A/N: Well, well. Here we are at chapter two. It's not my main fic but I figure I may as well update. To Halo expert: thanks for the info. Guess I'll just stick to what I said for the sake of the story, but don't worry! I won't forget about the Gravemind (how could I? He kicks ass). Alright, enough of that, on to the fic! (Again, a special thanks to Aeris' Savior).

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Chapter 2: Buckle Up

The Starfox crew drew a deep breath as the ship was rematerializing from the initial gatewarp. Everything always seemed distorted at first.

"THE ENEMY HAS SET A PURSUIT COURSE. IT IS UNLIKLY THEY WILL FIND US." ROB 64 informed the team, "HOWEVER, ENEMY IS USING UNKNOWN ENGINE TECHNOLOGY."

As the interior of the ship was rearranged to a recognizable mass, Fox went over to sit by Krystal.

"How ya holdin' up?" he asked, genuinely concerned.

Krystal gave a sad sort of smile as she stared blankly at the control pad in front of her. "Mm. I'm tired to sure. But don't worry about me." Krystal looked out the window at the swirling mass of unrecognizable shapes of slipspace. "It's so beautiful and peaceful. It's hard to believe what we just came out of alive." Krystal said thoughtfully.

"Yeah," Fox replied, "but were not out of the woods yet. We still don't know where we're headed." He gave little nervous laugh and then looked over at the vixen sitting beside him.

Krystal looked over at Fox and blushed. "Wh-what?" She asked shyly.

Fox smiled and tried to speak, "Krystal... uh, I, erm, what I mean to say is..."

"ENEMY HAS FOUND AND IS TRACKING COURSE OF GREAT FOX. ENEMY WILL BE ON GREAT FOX IN APPROXIMATLY 2 MINUTS." ROB interrupted. Suddenly the team was on guard. "What?!" Fox shouted. "That's impossible! Not even we know where we're going!"

"Oh this is brilliant." Falco said sarcastically.

"See! I told you this wasn't going to work! Oh man, we're toast! Toast ya' hear me!?" Slippy shouted hysterically.

"Oh for the love of god, pull yourself together Slippy!" Fox shouted at the Toad.

"Rob, can we maybe lose them before we have to reemerge from slipspace?" Fox asked the robot.

"AFFIRMATIVE. WE COULD STAY IN SLIPSPACE FOR A MOMENT LONGER THAN WE HAD ANTICIPATED. HOWEVER, IF WE DO NOT PULL OUT OF SLIPSPACE IN TIME, GREAT FOX WILL OVERACCELERATE. IF ANY PROJETILES CONFRONT GREAT FOX, PROBABILITY OF SURVIVAL IS ONLY AT 40 PERCENT." The robot quickly analyzed.

Fox frowned and looked back over at Krystal, "What choice do we have?"

"Nothing that comes to mind right now." Krystal replied.

"Oh man," Slippy whimpered, "we are so dead!"

"Put a sock in it toady!" Falco shot back. Slippy looked at him in contempt for a second before resuming brooding, but this time silently to himself.

"Alright Rob," Fox said, closing his eyes and gritting his teeth, "let's do this."

The artificial intelligence punched a few keys on the terminal and the onboard computer registered the action.

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"Sir!" The alien grunt reported. "Sensors indicate that the enemy ship should be exiting slipspace in a matter of moments!"

The brute nodded and an expression that might have passed for a smile crept across his face.

"Then prepare to power down the hyperdrive and emerge with them."

"Yes sir!" The grunt responded loudly. Although most grunts had joined the Arbiter in his cause for rebellion, the brutes had managed to keep a few loyal to the Prophets.

The crew began bustling about, beginning preparations for the exit of slipspace and the battle that would follow it. As the engines powered down, the brute chuckled silently to himself. They make it almost to easy. He thought.

As ship exited slipspace, and the blackness of space hit them again, plasma shields instantly engaged and weapons were armed onboard the Covenant cruiser, ready for battle.

"Commander!" Another brute had been looking at a navigation jackle's computer readout and he had discovered something most interesting. "They no longer appear on our scanners! It would seem they never left the slipspace stream!" He reported glaring at the lower ranking crewmembers. Several jackles and grunts averted their eyes from him. The grunt that had reported earlier shook in his place as he nervously toyed his the methane distributor. On more than one occasion, the brute commander had been known to smash a few grunt heads for incompetence.

