Returning to prologue part 2

(Reworking) thanks for the views btw

Please note I have to redo the second prologue; please tell me if there are any problems or errors so I can rectify.

Either than this enjoy.

-CODEX- Trans-light communications\ACER SAT NET

SATCOM or TRANSCOM; was the main communications for planetary communications, but it also plays a vital means of communications to other planets and other systems within the sector, the colonists who first arrived realised the difficulties with living in the sector was communication. At first transports sent out usually carried messages, but this could prove to be hazardous, the ships sent out had the higher chance of missing their jumps or end up missing.

But the communications had been the biggest of concerns because waiting took days if not weeks for messages or reports, it was until a man named Erice Acers, designed the first trans-light subspace satellites. It created a beam of trans-light energy and sent the signal over subspace then to another satellite, this system proved useful as it also increased the accuracy of jumps made and communication signals.

Only the colonies of Nova Stratus developed such a system, but with each signal it was also the risk that each signal sent had to be precise with where it went, so thankfully another adaptation was made by Acers, by developing the tans-light signalling system.

The system signal sent a single pulse of energy from A to B and the return signal came back to the origin, it possessed an intricate design and had to be perfected, but even by most UNSC or the outer colonies it was advanced. It could tell if the ship made transit would come out into a region densely clustered or if a gravity well was to close, this improvement made the jumps much safer.

First produced: Anomia Hypress, 2301 February 19

/ BETA continue/ Part 2 1540hrs

Matthew waited as the transport hovered into the base, it had gone under some security checks but it seemed as though the guards were distracted because of fighting, crawling into the supply containers hadn't been a bad idea.

There was shuffling sounds as the Covenant had started to move the containers and carry them; he was bumped around for a good ten minutes until reaching his destination, or what he hoped was close.

Pushing the lid open, he froze, he saw the grunts, small monkey like but usually scared little things, they were all going for a rest, the room he was in seemed like the freezer. There was one thing different, the air had high concentrations of methane in it, he quickly registered this when his HUD started blinking with alerts, quickly placing his helmet securely on his head and carefully crept out.

The grunts huddled up never saw or heard as Matthew made his way out of the room, Matthew then proceeded to carefully climb the flight of stairs, and he drew his silenced M6 magnum trying to stay out of sight, made his way to the communications.

The three levels he cleared easy, but the fourth was a challenge, the floor had the communications systems on the other side, but between him and there, three rooms aligned the two side of the hallway, and in each Covenant who were out for blood, elites as he could tell were the hardest to kill, being some nearly 8ft in total was not the best of things to be going against and the whole floor being filled with them made it just as bad.

The situation dictated action, and he had to provide. Looking left to right he spotted the elites, and the grunts, it was a straight shot to the right, and then he would be able to access the communications and intel relay.

Timing his approach he made his way to the left side of the wall to get a better shot at the guards, removing his SMG, he took aim at the grunts, changing the burst fire to a compression round, he targeted the closest grunt.

Within a flash the grunts mask came off with a good part of his skull. At that very moment the other grunts noticed that their fellow had lost his head, quite literally. The screams of the grunts and panic confused the elite on guard who watched as another grunt had his skull blown to pieces.

Matthew lobbed two grenades, a flash and a frag grenade, the simultaneous explosions added to the mayhem. The elite on guard was knocked back as the explosions threw him off his feet, the grunts that remained were blown to pieces by the grenades.

And then Matthew made his move. Rushing around the corner Matthew instinctively fired on the elite, his silenced M7I began to chew apart the elite's remaining shields, then half way through the clip the bullets finally managed to tear into the body of the elite.

A short roar of pain and the elite went down. Matthew carefully approached with his M6 and shot the elite in the head, he had to be sure. Scanning the area he quickly knew that the others would have heard the death of their comrade and would be charging in to kill him.

Matthew found the Intel mainframe and began to upload all the data, the process was expected to take another five minutes. Drawing out his third holstered weapon, he removed his shotgun. The yells of alarm outside the room became louder as the groups began to converge on his position.

"It's a good day to die!" He yelled.

