Chapter 2: Getting Dressed to Kill

"Now, let me see if I understand this correctly."

Master Chief nodded to allow her to continue.

"On the one side we have the Space Pirate armada I'd followed here."

"Uh-huh."

"On the other we have these…Covenant?"

"Yes, they call themselves the Covenant." He nodded again.

"And you say you have yet to make contact with your command ship, correct?"

The Spartan shrugged. "I've been calling and no one's picking up the phone."

Actually, I'VE been calling.

Samus glanced around to find the source of the voice. "Who said that?"

"That would be Cortana." The Chief replied, tapping the side of his helmet. "She's the AI construct that lives in my head."

A pleasure, Samus.

"I…see. Fascinating." Her concentration momentarily lost, Samus quickly regained her focus. "So, yes, you've had no word from your commander and other comrades."

"Yup."

"Just out of curiosity, would you happen to have any good news for me?"

"That we just so happen to be the two deadliest gunslingers around?"

The bounty hunter nodded. "I guess that's a start."

A start towards what, though? You're the one most familiar with these Space Pirates, Samus, can you give us something we can work with?

Samus caught herself again looking for the source of the voice instinctively. "That will certainly take some getting used to." she thought to herself.

"Well, first off, we may be fairly formidable, but we have too much going against us for that alone to matter. We're in a warzone here, and trying to drive off the Pirates while keeping the Covenant off our backs isn't going to be easy when they're throwing entire armies at each other."

"Can't say I've had too much luck dealing with that kind of situation myself." Chief replied, somewhat less than fondly remembering his efforts to destroy Alpha Halo while the Flood and Covenant battled across its surface.

Which means we need back-up. Which means we need to find In Amber Clad and Commander Keyes. And without any radio contact, that…could take awhile.

"Until we find some way to reach your allies, we'll need to do whatever we can to ensure our continued survival. If we're going to be tackling armies, I'm going to need to go back to my ship and pick up some additional equipment. Care to accompany me?"

The Master Chief nodded and gestured forward. "Lead the way."

***

The two armored warriors managed to back track their way Samus' gunship without incident, which the Chief found somewhat disappointing. Samus was just happy her precious vessel had remained in the small alcove where she had parked it; she knew the Pirates couldn't disable the ship's cloak, but the Covenant was using unfamiliar technology, and having a safe haven to come back to was no longer a guarantee.

Nice ride, Samus.

The orange-clad hunter leapt up to the hatch on the ship's head. "Thank you, Cortana."

"Do I need to give you two some girl-time?"

Samus chuckled at the sly remark, though Cortana simply responded That won't be necessary, though I am admittedly curious as to what the inside of her suit's computer looks like.

"I was thinking about something along those lines myself." Master Chief thought to himself, unable to keep a devilish smirk from his face.

Samus stood over the hatch and glanced down at her newfound comrade standing on the ground next to the ship. "It will take me a few minutes to upload the equipment onto my Power Suit. Wait here until I return."

"What, don't I get to come inside?"

"Chief, we may have a partnership, but this ship is my home; I am not quite that readily generous. Besides, I would rather not have any surprises waiting for me when I come out."

The Spartan shrugged "Fair enough" as Samus sunk into the ship's interior and the hatch closed with a click behind her.

"Cortana, any news over the Covenant battlenet?"

Nothing conclusive. They're in full-fledged 'holy war' mode right now, deploying more troops and heavier weapons to deal with these new 'monsters.'

"Leave it to the Covenant to crusade in style. What about the Space Pirates?"

So far, they've set up a base for themselves and have kept busy fortifying it. Other than that, there have only been a few reports of Covenant squads encountering Pirate strike teams. The strike teams seem composed of standard troopers with only one or two commanders.

"That can't be all they brought with them."

What do you wanna bet all their heavy hitters are sitting around in their base to make sure they don't get interrupted?

"I don't think anyone has that much money on them."

I'm not getting any chatter from the Pirates themselves; their comms must be pretty heavily- oh great.

"What?"

We've got company. Several dozen Covenant approaching from the way we came. They must've been following us.

"Glad to hear they haven't forgotten about us, at least."

You ready to lay out the welcome mat?

