitor in a secondary window on the periphery of the display. Her heart still sang to the wedding choir she would never hear, the bride she would never kiss, the flower petals thundering around her like a Venezuelan waterfall’s droplets impacting the aggregate water underneath, her heart’s solitary beats suppressing all other stimuli as she drew closer to the handsome man in his dark suit...

“Ma’am, one contact in our rear quarter. Permission to engage?”

The automatic response would’ve been: What the hell do you want to do? Let that bitch blow us to hell?

Her eyes glazed over as she transitioned from fantasy to reality, the daemon of Duty’s unyielding, cruel yoke aching her as she opened her eyes to the red wireframe of a Covenant frigate several hundred thousand kilometers distant behind them. She belatedly realized that her self-neglect for self preservation would led to the deaths of the hundreds of stalwart crew members aboard the Trenchant. She wouldn’t die. Yet.

“Rosen, full stop, and turn us around to engage the frigate. Jones, what’s the charge on the MAC gun?”

Lieutenant Jones, his face like polished walnut, eyes so angular they appeared to have been chiseled by an artist, “Ma’am, we’re at sixty-six percent and charging. Estimate insufficient charge before perpetrator closes to plasma torpedo range.”

“Even if we channel full engine power into the MAC?”

“Yes ma’am.”

Shit. Shit. Shit. The profanities came so profusely in her mind that she failed to realize her onset of swearing syndrome, common amongst UNSC personnel after several dozen years of being vaporized on space, land, and sea.

She stared blankly at the onrushing bull, wishing to be a matador and to acrobatically leap out of the way, or better yet, to reach for an M19 SSM rocket launcher and propel the feral beast into hell with a gore-drenched one-way ticket.

“Orders, ma’am?”

After a moment: “Just pray.”

*  *   *

Bearcat Squadron

The CB509 Intruder reconnaissance/stealth operations joint starfighter was the epitome of human technology, that is, a close-cut carbon copy of captured Covenant technology. When a UNSC military officer inquired Lockheed Martin Aerotechnology about the “authenticity” of the Intruder’s stealth technology, i.e. how much had been commandeered from the Covenant, a Lockheed representative had responded, “We’ve changed the language on the fuselage.”

Captain Malcolm “Blackhawk” Davis, a squadron commander of the newly formed Third Tactical Reconnaissance Group, a recon element under ONI jurisdiction, watched the flight recorders sketch a series of waveforms and digits on the triple-backupped ROM drives of the Intruder starfighter. After one of the two ONI prowlers in the UNSC fleet over Icarus VI had been vaporized by a Covenant carrier early in the battle, Bearcat Squadron had been scrambled to provide data for ONI.

It was a rather substantial waste of technology. The CB509 had proven in its two sole engagements with the Covenant that it could stand toe-to-toe with a Seraph counterpart and win. The Bearcats, formerly Longsword pilots attached to Admiral Stanforth’s Leviathan battle group, would have preferred to be in their older craft, engaging the Covenant Seraphs missile to laser, instead of drifting, recording the systematic annihilation of UNSC and Covenant warships alike.

The two fleets were rather evenly matched, according to the computer. For once. Twenty UNSC warships to seven Covenant bogies. A near-optimal three-to-one ratio for UNSC victories. As the frigate Absalom took an arcing plasma torpedo to the midsection, burnt for a moment, and then was cleaved into two flaming halves, the prospect seemed less likely.

The loss of one of its frigate escorts compelled Steinberg on the Magellan to issue the reform order, and the UNSC fleet, like a flock of obedient ship, complied. That is, all but the frigate Trenchant: the one errant one. Blackhawk keened closer at the Trenchant. Carbon scoring was frequent on its Titanium-A battle armor, and the frequency and close spacing of the rings of charcoal indicated pulse laser barrage from medium-close range. Flipping through transcripts, Blackhawk confirmed his suspicions. The Trenchant and a pair of destroyers had taken on a Covenant frigate, and with help from the devious sprite that was the Loki, succeeded. There had been COM intercepts of hull breaches on the Trenchant’s almost comically pathetic sixty centimeter armor: results of light pulse laser fire.

Bearcat Four muttered, “There goes another frigate. Our assets are running dangerously thin, Blackhawk. You sure we shouldn’t engage?”

Bearcat Nine, a flight commander and lieutenant, retorted, “ONI will excise our egg rolls for a transgression of us not collecting precious data for their Darwin Award-winning stupids. And, you know the price tag for them fighters, right-o?”

There was no conversation as the Trenchant reeled slightly backwards from the encroaching Covenant frigate. Buying time for a MAC recharge?, Davis mused.

COM silence was broken when Bearcat Five curtly reported, “Sir, I’m picking up radiation from position one-six-five. Mansart radiation - a Slipspace transition. Picking convex waveforms from within the rift...it’s Covenant.”

Rapidfire orders, like the chattering of an M267 50mm machine-gun turret. “Bearcat Squadron, go COM silent. Secure all electronics, and activate ECM (electronic countermeasure) arrays. Combat Alert Alpha.”

The chorus of affirmatives was nonexistent: the COM silence order.

From within the quivering portal thrust forth a finely-honed blade of heliotrope: a Covenant warship.

The sensor transceivers immediately picked up a titanic surge of data, like a solar flare jetting from the prominence of a star. Fire control, navigational radar, intraship and intership communications links, the whole works. However, also a trickle on the Covenant T-band...a previously unknown fire control channel. A new Covenant weapon? Their fathomless armada had already laid waste to the UNSC. Another starship-mounted weapon would be the killing blow.