/BETA PART 1 END/ 1600hrs

Orbit around Anomia 1620hrs

/ALPHA PART 2/ BEGIN

Melissa had gotten her refit and rearmament in a few minutes, the crew had to rush things, alongside the Longan there were two other squadrons of Longswords, the Few and None, had completed a circle of the battle field searching for survivors, the fleet remnants were nearly non-existent. The only remaining vessels were, a dozen frigates, and one refitted dock with a dozen heavily damaged vessels, the rest of the fleet survivors were in the bays working on the damage or helping with the final preparations.

Three squadrons of longswords were capable of flight while others which had been damaged were scrapped for parts, Melissa walked down the hangar, she saw the crew bringing more survivors and wounded, the ship had exceeded its crew complement a long time ago.

On the bridge, Captain Vance had explained his plan; the remaining commanders aboard their ships seemed to think he was insane. "How are we supposed to fight two Covenant vessels with a dozen ships, we may be strong, but not AWOL enough to charge at still functioning Covenant cruisers, this plan relies on one fighter to do serious damage to the super carrier behind while the rest provide a distraction, that's outright suicide!"

Vance had a feeling that it wasn't going to be easy. "Well what do we do about our people?, we have millions of citizens and we can't leave them for the torch, besides even if we run the Covenant are going to chase us over the entire sector, and if they call for reinforcements it'll only get worse."

The other officer shut up, they knew that Vance was right; the Covenant would scour every inch to locate them, and the Anomia was their home, to lose it to the Covenant would be devastating.

The time flew, with only another five or so minutes before the operation began, the code name of their operation became First Blood, the irony in this way was the Covenant had struck first but now it was the Fleets turn to show their teeth, irony or not the battle had to be fought and won.

Melissa got back into her cockpit, this time with a few new members.

A blue eyed teen crewman apprentice who had enlisted a year back, his name was Jonathan Reyes, and Reyes seemed the stable type but was overly eager to join a fight.

At the gunnery seat was another young man, Alex Heinemann, Alex was born on Anomia, but his family came from Earth, he was from an Asian and German background, clean cut brown hair and smooth hazel eyes, he had been part of the Fleets for two years, making lance corporal.

And finally the one who sat at Navigations was, Jackson Herring, a seventeen year old private, recently gotten a promotion to first class private, Jackson was a tall and slightly large, but overall he was a cool headed marine, he had a know how to fly through most obstacle courses with ease and had a variety of technical skills, but Michi was hoping to take over for that part.

Now with a few minutes left, the final flight procedures were being made, Jackson said. "We are green and we are very mean."

The others in the cockpit knew what he meant, they were unprepared but ready to go, or so they hoped.

The Longan exited out of the hangar bay, followed behind by the remaining squadrons of Longswords, the fight was now to the end.

Few and None and the other remaining vessels formed three diamond formations, with her in the lead, the Longan sped towards the cruiser with the squadrons closely behind, they were to hit hard and fast, then as the fighters came into range the Covenant began deploying their seraph fighters.

The two forces were closing in, as the Longan saw the first wave Melissa ordered. "Good hunting people, firing first volley away."

The archers launched across the space between them and the opposing ships, the missiles swung past striking a few and scrambling the rest, the Seraphs responded with pulse canons, the two forces clashed once more.

Longan zipped by the main concentration of fighters hopefully to reach the carrier in time, it hadn't worked as well as they hoped though, and three seraphs were now hard on their tail, the 120mm ventral guns swung about as Melissa did a barrel roll. Chewing apart the first seraph it quickly turned its attention to the others, the second twisted in a corkscrew to avoid the guns, but Melissa countered with two missiles, blowing the second from stern to bow, the final seraph was harder, most likely a skilled elite, the two chased each other the whole length over to the cruiser. The seraph pilot was good, but Melissa was better, using the old loop de loop, she quickly turned the table, both of the forward rotary cannons ripped the opposing fighter apart.

Back on the Few and None the crew were giving everything they had to reach their objective, the MAC rounds flew out again and again, 600kg of tungsten shot off at 1/5th speed of light, even so the Covenant cruiser seemingly took the punishment and continued to return fire.

Vance was now laughing death in the face, the slugs and plasma flew about, once more finding their marks, the plasma struck across the lower bow and starboard decks, the Few and None alongside the other Fleets crafts continued to push forwards, the punishment on the old Halcyon class cruiser was bad but she wasn't going down yet, unknown to the Covenant the Fleets had not been ignorant in the refit of the Few, thanks to the idea of emplacing heavier weapons, the archer missile pods sat next to four hundred ASGM-10 Missiles, the missiles at close range could give any ship hell within seconds.