Now that he really thought about it, was he? He hadn't been able to recover too much new weaponry since the battle that had claimed his squad mates, and he'd been doing a nice bit of fighting since then. He wasn't encouraged by the quick review of his current supplies; his SMG was almost out of ammo, the Needler he'd grabbed during his tussle with Samus was empty, the Plasma Pistol he'd picked up had a dead battery and he hadn't even noticed, and he was completely out of frag grenades. On the plus side, his Battle Rifle hadn't yet been used, a Plasma Rifle he'd claimed had a nearly full charge, and he had plenty of Plasma grenades.

He cocked the human rifle and glanced over at Samus' ship. "Don't mean to rush you or anything, but you might want to speed things up in there."

By now the Covenant were close enough that he could hear the squealing of the Grunts and Elites barking orders. "Well, time to go to work."

***

The alcove had some fairly rough terrain, with plenty of rocks for the Master Chief to hide behind. He used these to his advantage as the alien soldiers came into view, jumping from cover to cover between bursts of fire, keeping his adversaries from using their numbers to flank and surround him. He'd just felled his fourth Elite when he realized he was reaching for a Battle Rifle clip that wasn't there, and cursed as he beaned the nearest Elite with both the empty Rifle and the burnt-out Plasma Pistol. His kill count rose to seven Elites and a nice handful of Grunts and Jackals as he threw his last grenade, and realized that half of the Covenant squad still remained.

The Chief sprinted back to Samus' ship and ducked behind a thruster right before the air behind him lit up with plasma fire. He took another glance at his ally's still silent ship and shouted "Samus! A hand over here would be great right about now!"

He could hear the dirt-scraping footsteps of the Covenant and prepared to plant his fist into the first alien bugger that poked his head into view when he heard a familiar click and one of the Grunts squeak "Look! Other demon!"

Before his Elite sergeant could respond, the air was filled with the sound of crackling electricity and shrieking Covenant. The Master Chief stood up and turned to look at the ship's top; as expected, Samus had returned, and her arm cannon had widened to reveal purplish electricity sparking from its interior.

"Sorry to keep you waiting, Chief…" she paused as she noticed the handful of Covenant remaining taking cover behind some crags a few meters away. Her arm cannon shifted appearance again, this time elongating and emitting red cinders. Her cannon charged up and released a searing burst of concentrated flame straight through the chest of an Elite that was urging his troops back into the fight. "…I needed to get some bigger guns."

The Spartan chuckled as he set about salvaging some of the Covenant's weaponry as Samus took aim at the surviving alien soldiers. "Yeah, I noticed."

***

After a few minutes of further fighting, all that remained was a solitary Jackal that had pressed itself up against a wall and huddled behind its shield. While the Chief tried to take aim at a spot that would let him hit through the shield, Samus whipped her free hand forward, reaching out with the Grapple Beam to snag the Jackal's shield, and with a quick jerking motion from its owner, yanked the shield clean out of the Jackal's hands. The skinny alien squawked in terror and fled, leaving the remains of nearly four dozen of its comrades scattered around the alcove.

As the Master Chief raised a Needler to fell the fleeing Jackal, Cortana stopped him. Not so fast, Chief. You let that little guy live, and I'll bet you he tells every Covenant he can find not to mess with the two 'demons.' Might make things a little easier for us if we establish a reputation.

He paused, and then lowered the weapon and shrugged. "I guess I can restrain myself just this once." He was fairly content, as far as things were going; he had managed to completely restock himself during the final minutes of the battle and had felled almost three dozen Covenant total. Overall, not too bad of a performance, if he did say so himself.

Samus walked up to stand next to him, tapping a small control panel on the side of her arm cannon as she did. After a few moments, her ship's engines fired up and the personal craft rose into the air and sped off.

"What, not going to leave it there in case you need to come back and fix your makeup?" The Spartan asked, attempting to lighten the mood with some good-natured teasing.

Samus didn't seem to notice the taunt, however. "I'd prefer it if my ship was not destroyed in my absence, so I've set the autopilot to orbit the ring world from random positions."

Why not just use it to locate Commander Keyes and our command ship?

"And paint a nice, big target on ourselves while we fly around playing detective?" Master Chief answered. "Might not be the best idea in the world."

Good point.

"At least if it's in orbit, it will be out of the line of fire. I hope."

There was a brief pause as Samus watched her ship disappear into the distance. Then, she turned to her companion and asked. "Alright, where to?"

"Cortana, still got In Amber Clad's last rendezvous coordinates?"

Sure do.

"Then that's where we go."

"And if it isn't there?" Samus asked skeptically.

"Then this trip will start to get pretty interesting."