He, however, remembered the debacle of the Battle of New Harmony, where a prowler had identified a new Covenant frequency, believed to be a fire control one as well. When further analysis had indicated that it was actually a new variant of a pulse laser long-ranged targeting radar, that prowler’s commander and sensor officers had been demoted to picking up golf balls on Reach’s Officer’s Club. That is, when Reach had been still standing.

An unheard command whispered through SQUADCOM: There’s one Covenant ship! Identify it!

The primary monitor immediately displayed information: a rotating wireframe, each organic curve and flickering turret brimming with plasma or laser energy laid out to see, and text scrolling across it. CRUISER TONNAGE. REVERENCE-CLASS. 3000 METERS.

He hissed underneath his breath: fuck. *  *   *

Vulcan Team

An angel reached out a hand to smite the intruders, and the seraphic touch annihilated the Scarab above. Regardless of the main fuselage’s elevation into the sky, a hundred nearby conifers were flattened and vaporized into the downthrust of plasma and sonic thunder, and thousands of nearby trees were alit afire. It was a heavenly thunderclap, and immediately, UNSC COM channels lit up with queries about a nuclear detonation.

The secluded cluster of oaks that the three Banshees were underneath for protection were ones now wreathed in flame. It would be problematic to lift off again, but if the Banshees had been airborne during the detonation, they’d be dashed against the ground from the sheer force of the blast and their organs most likely fused inside their Mark II SPI armor.

Jennifer whispered, “Now, that’s a fiesta.”

The secondary shockwaves came from the crumpling mechanical legs, and they fell outwards, pillars of plasma-charged metal that unkindly pummeled dozens of more trees and extended the reach of the forest fire. Several seconds later, the Scarab’s main chassis, mostly burnt-out and disintegrated completely in some locations, impacted the ground, sending subsonic tremors rippling through the soil, the tree branches swaying in pained resonance.

Angel didn’t even flinch to her credit as a tree branch, now an organic torch, was shaken loose from a nearby oak and ignited the nearby underbrush. Her surreal calmness was unnerving, like a woman of god bestriding the dangers of the world, knowing she would be untouched by nature and its inherent dangers.

As a curtain of fire began to gentle rise from the crinkling leaves beneath, he did not allow himself to unwind, his muscles to relax from their contracted state, for there was danger nearby. It was not a sixth sense, but simply the fact that there were Covenant still on the planet, and they would also have to be cleansed. It was just a matter of being transported there, and the magics taught to Vulcan Team by Mendez and the L.C. would start to work.

The TAC display still showed Merciful Repentance, the Covenant auxiliary base, to be still standing, and under contention by UNSC forces. Subtle flicking of fingers, something infamously difficult because of the strength-amplifying and neurally wired circuits impregnated in his battle armor, indicated that Vulcan Team disperse.

With a lighting of antigravity pods, the Banshees wobbled, the negative energy loops recalibrating from their brief period of inactivity, and then the burnished metal aircraft ascended through the tree canopy, the tongues of fire salivating to slay the SPARTAN-IIIs...metal barely deformed, but as the tracers of flame reached upwards, the Banshees leapt out of their grasp with an unexpected surge of vigor, unwilling to fall to the discordance of fire.

Their destination: Camp Merciful Repentance. Mission: blow the shit out of the Covenant.

*  *   *

UNSC Trenchant

Commander Dunlap viewed the appearance of the Reverence-class Cruiser without apprehension, for they were already fated for an ignoble death by the Covenant frigate steadily advancing towards their own starship. It was remarkable, however. A MAC heavy round had squarely lanced the enemy frigate through the midsection, and still, lights were twinkling in the perforation and the plasma torpedo accumulator of the Covenant warship was warming. There was nothing she could do yet watch the radiation counters record the increasing ampere of the beta radiation, the scintillating spindles of gas gathering on the torpedo tube’s surface.

The cruiser angled towards them, for all in the world appearing to be a transfigured bloated whale for its lack of Seraph interceptor screens or charging turrets. It was an insult to the Trenchant that the Covenant Ship Master believed their frigate to be so pathetic as to not even warrant a charging of weaponry or deployment of Seraphs.

Andrea distracted turned her pale blue eyes to the TAC monitor. Eighteen UNSC warships had already aggregated at the rally point and had set into their elaborate formation that maximized firepower, while seven Covenant starships accelerated towards their defenseless targets. There were only three exceptions: the Trenchant, the damaged Covenant frigate, and the newly-arrived Covenant cruiser, which was still angling towards the Magellan and its escorts.

The Communications Lieutenant called out, “One minute and sixteen seconds until plasma torpedo launch.”

A pause, for the crew knew the following words, and the communication lieutenant’s trepidation was understandable. For the rest of the crewmen, life was more valuable than honor or death, for they did not share the stoic fatalism that resided within Andrea.

“Ma’am, permission to sound Abandon Ship?” This set an internal war within Andrea: brief but agonizing as she tapped into the unseen web of emotions and thoughts that linked every crewman aboard her frigate. For the last seven months, the crew of the Trenchant had labored in several catastrophic battles with the Covenant, never a victory, never a fire to alight their hopes. The strength of mankind, that of perseverance, the gentle flare of the candle within them that inspired them, gave dutifulness to their actions and valiance to their spirits, now had been doused by the unearthly, cold destructions of the Covenant. For every planet glassed, the UNSC suffered not only a material loss of several million or billion citizens and soldiers, but a giant morale blow.

They would have something to live for, and would continue to serve humanity. She would not. Not a needless waste of a life, but a calculated ploy to reunite her with Richard.

She turned to the COM array implanted on her command chair, knowing that every moment might risk the lives of dozens of her subordinates, yet every bone ached, every muscle felt lacerated as her jaw worked out the words. “Aband-”

Something within her, a neuronal circuit, billions of organic molecules interacting to form a transient thought, broke that lethargy. “Belay that. All hands to combat stations.”