The brute commander gritted his teeth and shook furiously. After a few moments though he seemed to calm down (an unusual characteristic for him).

"Track their course skipper. I want that ship." He said to the brute whom had spoken a moment before.

"Aye, sir."

"Commander!" A jackle yelled. "We have an incoming transmission! It's from an allied ship."

The brute was paying attention now. Hm? He thought to himself. Perhaps this could be good.

"Put it through the speakers." The brute commanded.

"Covenant cruiser, you were identified making a blind jump without proper authority, can you explain yourself?" The transmission asked.

"Affirmative, sir," the brute grinned, "My crew and I were pursuing a very dangerous ship a moment ago. We had it pinned until it decided it might escape through a blindjump. We pursued, but somehow we lost them. If I may ask, who am I speaking to, and would you be able to offer us your assistance?"

A screen flickered on in front of the brute revealing another of his kinds face. The face then spoke, "This is the commanding officer of the Ara' Sandure bolt cruiser, Commander Urshra. If what you say is true, then my men and I will offer you our assistance. We will need a moment to work out the protocol and get proper clearance and confirmation."

The brute commander of the first pursing ship grinned and thought to himself. This could certainly make things easier. The bolt cruiser was a brand new type of Covenant military space technology that only recently had gotten out of its prototype stages. It had made great bounds in advancing the Covenant's already superior space combat weaponry and the ship itself required a minimum crew of 9,000 to operate properly. The brute had not counted on having additional troops to work with, much less the Ara' Sandure, a ship that was a legend in the making.

"How many are you exactly, Urshra?" the brute asked.

Urshra grinned (as well as he could) and replied in a smug tone, "There are three of us Commander."

The brute looked confused for a second before letting out a small gasp, "You mean... you have in your possession three bolt cruisers, Urshra?" He asked.

Urshra grinned, "Affirmative commander. And it so happens that our immediate orders were to patrol and help any fellow ships in need. If we should find this ship you seek, I can assure you that it is most certainly royally screwed."

"Perfect..." the first brute commander chuckled to himself.

Two more brute faces appeared on the screen. "Commander, this is Commander Tarshalis and Commander Garsha." The one called Tarshalis nodded his head and Garsha grunted. "Now, I don't believe I have inquired as to your name yet. Let's have it." Ursha finished.

The brute commander puffed out his chest proudly, "They call me Dardaron." He boasted, obviously thinking rather highly of himself.

"Indeed." Ursha replied.

"Commander!" A jackle interjected, "I believe we have picked up the correct signal, it would appear that we have found their location."

"Your files just went through Commander Dardaron. We shall accompany you on this chase." Ursha stated before the screens went blank.

Dardaron grinned. Perhaps we shall find more than what you think we shall, too.

"Prepare to move out!" he bellowed, "And no more screw ups!" He glared at the grunt that had spoken earlier. "Or I'll have you branded and put on display before your execution."

The grunt promptly soiled himself.

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"I heard he killed himself by flying off the edge," the grunt said.

"No way! He definitely got killed by the Arbiter," another retorted.

"Nah, I think the demon got him," a third grunt stated, tiredly.

"He wasn't even there, you idiot!" The first grunt retorted hotly.

"Oh whatever. I don't care." The tired grunt finished.

They were aboard the stolen Covenant flagship, Arbiter's Judgment, and had been debating just how the former brute chieftain, Tartarus, had met his doom.

"Gentlemen," the grunts jumped at the sound of the Elite's voice and turned to face it.

"Ar-Arbiter!" One of them stuttered, "It's an honor to see you sir!" He said in his high-pitched squeaky voice. The grunts in question were all the lowest of the low, all clad in the orange armor of a minor.

"As with you my loyal cohorts," Arbiter replied, "I bring tidings. A rather large mass of energy has erupted on our scanners some distance from here. Upon investigation we found that it was a primitive, less energy efficient, form of slipspace used by an unidentified ship. But the ship wasn't what caught our attention. You see my brethren, upon closer inspection of this ships surroundings we have by pure chance discovered yet another of the Apocalypse ring installations. The ship we saw could not have been a brute cruiser dew to the primitive technology, so it could very well be humans. I have no doubt, however, that if we move to the installation our enemy will be right behind us."