As they closed range the Fleets frigates made their pass around the flanks of the Covenant cruiser, the starboard side of the Covenant cruiser was now open, the frigates stared to pound across the whole length of the Cruiser, while the Few and None struck out against their bow, the constant pounding forced the cruiser to pull away from orbit, but in doing so Vance saw his chance. "Fire, all ASGMs at aft, concentrate fire now!"

The dozen vessels struck out, blowing apart piece by piece, but the four hundred plus missiles now en route the Covenant cruisers crew could only watch as a wave of missiles washed over them, the whole view was a fireworks of white and blue, the Covenant cruiser was nothing more.

At the same time they noticed the large detonation of the Shiva nuclear device, it had detonated on the Covenant super carrier, the ship had been attempting to escape via slip-space, but thanks to Melissa it was stopped in mid-flight, though there was a problem, the vessel wasn't crippled it lost its engines, and the large wave of EMP energy caused by the slip-space field and Shiva had created a mass of energy, causing the Covenant Carrier to lose navigations, the EM wave soon crashed over the remaining Militia vessels, Melissa could only see the oncoming shockwave, she ordered to brace but all she felt was nothing.

/END ALPHA PART2/ 1700hrs

/BETA PART2 BEGIN/ 1625hrs

Bullets ripped the darkened hallways with lights of gold. Matthew watched as another elite fell, this time it was a spec ops. He had held the elites and their fellow troops at bay for over five minutes, in which time he managed to kill over a dozen elites. The bottle neck of the corridor made it nearly impassable and every attempt had resulted in casualties.

But now Matthew was running dry his weapons would never hold out against the covenant numbers. Changing once more he loaded his shotgun for close quarters and waited. A grunt made a desperate run but was stopped as Matthew came back out of cover and tore him to ribbons.

The TAC on his arm suddenly beeped with a blue light, the mission was completed and he needed to escape. There was a notice about an incoming danger about the battle in space, the Shiva was en route for detonation and he needed to get out fast. His HUD suddenly light up as it pointed him to his next objective.

A fire escape in the right hand corner of the room suddenly became accessible and unlocked; Matthew covered his escape by throwing the last of his grenades. Running in the confusion of the explosive aftermath, Matthew reached the door and shut it behind him.

He quickly began climbing the stairs; the flight seemed to pass in a blur as he sprinted every three steps. Years of training in the Hypress academy for Spec Ops hadn't been for nothing, he needed it when he joined the UCAF corps, and he still had it now.

The final steps went by as he reached the roof floor, smacking the white emergency floor door open he stepped onto the open air catwalk. Looking about he could see his next objective, the landing pad over the length of the complex.

Bolting his way across the roof, he came under fire, a group of skirmishers were sitting on a nest on the opposite wing of the complex, and they had spotted him and began firing their needler rifles. The pink shards seemed to scrap his shields as he sprinted as fast as he could.

"Where's my Evac?" He asked over his com.

"Right here Mattie." A familiar voice replied.

A hawk loaded with heavy weapons and new exhaust jets appeared, it began covering fire. The figure on the side stepped out to get him on board.

"Good to see you again Yahn." He called as he arrived.

"Yeah well don't get too comfortable, we're calling it close, that Shiva is about to go critical." He said hefting him aboard.

Leaving the fight behind the chopper made it through the burning remains of the city below.

"So I wonder when is that Shiva going to go off?"

"I'd say another twenty or so minutes."

"Can we out run that?"

"Probably not. We're in a troop carrier not a fighter." He said checking his TAC.

"Then where are we headed?"

"East command to Caldera, and then to Cross Point, hopefully command has some support waiting for us there."

They travelled for another ten minutes, as they flew about; a fighter wave went over ahead of them, Striker fighters for nearly five years back. As they escaped the city limits the skies suddenly lit up.

"Aw shit." Yahn said.

"Pilot, get us the hell out of here!" Mattie yelled.

The hawk began to fly away as fast as it could, but the shockwave kept coming, in a few moments of exiting the range of the city, the impact wave washed over the small troop carrier.

/BETA PART2 END/ 1705hrs