The crew affixed her with laser stares: an inexcusable breech of military protocol, yet expected. Their commander had basically said: go fuck yourself up your ass. Swift to quell the dissent before it broke into mutiny, she declared hastily, still eyeing the TAC monitor, the parallel lines of the linear trajectory of the twin Covenant ships, “Come about to course oh-oh-three and incline the ship to produce a minimal signature to the enemy frigate.”

None dared to venture a question, for the crewmen knew that their deposit of leniency had been overly depleted by their resentment at the commander’s orders. Yet, the commander wasn’t a madwoman. Each movement was precise, with minutes of forethought before execution of a tactic. It was what had allowed them to survive relatively unharmed for the seven months that they had spent together. For they had been baptized in alien fire, and forged into a family. When the mother gave an order, the sons and daughters were compelled to obey.

*  *   *

Covenant Frigate Sorrowful

“Excellency, fifteen seconds to plasma torpedo discharge!”

The acclamation of the blinding glory of the weapons systems of their forefathers came with such exuberance and swiftness that one would have expected such a declaration to be from an insignificant underling to a master far greater than them, one of religious fear to a pious entity. Or else, from an officer that was addicted on some methylphenidate-derived organic compound.

The former was correct, for an Ossoona, an Eye of the Prophet, was aboard the Sorrowful. ‘Uraggee donned the jet-black armor of a Stealth Sangheili, yet the plasma pistol strapped to the side of his sparse combat belt indicated that he was a noncombatant. He had never seen a heretic fall to scything plasma beams, never had taken a wound for the Covenant. While ‘Uraggee had been stationed aboard this relatively low-risk starship to observe, it was not combat he was to record, but adherence to religion.

The Fire Control Major Domo would have normally announced, “Fifteen seconds to firing”, or some other rather dismal sentence. Ship Master ‘Kinee understood his warship’s crew. They were faithful and competent, and ‘Kinee normally allowed such comments to slide. Religious fervor was actually a deterrent to effective warring, for it led to suicidal plunges into enemy formations and other rather mindless tactics.

Now, the presence of Ossoona ‘Uraggee was threatening the lives of his men. Especially hazardous, seeing the fine line being treaded by the Covenant battle fleet in light of the seven to eighteen ratio to the heretical enemy starships. The slightest mistake would spell a horrid disaster offending to the Table of the Gods on high and the slaying of the family of every crew member on the warship that had committed the mistake.

Playing to ‘Uraggee, a Minor Domo heralded, “For the Gods, we shall have blood today!”

A chorus of voices affirmed, “With the blessing of the God of Victory, our purity of spirit, our devotion, we shall secure victory!”

The NAV Officer broke the rather insincere religious conversations. “Excellency, the enemy warship is moving. Its position is on-screen now.”

‘Uraggee fixed the Major Domo at Navigations with a disapproving sneer, but the NAV Officer disregarded the Ossoona. At least one Sangheili understood that without the say-so of ‘Kinee, the Ossoona could not list any crewmember for failure to uphold religious protocol.

On the main screen, the warship less than half their size had jets of white vapor plume from equidistant points on its hull, turned on its axis...but to what end?

The question in the mind of the Ship Master was answered not in words, but by the bulk of the Reverence-class Cruiser Glorified Altar sliding across space behind the infidel starship, gliding on the entrails of its quantum mechanics displacement drives.

Meanwhile, ‘Uraggee had curled his unarmored hands into meditative shapes, and was rather ear-wretchingly singing praises about the God of Victory and his divine son, the God of Running Death. While ‘Kinee writhed at the inharmonious tones, he found the air to expulse the words: “Hold your fire! Hold your fire!” The Ossoona abruptly terminated his song, and glared at the Ship Master. ‘Kinee would almost envision the religious robes adorned by the Adepts swirling around ‘Uraggee, making him for all in the world a towering raven ...but ‘Kinee would have to serve five more combat placements before promotion to an Adept of the Sanctified Order. For now, he was an utterly unimportant and inconsequential bystander.

“Ship Master, the Gods demand their share of...”

‘Kinee was tempted to retort that the Gods didn’t demand anything, but knew that even his lofty rank would not prevent a mock trial and an evisceration. The bridge recorders would undoubtedly record his “heresy”, so he opted for: “O Ossoona...” A touch of uncertainty on the following words after the sarcastic honorific.... “...thou shouldeth not strike the vermin lest thou unseat the Glorified Altar.”

This temporarily appeased ‘Uraggee, whose EQ was sufficiently low enough for him not to detect the mocking in his voice and a terrible enough understanding of the ancient dialect for him not to realize his grammatical fallacies. However, the Adept-to-be recognized the folly of possibly hitting the Glorified Altar with a plasma torpedo. In fact, the odds of a miss were a million-to-one, but with the damage to the secondary focusers by the human MAC round and the fact that the Fleet Master would order all vessels to burn down the Sorrowful on a misaligned torpedo were enough to stall their attack of the vermin ship.

“Then stay thy hand, Ship Master.”

*  *   *

UNSC Trenchant

The tension laced the air and intensified as the timer ticked down the seconds until plasma torpedo launch...

Three...the electronic tone percolated every ear, every mind, every soul on the Trenchant. Hands were clasped in prayer, skin adorned with tears.

Two. A cacophony of unheard thunder sounded, its muted majesty recognized the probable impending doom to befall the UNSC frigate. Commander Andrea Dunlap’s eyelids slid shut with a whisper-silent sound as her polished fingernails knitted together. Her choice had betrayed her own soul, her burning desire to meet Klaus once again, but had saved a hundred and ninety-nine lives. She would forever be christened a savior if her actions had been true.