The grunts shuffled their feet nervously and saluted, "What are your orders exulted one?"

The Arbiter clicked his mandibles and smiled, more with his eyes than his mouth, "Prepare yourselves for slipspace, and get ready to fight. We are entering Halo. I have others to inform, brothers. Rendezvous in the ship hanger and be ready to move out, understand?" The Arbiter commanded.

"Yes sir!" the grunts finished their salute as the Arbiter walked away.

"I like the Arbiter. No one in high command has ever directly talked to me before." one of the grunts said, beaming with satisfaction that he had gotten to talk to the Arbiter.

"Yeah, how often does that happen!" the other said unbelievingly.

"Oh brother. He was carrying our death sentence you two! Do you guys know what happens on Halo installations?!" the third one screamed.

"Oh, stick it up your snout! Brutes would have sent us to our death anyway. At least the Arbiter sees us as equals!" the other retorted before an announcement came over ship speakers.

"All units! Be prepared for slipspace in five standard minuets!" the announcement rang loud and clear throughout Arbiter's Judgment.

"Let's move!" the first grunt suggested to his friends.

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A little while ago on the Greatfox.

"RECOMMENDED DEPARTURE FROM SLIPSPACE IN FIVE SECONDS." Rob stated.

A bead of sweat was visible on the fur of Fox's face. Gotta' time this just right. He thought to himself.

"THREE SECONDS." The robot stated. Fox readied himself.

"TWO,"

"ONE,"

"Punch it!" Fox yelled, jamming his finger into the button that would stop the slip space stream.

The ship shook violently as it came out of hyperspace.

"Ahhh!" someone yelled as the ship shook.

"What were the odds that we would run into something again?" Falco asked.

"What is that thing?" Krystal asked in a state of awe as the view of gargantuan ring came into view. A ring that Greatfox was headed toward very rapidly. The outside was metallic and seemed to be made of some very complicated technology, but on the inside were rolling mountains, oceans of a pure blue, forests large enough to see even from space, and several other recognizable features of an inhabitable planet. The crew had a moment to glimpse the beautiful view before they realized just how rapidly they were approaching it.

"Damn it!" Fox yelled, "We came out of hyper space to late! I can't steer! We have to eject pronto! Team! Arwings now!" The Starfox team bolted from the room in an attempt to make it to their ships in the hanger. Rob had already ejected himself from the bridge via built in space equipment on him.

"Sprint people! We're not gonna' make it!"

After the one minute that had seemed like hours the hanger was in view. Without question, the team ran to their designated ships and made preparations to launch more quickly than they had ever done before. The one-man fighters launched out of the Greatfox bay, far to close to the ground. The team noted that only about 2,000 more feet and they would have been done for. The Arwings, however, were still super accelerated and were not easily controlled.

"Oh-ho... ...snap. Uh, buckle up people." Falco said over the intercoms on the Arwings.

The Arwings hit the ground with a sickening crunch sound and somewhere the explosion of the team's prized mother ship was heard, not too far away.

The Starfox crew was alive, but not unscathed. Bruised and banged they crawled from the wreckage of their ships.

"Heh, quite a landing, huh? Fox asked groggily as the team formed up, "Is everyone alright? Or at least alive?"

"Well, we're as fine as we can be," Krystal assured him, "but..." She motioned in the direction of a pillar of smoke. "Greatfox is totaled, beyond repair by the looks of it. We're trapped here. I think Falco's Arwing might still run but..." Krystal trailed off as Falco looked over at his Arwing. It was stuck in a tree. Had the situation not been quite so dire, the scene might even have been comical.

"Oh man. Yeah, that things not going anywhere by itself. And I might add that it was a pain getting down from there." Falco stated.

"Well, at least we accomplished our goal." Krystal smiled.

Fox looked confused for a second, as if he had forgotten just what the goal was for moment. Then he smiled, "Hey, yeah. At least we lost those other ships."

Krystal frowned and looked over at the giant pillar of smoke again and then to the sky. "For now." A moving gleam on the horizon was visible.

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A/N: Well, that's that. What did you think? Introduction of the Arbiter and new Covenant technology. Please Read and Review. For any of you who are reading it, Chapter 6 (which is technically my seventh chapter) for Survivor of Genocide is up. Thanks for reading every one! I'll try n' update soon!