Chapter 3: Harmonic Symphony of Battle
The scarab shook to life with vibrant energy. The joints and swiveling parts of the insect-esque machine suddenly gained strength and stood up straight and erect. The company of elites and Miranda climbed unto the canopy of the great automaton as it took it's first steps unto the battlefield. Enemy Phantoms had managed to get past the sparkling flood of covenant anti-aircraft fire and landed several hundred brutes in the lake right next to the battle field. They infantry guns could not be pointed to face the opposite direction, and their were few guns facing the lakes shore, a fatal mistake caused by haste to protect the Arbiter and his newfound allies from the neo assault on the control room .
"Their trying to mix in with you troops, Praetor!" Cried a distressed Miranda.
"You must do something" the Arbiter stated with his average cool and collected tone.
The cream armored elite calmly thought his decision over and then suddenly ignited his sword.
"I will go forth and take back the cruiser as I promised" He declared
"Expect to have a fully operational ship soon"
He turned and ran on top of the canopy of the scarab and a waiting Phantom swished him up into the gravity lift and flew off firing a few fiery crimson bolts of plasma down unto the brutes as it passed over the battleground. It disappeared in the horizon, approximately the direction of the Cruiser in the distance.
A huge line of brutes formed a hundred of the beasts wide and ten deep made a mad rush for the heart of the base .The air crackled and lit up as the elites without hesitation nor orders let lose every single weapon in their arsenal at them. Cannons were set up to fire at them from the shore of the lake in an attempt to slow their brisk march to an uneven stagger. Covenant mortar tanks turned their attention to the steadily approaching army of brutes and aimed tremendous blue-white balls of deceptively torrid energy at them. It decimated their numbers, turning many of the places they were marching into blackened craters and scattering many brute's corpses like crumbling and brunt match sticks. They were all eager to meet the symphony of pummeling light hosed from the elites weapons. Hundreds of well aimed Carbine rounds hit them from all directions and angles making many of them flinch, stagger and fall dead under the intense flow of projectiles. Grunts and elites perched high on hovering covenant sniper nests poured down long parading streams of needles down unto the approaching wave of pure muscle mass. They found their targets imbedded themselves into the unlucky bodies of the traitorous apes and detonated in glassy flashes and showers of pink crystalline debris and gore. The charging line of brutes did not cease to spite all of the desperate effort.
They reached the inside of the perimeter and went berserk, charging forth plowing themselves into the nearest soul the could find. Many elites with swords tried stopping them, slicing and lancing the plentiful and brutish Brutes those that indulged to long were swept away in a tide of sinew and muscle mass and crushed to death under the feet of the treacherous primates . They trampled and crushed friendly Jackals and hostile grunts alike. The elites weren't fairing much better either. In hand to hand combat, a brute was king without the aide of graceful swords. From above in the scarab they could see shields flashing and suddenly blinking off. Crowds of brutes sloshed past a pair of hunters ignoring the massacre the twin monsters were making. They surged past them while knee deep in the corpses of their slain brethren in every imaginable position of death and with vital pieces of anatomy torn away from them.
One particular squad perched on a small hill that was within the perimeter was yet to be overrun. The elites and grunts and Hunters fought bravely around the hard earned piece of real estate, going into a defensive formation around a turret firing precisely aimed bulbs of super heated plasma into the brutes who still hadn't gotten cloe enough to fire. It seemed as though all was lost for the brave defenders. This is where they made their stand . They saturated as many targets as they could until they piled into crisped piles of smoking corpses, but it still wasn't sufficient to stop the insurmountable tide of Brutes. They we're getting closer and closer; letting a few slip by here and there. An Elite pitched a hazy blue orb of a grenade at particularly nasty brute. He furiously leaped and bounded forward on all fours like an ape. It was clear if he wasn't stopped soon he would enter there perimeter and blow them all into smithereens . They desperately fired clips of Carbine rounds into him. The continuous green trails of light absorbed into his body and it was clear they wren't slowing him down. Suddenly he was filled with a perpetual hail of tracer rounds and he disappeared in a cloudy mist of his blood.
The drop ship responsible for the kill passed over head, and circled around the battlefield, coming in again madly firing it's chain gun into hordes of the alien simians. Peppering their bodies with uranium tipped 70 millimeter projectiles, flaying them and causing mists and fountains of blood to arise from the teething crowd of brutes. Their cries of agony were barley audible over the sweet and triumphant staccato of bullets bursting from their hose on the tip of the mighty Pelican drop ships. More of them; at least a half-dozen had joined, swooping and diving. firing a hell storm of fletchette spikes from their noses. The crowd of brutes thinned pathetically and the ground forces with vengeance empowered by bottomless rage for their fallen and wounded leaped from submission and return fire, giving pursuit of the hulking brute army which was now falling back into the canyon where their army of vehicles still crawled through. The pelican drop ships also racing after the brutes had been led right into range of the enemy wraith tanks and Specters. They all surged toward the canyon opening at full speed and released their Anvil II class missiles. They veered of course to avoid the barrage of wraith mortar fire and the rockets homed in on the tanks and slammed into them, bursting them into fiery, blue, smoking chasisses.
White elites jumped from the scarab body, on to the gargantuan limbs, and unto the battlefield and ended countless skirmishes between rebellion and brute forces. Sprinting magnificently across the field and heaving the sword at all enemies that stood in their way. A stupendous performance in the theater of battle. All the stragglers were slaughtered quickly and flawlessly.
Three tanks and a few specters still at the entrance to the canyon lobbed comets of explosive energy and piercing, baby blue, beams of energy from their turrets. Johnson's scarab quickly took aim, powered up it's thunderous guns and fired a long extravagant beam of light at full power that leveled the ground at the canyon's entrance and an explosion consumed all of the lingering vehicles that still harassed the rebellion forces with an earth shaking sound the caused the ground to tremble. An extravagant period to the end of a bloody and seemingly relentless battle.
"The monitor is done uploading the Arks location to this scarabs computer." Miranda stated matter o' factly.
"Oh no! There must be a mistake, the coordinates are at…!"
"It's the sol system 'aint it, ma'am", said the sergeant coolly.
"How did you kn…"
"Ma'am", he cut in, "you oughta' expect the worst in life,you'll never get disappointed that way" He took out a stub of a cigar to calm his nerves and lit it, and blew a few halos of smoke...