One. Not a single breath, heartbeat, or expletive. Hell was coming, Hades on his darkened chariot beckoning for his spirits to take lives to be prisoned by Tartarus, locked within his underground palace for eternity.

The wispy breath of the chariot’s horses swept her immaculately-kept hair, yet Andrea did not feel fire cascade around her, nor her body immolated. The seconds now raced with astronomical speed, ticking away as she opened her eyes to the unnerving sight of an elongated bulb, liquid fire restrained, yearning to slay but held back by electromagnetic handlers...the Trenchant would not be felled for now.

*  *   *

Vulcan Team

Evidently, the Covenant had recorded the IFF tags of the three commandeered Banshees, as triple scythes of cyan-heliotrope fire swept through air, incinerating the oxygen-nitrogen potion called the atmosphere to reach the aircraft.

Knowing that a returning of the favor would be the end of the SPARTAN-III element, a taut command from Daniels’s mouth brought the Banshees beyond the maximum range of the Shades. Although every second was an opportunity to be intercepted by Covenant air patrols, time was needed to regroup and map out the battle strategy.

Beneath them, a full-fledged UNSC force was taking Merciful Repentance, or rather, trying. At the core of the assault were three Scorpion tanks and on the flanks, a dozen Warthogs and companies of Marines. The perimeter line of Covenant Shade emplacements had held the line for a sufficient amount of time for the Covenant to ready their counterattack: Ghosts and Specters. Although the Wraiths and Shadows were not visible yet to Daniels’s eye, they were undoubtedly secured the in warren of running cargo modules and Grunt environmental units that comprised the bulk of the Covenant base. Their barricades of supply crates would make them impregnable to Scorpion HE rounds, and would end the UNSC attack.

That was the objective.

Angel had already come up with a tactical thought. “Those Wraiths are probably on the flanks. The Covenant already know that we think their standard strategy is to place their artillery in the center position.”

When a fireball not of shifting oranges and crimsons but of electric blue, sparking with such luminescence and vigor that it appeared to be a newly-birthed star arced from a position behind the half-dozen Shades that had been harassing the Spartans, Angel’s estimation was confirmed.

Vulcan Team was holding position over the right flank of Merciful Repentance, untouched yet by UNSC forces. The UNSC force had insufficient vehicular assets to strike at the flanks. Vulcan Team would be their asset.

Now, what was their insertion plan? A strafing would be suicidal, and any paradrop that involved getting near the turrets would be as well. A ground assault would lead to the launching of the enemy’s Banshee reserves...the only reason that they weren’t deployed was probably that the enemy commander reasoned that the trio of enemy Banshees on his periphery were incapable of taking any action.

Damn wrong.

As he reviewed the topography of the land beneath him, the river catching the rising star’s brilliance and the ripples of water appearing to be liquid glass, he was reminded of the fires that were ravaging the surrounding landscape. Trees. Plasma.

He hit the COM: “Vulcan Team, here’s the plan...”

*  *   *

Bearcat Squadron

With begrudged admiration at Commander Dunlap’s tactics, the partially insolent expression completely not befitting with the saving of two hundred men and women, Blackhawk observed the three starships, moving in parallel, the UNSC Trenchant directly interposed between the damaged Covenant frigate and the newly-arrived Reverence-class Cruiser.

Neither Covenant capital ship dared to fire in fear of possibly lancing each other with plasma or laser energy. The skipper of the Trenchant exacerbated this by using the altitude thrusters like a virtuoso, keeping the frigate on its metaphorical toes, increasing the chances of a misfire. However, it was only a matter of time before the commander of the cruiser realized that his Seraphs could accurately and efficiently decimate the Trenchant.

Was there any way that the Bearcats could intercede, somehow extricate the Trenchant?

He turned his eyes to the weapons station of his fighter: 110mm gatling cannons, ATA ASGM-10 missiles...no nuclear weapons, as their auras of radiation would compromise the stealth and electronic countermeasures of his Intruder starfighter (Prowlers were forbidden to carry nukes during a Slipspace transition, as that would reveal their position by Cherenkov radiation upon reversion, but could carry nuclear weapons in normal 3-dimensional space, as their stealth armor could absorb any betraying neutron radiation. Intruders, however, had too underdeveloped armor or ECM systems to conceal radiation from nukes), and nukes were the only way to even put a dent on the hull of a Covenant cruiser or a frigate.

What about the prowler?

The resident prowler, the UNSC Loki, however, had depleted its supply of HORNET nuclear mines on two Covenant CCS-class Battlecruisers. Its offensive capabilities were essentially nil, except for the two pulse laser cannons mounted on it: commandeered Covenant technology, and also extremely power-expensive. The Loki would be unable to stealth and fire at the same time, and it would be compromised, and shortly afterwards, eradicated.

The prowler, an unseen apparition, was the greatest chance of slipping tactical munitions or any weapon within the cruiser’s weapons range and survive. His eyes fazed, turning again to the boneyard of burnt ship fuselages that strayed in orbit over Icarus IV, the predicted and paid cost of war. Casualties were certain, and there were no winners in warfare...only whoever lost the less. And currently, that was the Covenant, as evidenced by the disproportioned ratio of annihilated UNSC and Covenant warships.

The remnants of the fallen Princeton brought an idea to his mind as he reached to his COM control to contact the Loki. *  *   *

Vulcan Team

Angel, SPARTAN-G152, steadied the width and breadth of the Covenant particle beam rifle on the mossy fallen log, its cellulose composite being decayed by saprobes: the carbon and nitrogen cycles. Such ecological knowledge, however, did not process as she rested the cool amethyst reticule upon the comically pointy head of the orange-clad Grunt on the center Shade.

