A bit of luck

The bridge lights flickered and Peiper found himself flying across the bridge, the ship going at a 90 degree angle momentarily. Thanks to some good flying skills, the crew managed to right the ship and Peiper felt his breath fly out of his lungs as Roussel caught him with a huge, muscular arm. Peiper squeaked out some words about letting him go and in response, the huge navigational officer dropped him on his head.

Peiper groaned on the floor as the face of Yiao filled his vision. She smiled down at him dazzlingly, to his extreme annoyance as he felt blood run down the back of his head.

"Comms are still up sir! So are most of our weapons! We only lost deck two and three from the blast!" Peiper groaned, he was lucky that two and three had been abandoned due to poor maintenance, but he'd have to have them repaired as they would weaken the entire ships superstructure. Hands gripped his arms and Gersten began lifting him up.

"Come on Liao we need to get our captain up if we're going to keep this boat afloat," Gersten said, somehow making his words sound both charming and powerful at the same time. Liao nodded and ran off to go coordinate with the other UNSC ships that were being melted by plasma in the vicinity. Gersten began shaking him, Peiper still dazed from the fall, when Carvalho appeared with a glass of near frozen water which he splashed straight into Peiper's face.

"Christ, shit, was zum Teufel ist los mit dir! Verdammt nochmal!" Carvalho raised his hands defensively,

"Hey, you're up now at least!" he said in his defense.

"Where did you even get a god damned glass of ficken Wasser!?" Peiper demanded, but received no response as another blast rocked the entire ship. The lights went out for good this time, the red emergency lights flickering on to replace the ones they had lost. Cursing a bit more, Peiper stumbled to a screen that showed the damage.

"Sir! The Covenant corvette's making a beeline straight for us! Engines one and four are down, I can't get us out of range!" a panicked crewman screamed from his chair. Peiper looked at the damage, engine one was completely gone, while four was just out of power from its supply being blasted. Peiper reached to his belt and found the right radio channel,

"Balog, see what you can do with engine four's power supply. Try and reroute it or something. We're missing half our fucking decks so you can probably find some spare power from the lights. Go!"

"Yes sir, for us and the UNSC, I shall PREVAIL in my mission! My god sir I promi-" with an annoyed roll of the eyes he turned off the comms.

"Sir! Engine three just turned off!" the crewman cried out again. Peiper's eyes widened and he walked over besides the man,

"What the hell do you mean we just lost engine three? Is it hit?"

"Uh, no sir! I think it overheated!"

"Are you telling me we just lost one of our two remaining engines because of TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES?" cried Peiper. The man blanched and nodded quickly, water dripping from Peiper's forehead and onto the man's console. With a groan he turned his radio back on,

"And that sir, is why I swear to our good president that we shall have these engines working agai-"

"Du mich verarschen?! Start the damn repairs already! And throw some fucking water on engine number three or something, it's overheated!" Balog replied, gasping in offense that he interrupted his useless ramblings but complying all the same and Peiper walked up to the viewing window. The corvette was quite literally coming straight for them, head on, plasma weapons firing.

"Peiper, the corvette is going to hit us," stated a very helpful Roussel, Peiper mistook her for one of the male crew members for a moment. Blinking at the rapidly increasing size of the corvette, he turned to the woman.

"No shit you god damned- sheisse drauf, just turn us away!"

"I'd love to Herr Stringbean, but we are missing three of our engines. We don't have enough power." Peiper collapsed into his chair and immediately groaned, putting his head in his palms. The corvette was getting closer and closer, and would easily turn the Lead to Gold into a smear on its side. A rather fitting end to such an inglorious ship, Peiper thought.

"Sir! Uh, something's happening!" Carvahlo shouted, his eyes glued to his console. Peiper looked up, sweat pouring down his forehead,

"Yes I know the ship is going to exp-" he was interrupted as Axiom appeared next to him,

"Actually the ship is most likely going to be crushed by the Covenant ship, not explode. Any explosions will be done if they fire their weapons as we smear across the side. Predicted chance of survival for bridge crew if an evacuation is immediately called: 15%... 13%... 12%..." the AI's voice distorted as he went on, beginning to echo and deepen.

"Now is not the time you creepy computer!" Peiper cried out and was completely ignored,

"11%, 10%, ooh, 9.8%" Schaeffer clicked a button which turned off AI systems and then turned Axiom back on immediately, the AI looked as offended as a faceless computer program could, "why, that was not necessary."

"Stuff it Axiom, what is it Carvahlo?"

"Uh sir, either Balog's wonderful patriotism inspired the ship or he jumpstarted the engines a bit much. He overloaded the powerplant-"

"Oh son of a-"

"Which somehow made our MAC's charge early." Peiper's eyes widened and he swiveled the chair around.

"What?" Axiom's voice filled the room again, the AI flickering to life near Carvahlo,

"Confirming, MAC's powered to 100% from 34% after power surge. Unknown cause... we should re-r-r-esearch this," the AI proposed, his voice crackling. Peiper wasn't sure if that was from his regular voice or the power surge but frankly didn't care. If the AI core overloaded and exploded, it'd be one less annoying thing on the ship for him to deal with. Maybe he could even get one of those AI's that didn't talk?

"Frost!" he screamed over to the comms station. What he saw their surprised him, the comms officer having the nerve to actually be reading a novel in the middle of a battle. He screamed his name again and the man rolled his eyes and sighed, putting the book down,

"What now?" he asked as if Peiper had committed the greatest effrontery. Peiper felt his mouth moving at a million miles a second,

"Was zum Teufel ist los mit dir, du Stück Soziopath- just get the fleet on the line. Tell them to focus Archer missiles on the corvette. You too Carvalho, give them all we got!" Frost sighed and dropped the microphone down, saying what he had to say agonizingly slowly.

The Lead to Gold was slowly angling away from the corvette, each of its thrusters trying to push it away, but it simply wasn't enough and the corvette would be tearing through them in less than a minute's time. Then, the archer missiles of half the fleet seemed to come at once, along with the ones from the Lead to Gold's pods, and the shields on the ship flickered and shut off in a flash.

"Carvahlo, fire MAC! NOW! STRAIGHT AHEAD! MACHEN SIE ES JETZT VERDAMMT NOCH MAL!"

There was a dazzling flash and the MAC fired straight into the mouth of the corvette. Peiper found himself turning away and covering his head as the purple ship filled his entire vision...

and then there was nothing but cheering.

Looking up, the corvette tore in half and away from the frigate. The Lead to Gold flew straight through the exploding remains with nothing but both sides of the ship nearly being torn off from the scrap. His control panel let out alerts of the multiple decks being annihilated from the remains of the corvette but he could only fall back into his chair with a sigh of relief.

In what may be the most ironically heroic looking thing in UNSC naval history, and what Peiper didn't realize at the time would become subject for thousands of propaganda posters, the Lead to Gold flew from the remains in a blaze of fire, the remains of plasma, destroyed Covenant ship (and crew) and more trailing off the ship as it flew out of the remains.