It was to the credit of Daniels and Jennifer, doing their elaborate dance with their Banshees in their air, toying with the Shades, occasionally straying into the firing range, that none of the emplacements had her sighted. Besides, the delicately arranged camouflage net draped around her, the foil a smear of mud and chlorophyll colors, with the only opening the accelerator of her beam rifle and the lenses at the fore of the unwieldy sniper analog, would make her for all purposes, invulnerable to the Shades.

She whispered three words over TEAMCOM: Tora, tora, tora.

If the Covenant intercepted that transmission, there was no outwardly recognizable sign...that is, until finely-honed lances of energy began to decimate craniums. One after another, systematically, the Shade gunners fell dead. They were so focused on the threat of the Banshee pair aloft that only the sixth Grunt awoke to a horrid reality: that the rest of his brethren had been fell. A panicky burst, a garbled cry, and that Shade emplacement’s seat wobbled slightly as the corpse sank back into the seat, pushing against the antigravity field that suspended the gunner’s seat and the base of the turret.

The phalanx of two dozen Elites and Jackals, however, broke and began spraying the woods with suppression fire from an assortment of plasma rifles, plasma pistols, and the occasional odd needler. The Ultra Elite, clad in opulent white armor and gesturing with his plasma rifles for the Jackals to advance and neutralize the heretic sniper, was the first to be greeted by Mr. Kick Ass, namely, a highly-accelerated bolt of heliotrope radiation. His shields flared in a millisecond, vainly holding against the beam rifle’s irresistible tempest, and then his brain superheating and compelled by thermal expansion to crudely escape from the helmet.

That was the final blow, and the Covenant warriors scurried like rats for cover. A Jackal, a plasma grenade clipped onto an Elite...the resulting conflagration was sufficient to tear the life out of three further Jackals. A few Elites found purchase on the mobile shield generator units systematically scattered throughout the Shade line.

As Angel’s aim strayed to the base of a generator, the weakly armored cadmium resonator that Ambrose had instructed them of at Camp Currahee, she saw the harsh glare of reflected optics. Her eyes, trained by years of marksmanship training to not falter, reflexively squeezed shut before the auto-polarizers in her helmet kicked in.

That bitch is using a spotter’s laser!

When a fine beam of energy reciprocated the favor, missing her beam rifle by centimeters and slagging a section of the protective netting, allowing it to eerily glow from the massive thermal radiation transferred onto it by convection, her slight worry was confirmed.

There was no need to reach for the COM. The cover Banshees were already diving in, twin plasma cannons firing in sequence, indiscrimately peppering the Covenant infantry with suppressive fire. Elites and Jackals caught fire and melted like wax before the onslaught, yet the snipers...a second bolt burned the air barely across the surface of her helmet, and the aftertrail of partially ionized air burned into her retinas, superheated. She felt the paint finish of her armor crackle in sympathy, fragmenting and drawing up a the edges.

The second shot to that pair, fortunately, caught a section of camouflage netting. As the front, charred web of netting loosened and fell to the light coating of desiccated leaves around her, and she recognized the adeptness of the enemy sniper(s). The second shot had been unexpectedly close...and she gritted her teeth and found cover beneath the aging log. A fourth shot from an unknown location impacted the edges of the log, sending an unusually energetic plume of carbon and ozone expulsed into the air.

As the steady rhythm of Banshee cannons sounded, and acknowledgement lights winked green, indicating that suppression fire was in place, Angel momentarily observed the girth of her elongated weapon, and then wriggled to one parched side of her guardian log. She held her attack, though, for ten seconds, and the lack of beams confirmed that the enemy snipers had been forced into cover.

A syncopating heartbeat later, her barrel suspiciously peeked over the edge, the five charge accumulators arranged in a circle on either side of the beam rifle making it have a leering, inquisitorial look. She then commenced a rapid sweep on the 5x scope, running across the Covenant cargo modules, stacked irregularly upon each other. Her counterparts were undoubtedly tucked in behind the barricade, unwilling to expose themselves to the menacing Banshees.

Troublesome, she admitted. She tapped a holographic alien glyph, and her vision leapt forward as she eyed the Covenant flank through a 10x electronic magnifier. Training once again took hold as she cannily observed the irregular clusters of modules with the thought, If I was sniping from there, where would I camp?

She had spotted a likely-looking increment of space between two modules, with stacks of further cover nearby, and rested her finger in the trigger guard of the beam rifle, the alien niche familiar from cross-racial weapons training under the L.C. and Mendez.

Adrenaline and noradrenalin from her adrenal gland quickened her heartbeat as a delicate strain of light worked itself up in the crosshairs of her beam rifle. Reflected light from...what? Metal? A second twinkle of light: definitely optics, probably the scope of a beam rifle. She instinctively laid closer to the bare ground, a taste of electric, addictive ecstasy as she saw her prey slightly ease out of his hiding spot.

A crinkle of leaves, a slight rustle of wind, and her brow furrowed as...

“Freeze, Demon!”

Slightly bewildered, her first thought was that the enemy sniper was taunting her, unlikely because of the hundreds of meters parting the two of them and that he couldn’t possibly divine her location. A trickle of coolant crystallized in her intestines from that sudden fear, but when she saw soft, downy blue light reflect off the burnished metal of her beam rifle’s barrel, she then belatedly realized that a hostile was behind her, and the light was from a pair of plasma rifles.

She suppressed the urge to whirl and fire. Training had made such a reflex arc end in the ending of her barrel perfectly align with the enemy’s helmet. What barred her was the threat of a brief melee strike to her back that would casually fracture her spinal cord into two. The vertebrae could not resist such pressures.

A rippling sound, as if matter was being torn from thin air, for which it was. It was, in fact, a Stealth Elite disengaging active camouflage. The slate gray-armored commando said with careful deliberation, precisely monitoring the rate of his words so that he would not be distracted for the barest moment from his target: “This is ‘Qafiee. I have found the Demon sniper.”

Her mind booted and ran through a tactical analysis of the situation. She was clearly in the disadvantaged position. Her enemy had the luxurious choice of options that a victor always had: melee, plasma grenade stick, automatic fire...the SPARTAN-IIIs had been taught of this. The victor always had the greatest amount of tactical solutions to the problem, while the loser had fewer. For all her combat missions, Angel had found herself with the upper hand, and had found it oddly reassuring to her Mendez’s voice remind her of the battlefield definition of a victor, and it was cathartic to know that she was again wreathed in the laurels of triumph, and humanity survived another hour longer.

The cathartic effect here was gone, and despite the psychological training, her stomach became a gaping maw, and she felt sickened, as if going through one of Mendez’s torture resistance sessions where a simulated captor induced vomiting to ensure the lack of any escape devices sequestered in the stomach.

There was no ultimatum, no moment of religious babble before he killed her for Angel to react. Only the sound of an armored fist striking down, a plasma rifle ready to bash the defenseless Spartan...she closed her eyes in that moment. What laid beyond the physical? Heaven? Hell? Daniels’s hazel brown eyes, the well-defined cheekbones, were the thought that came into her mind as she slumped forward...and felt a weight on her back, deadening, straining her, and she contemplated the end, eventual death, the less of all sensation, the gothic choirs announcing her doom...

When she slumped onto the ground, however, she found the weight, so pressing on her, weighting her lungs with fluid to bring her into pulmonary edema...that of an Elite corpse. In a single, amorphous motion, she brought the point of her beam rifle to the entity she felt behind her, her mind so permeated by adrenaline neurotransmitter that her cerebrum did not process that anyone now behind her had most probably taken out the Elite, but that did not enter her brain. It was now fight or flight.

A familiar, bemused voice said, “I give up.”

SPARTAN-G025, Rachael, was standing before her, Covenant Carbine in hand. Never before had the slightly crumpled and pitted armor plates of SPI armor appeared so divine, radiant. Rachael’s arms were mocking raised, with her semiautomatic firearm lying over the slightly depressed atmospheric units on the bloodied Stealth Elite’s back.

Angel felt an unexpected jolt of anger, that someone had violated her turf. Never before in Currahee had one of the DIs managed to sneak behind her while sniping. She took the leisure of driving a spiked boot into the Elite’s skull, and her the brittle bone snap and the dank sound of the brain losing integrity and congealing. Once the head had become almost porous in its hardness, she spat on it, and turned to Rachael. “Thanks for the save.”

“What I’m here for, Angel.”

*  *   *

A beam rifle’s bolt crafted a finely-milled impact hole on the nose of the Banshee, and as Daniels burnt off the torso and flesh off an overly audacious Brute captain, he turned the unwieldy aircraft and triggered a salvo of whirring plasma beams at the Jackal’s location. Glossy alien metal of the cargo modules crackled with the induction energy, yet the diminutive bastard had poked back into his warren within the boxes.

A tap of the holographic yoke moved the Banshee into a new location: a different firing angle. The Jackal, however, had anticipated the move and fled like the coward he was. Disgusted, he turned away, just to receive a peppering of needler shards and plasma bolts. A crimson-clad Major Domo waved forward a group of six mixed Grunts and Jackals over the uneven topography of the module maze, to have Jennifer plow the irascible irritants from behind. Methane rebreathers caught afire with explosive force, and the interlocking plasma fire cleansed the rest.

He once again reoriented towards the Jackal sniper’s location, found no trace, and moved to a higher altitude, surveilling for targets...when a cluster presented themselves straight-away. The glistening sphere of an overcharged plasma pistol shot connected with his Banshee, and his SPI armor’s electronics crackled slightly from the EMP aftershock.

He turned to the offending aggregate of Covenant...to find a single Zealot, five other Elites, and fifteen Grunts and Jackals. However, there was a more imminent problem...a horde of shadowy locusts...Drones.

The formation angled towards him, and then broke into a dozen different tangling vectors as plasma bolts and needler shards coiled serpentine-like towards his Banshee.

*  *   *

Field Master Undo ‘Kanomee hissed with a touch of malevolence as the Yan’me squad unfurled, breaking into an unorganized haze of weapons fire and insectoids. The Demon-taken Banshee shuddered in midair momentarily, absorbing the brunt of the precisely-aimed fire, and then weaving, attempting to track the individual winged warriors.

On an unheard signal, the second Banshee flocked to reinforce the first, and Field Master ‘Kanomee reciprocated the favor. A handful of Jiralhanae emerged from cover, plastering the oblate mass of flying objects with Brute Shot HE grenades and crimson Brute Plasma Rifle shots. Although the apish creatures were probably doing more damage to the Yan’me than the Demons, the psychological effect was needed: intimidation. Furthermore, the Banshees had been temporarily averted from the groundborne prey.

As Yan’me biosigns winked from his HUD, ‘Kanomee readied the Longbow of Nuhn. A hundred years earlier, Undo had raised that same particle beam rifle and slain the Heretic, Nuhn ‘Guajee. Fifty Special Operations warriors had been covertly dispatched to Malheim, the moon of Joyous Exaltation, to surgically eliminate ‘Guajee and his rebellious followers. A turncoat in the platoon had led to an ambush. Only a dozen loyal Sangheili had managed to slip away to the Tactics Amphitheater, where Nuhn and his hand-picked guards resided. The former Arbiter’s wrath had been terrible, and he exacted his vengeance with the Fist of Rukt which he bore. He slew Sangheili after Sangheili, laying waste to the most talented warriors of the Covenant.

Near the end, a heretic guard had charged him with an Energy Sword. ‘Kanomee wielded his ungainly Beam Rifle like a sword, impacting the insurgent’s helmet with such force that his aim wavered and shields failed, and then brought it down on a second stroke, killing the rebel. Then, in a single motion, he righted his beam rifle and fired at the heretic leader’s head, killing him.

After Nuhn fell, the heretic defense web into disarray, but the guards had managed to capture him and whisk him away on a destroyer, interrogating him for five days with arc knives and necrotic drugs until a Covenant battle group intercepted the Heretic totem of anathema and cleansed it. ‘Kanomee was recovered, and heralded throughout the Covenant Empire such that every youngling yearned to attain such coveted status.

Every item on his body was consecrated by the Prophets themselves. His armor plating, formerly cyan, but now tarnished by plasma bolts, was polished to a mirror sheen and hung in the Step of Silence. His backup weapon, a close-range plasma pistol, had been electroplated in austere gold and named the Maul of the Righteous. However, his particle beam rifle had been most exalted of all his equipment. Named the Longbow of Nuhn, the Prophets themselves had blessed it, sprinkling the holy water upon it.

The High Council automatically elevated him to rank of Councilor for his achievements, but Undo ‘Kanomee had demurred. The highest rank that he would take was Field Master. The Councilors had glorified him as being a pious, humble warrior, and then inquired why. It was because the aristocratic Councilors never saw combat. Yes, some of them had shed blood to attain their high rank, but most were insolent economists that horded money like Grunts did armor-piercing bullets. To earn his glory, he would continue fighting.

Then humankind came: his greatest path for ascension...he would possibly even be titled Arbiter. It turned out to be his, what the humans called a “midlife crisis”. While the Covenant and UNSC warred for the plasma-charred orb of Harvest, ‘Kanomee was seated on the Reverence-class Cruiser Contrition and Resolution. Then, a human nuclear warhead impacted the bow, and sent the Field Master impacting against a Wraith in one of the midaltitude personnel bays. His cranium had been literally shattered and brain askew. When the several-hour skirmish had ebbed for several minutes, several tugs came alongside the cruiser, hauling its mortal remains out of the fire zone.

They found the legendary warrior almost dead. However, ‘Kanomee had not been killed like the warrior’s way, but forcibly suppressed into a coma. He’d lain like that for over four years, and awoke without any memory of his identity. It had taken him years to go through rehabilitation, learning speech and movement again, and after that, a second pass through combat training, where he relearnt all the techniques of war again. After that, he slipped out of the favor of the Prophets.

However, he swore that he would redeem himself. That promise laid in the Longbow of Nuhn, which he clasped in his scarred gauntlets. He made a hand signal to a subordinate Major Domo, who nodded and spoke words into a wrist-mounted communicator. Another dozen of the pestilent fliers joined their falling comrades, assailing the Banshees with such tenacity that the Field Master could’ve mistaken them for Hunters in bloodlust. Unexpected, but useful.

He steadied the elongated, arching barrel of his beam rifle, aligned it at the leading Banshee, whose hull was peppered with plasma scorches and thousands of microscopic crystalline needles...perhaps it was fortuitous chance, skill, or the magicks that were supposedly within the Longbow of Nuhn, but a lance amethyst shot lanced out and impacted the Banshee between the twin plasma cannons.

An algal plume of tepid plasma burst forth from the alien flyer, and the antigravity pods on the edge of both wings flickered for a moment...the clustered Elites, Jackals, and Grunts paused their random firing for a moment, even holding their breaths in anticipation...and then a small, almost inconsequential secondary explosion sounded. A fuel cell that was directly adjacent to the cannon capacitators had burst from the deluging heat, and its radioactive fury extinguished the holographic controls of the Banshee. Without a rein, the horses of the Banshee were silent, and the Banshee almost innocently crashed into the ground.

A roar, deafening, arose from the amassed Covenant, for the sacred weapon had fell a Demon. Enraptured by their honest joyousness, he took the surge of the pride full in the chest, crying, “Advance! Ensure that the Demon had been killed, and I shall banish the second into the void!”

*  *   *

Angel’s jaw was slightly askew in subconscious envy as the Zealot made the shot. Fire blossomed from the center of the craft, and the pods were muffled, flickering erratically, and a second burst of fire rang out from within the mechanics of the craft, the Banshee leaned backwards for a moment, and then spiraled towards the ground, Daniels slumping over the side of the ruined cockpit, Mark II SPI armor burnt. His biosigns winked.

Rachael, beside her, laid the stock of her MA5K Assault Rifle onto the worn log, titled her head to brace the rifle on her shoulder as she squinted, her visor and the integrated electronic rangefinder of the MA5K operating the synchrony. She reported almost breathlessly, “No shot. The Elite’s still in cover.”

Expectation murmured through the air. They would avenge Daniels...or die trying. The blind fatalism of the SPARTAN-IIIs...their cerebrums intrinsically wired for such an act. Yet, Angel restrained herself, her face blushing in jagged anger, her hypothalamus disagreeing with her external calmness.

“Wait, wait, I think that...he’s coming forward, Angel.”

The Field Master came striding forward, gesturing articulately with his arms in ecstasy. Jennifer, on the Banshee, lunged towards the Zealot, but was like a beaten prison restrained by the servants of her captor, for the network of Drones would not relent, pestering her with continual fire so that she was unable to mow down the insolent whelp.

It didn’t matter to Angel, who did not even bother with the formality of a headshot. There were three shots in near succession. The first impacted his lower chest, between his lungs and torso, and his shields immediately failed, wreathing him in sparks as they went through the too-slow recharge cycle. His body spun slightly from the momentum and he slumped slightly to the floor...and his head interposed itself in Angel’s reticule. The second lanced through his head at an angle, vaporizing the lower two jaw mandibles, burning the upper right one, and escaping out of his right ear. Meanwhile, within his helmet, his brain superheated and part of it vaporized, and a cloud of dark purple arose from his head like Athena from Zeus’s. The third shot was completely unnecessary, a low shot because of her trembling fingers that blew off the midsection of his right thigh, amputating his calve from the rest of his body.

The deed was done.

Daniels lurched, awakening to the fresh sound of a bloody cry, a vocalization of unending anguish nearby. His eyes fluttered momentarily, not accustomed to such a gruesome sound, and belatedly realized that the human roar was the least of his problems. He was not the one that had shaken his body: it was a crimson-clad Elite that was before him, toeing him with an armored boot. His heartbeat expanded to fill the void in his ears as the Major Domo snarled, “The Holy One’s aim was true, his intent pure, for this one has been killed.”

He did not even dare to strain his neck to turn to the side to identify the second speaker as the voice responded with a touch of petulance, “Excellency, but are you sure? These Demons are...”

This is the time to act. He straightened his arms in a single bound with such velocity that he had never experienced before, planted them into the ground as his two legs swept out in a scissor kick for the Major’s own, bringing the Elite to the ground with an explosive groan as the air vacated his lungs. As the two Minor Elites, alarmed, brought their plasma rifles to bear, Daniels grasped a plasma grenade, placed it over the Major’s neck articulation, his thumb over the slight symbol that was the arming pad. A single tap would make the grenade irreversibly fuse to the Elite and kill him.

What could’ve been an effortless gunning down of the SPARTAN-III metamorphed into far more grave: a hostage situation. The Minors shifted uneasily for a moment, and then their resolve solidified as they reached for...Daniels didn’t even intend to give them the chance, nor prolong a hostage situation, for the Covenant had superior firepower and numbers, and didn’t have the slightest shade of cover, in the center of a lane boxed in by parallel rows of cargo modules.

He tapped the icon, and the grenade whined like a rising chorus of Scorpion cannons...but nonchalantly flicked it at the first Minor. His stylish toss cost him a bit of accuracy: the adhesive grenade was affixed to the Elite’s forearm instead of the chest, but it was no matter. He then brought down his MA5K on the rising Major Elite’s neck, instantaneously severing it, and raised it to...well, a firing plasma rifle. Beams scythed out from the energy cycler, the edge of his SPI armor caught it, and a single beam skimmed his epidermis, causing severe burns. His anguish was punctuated by the nearby chattering of assault rifle, but that hope of nearby UNSC reinforcements turned into dripping dread as he felt his skin alight in fire...pain resonated through every tendon as he spastically tore forward, vision clouded with rising fury at the Elite. His vent of displeasure was the Elite, whose plasma rifle was cooling itself, a mechanical defect making it unable to trigger a last burst of fire to kill the SPARTAN-III...Daniels anticlimactically swept his assault rifle behind the alien’s neck, and pressed the Elite towards him. The Minor Elite gagged for a moment, eyes bulging as if an osmotic pressure was building behind them...and then died.

“Sir! We could use a hand here.”

The gritty voice wasn’t a SPARTAN-III’s. Instead, it accompanied the staccato beat of 7.62mm rounds being projected from soot-covered muzzles. His HUD immediately registered three UNSC Marines in the immediate vicinity, and tagged them as FIRE TEAM CORAL. However, its electronic sweep also caught another signature: a downed Marine.

From the propensity of exchanged fire and epithets, he surmised that the engagement was not ill for the Covenant. The lactic acid pooling in his muscles was beginning to effect enzymatic activity for aerobic respiration, but he lithely managed to overcome the barrier posed by a Banshee plasma cannon-painted cargo module, leaping over it, to find three huddled Marines, and a widely expanding pool of blood draping a crumpled body.

Daniels was no forensic expert, but the dead soldier, Coral Two, had apparently been hit by an overcharged plasma pistol shot in the lungs, and then shot at a couple of times by random plasma rifle shots across the remnants of his ballistic armor. He was down cold for sure.

Fire Team Coral’s cover was an irregular stacking of other modules, their enemies three Elites and six Grunts laced in the surrounded modules, strangely oriented so that they were circumventing the fire team’s improvised bunker. Unusual arrangement for the Covenant.

He ignored those thoughts, crouching and sprinting towards the fire team, gnashing his teeth at the pain from his lacerated body. That was rather tactically inadvisable, as the supersoldier could have been more of a help by flanking the Covenant, but it was no matter. The Grunts had sprayed a volley of errant needler rounds, were unable to hit him, and that was all that mattered in Daniels’s mind as he hailed the corporal in command of the fire team.

“What’s the situation, corporal?”

The loudmouthed corporal swore as his MA5C assault rifle ran out of projectiles in its current magazine, laid supine as a flurry of plasma beams painted the convenient firing port hole: a small space between two adjacent modules. He turned to the SPARTAN-III, not even him appraising him in respect like the other two were, almost worshipping the divine warrior.

No, it was a simple “Just call me Watson.” Not even the honorific of sir.

It was a small matter, and the officious Second Class Petty Officer was obliged to let it slide. It was rather enigmatic, how even in a maelstrom of crystalline shards and plasma bolts that passed by so close as to initiate induction crackles on their electronics, that a Marine hollered, “Yeah, not shit, and my name’s Sherlock.”

The corporal