Chapter 2. Reach - Part 2

0617 Hours, September 22nd, 2552 (Military Calendar) /
Alpha Team AO, Orbital Defence Generator Facility A-331, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System

A series of dull thuds sounded across the still night air of the valley.

Master Sergeant Edward Buck did not look for the source of the sound, recognizing it as the auto-mortar unit the Spartans had set up firing another salvo of projectiles off.
This time however, instead of sending high explosive death downrange on top of whatever poor target the Spartans had decided needed to die, the projectiles were fired on a much steeper trajectory, a dozen orbs of brilliant light exploding into view half a kilometre above the battlefield. In the flickering white light of the flares Veronica had ordered up, a hoard of figures could be seen pouring from the distant tree line as the Covenant launched their assault. A din of barking and yelping carried across the still night air and the few ODSTs who hadn't already stood to did so, steeling themselves to meet the wave of figures pouring out of cover towards the base of the hill the UNSC redoubt was set upon.

"We've got ourselves a genuine Gruntpocalypse boys!'"

Which of the ODSTs made the call was unclear, at least until a more senior Shock Trooper next to him reached over and whacked said Marine in the back of his helmet for saying such a stupid thing, but the sentiment was none the less felt across the entire defensive line as troops disengaged safeties and cocked their rifles. Grunts were insignificant and weak creatures, generally equipped with the worst weapons in the Covenant inventory and considered something of a joke by both human and Covenant forces alike. In small numbers, they were little more than target practice; they were sloppy, careless and broke easily, used more often than not to draw fire away from Jackals and Elites while they did the real work.
In large numbers however...they became something entirely different. They almost became the living proof of the so-called 'Mob Effect'.

One Grunt was a coward.

Six Hundred were the next best thing to a force of nature.

On they came, many on all fours, at a speed that would have shocked anyone who had only ever seen the odd grunt waddling about, the barks and yaps from each building into a roaring din that encouraged each other to new spurts of speed - and Buck let himself feel a moment of deep regret for the fact that the Spartans had already used up almost all of the HE and FRAG rounds for the mortar, because a couple of dozen spread among the carpet of Grunts would have had quite useful results about now.

"Count is approximately Six Zero Zero for each flank" Wellesley spoke up in Edward Bucks ear and he briefly switched his helmet display over to an area Tactical Map controlled by the AI, noting the waves of Scarlet contact markers were indeed pushing in from both the Northern and Southern flanks, leaving the East and main access road suspiciously empty ... but that was a question for Veronica to sort out. "Hold order remains in place for heavy weapons teams at this time".

The first of the Grunts had already covered the distance between the treeline and base of the hill, the wave of figures parting around or over the boulders, stumps and none too few discarded HEV pods the ODSTs had arrived in before pushing briskly up the longer slope towards the Generator Complex entrance in the cliff face and its defenders. It was a simple but common Covenant envelopment, hitting both sides of the defensive line simultaneously with massed numbers of bodies - a tactic best described as suicidal in the face of the kind of weapons the ODSTs and their Marine friends were packing ... but of course the Grunts were never expected to actually carry the day; their job was to just probe the defenders, wear them down, eat up some ammo, and hold their attention.

Having seen this tactic more than once, Buck ignored the heaving mass for the moment, directing his scoped BR55 back along the tree line and wholly unsurprised to see the stealthy movement of Jackals edging out from the treeline and picking their way down towards the base of the hill in the wake of the rampaging packs of Grunts, clearly planning to use the distraction to get set up with their Beam Rifles and Needle Carbines to cover the real attack that would be coming next.

"You seeing this Wellesley?" he asked as he made a count, figuring about forty Jackals were sneaking down as best they could into the modest cover along the valley floor that would get them in range of the defenders.

"Of course" the other replied easily. "And its much the same on the Southern Side. The Pawns are advancing, the knights moving into position, but the Bishops and Rooks have not yet revealed themselves".

"English please, mister English?"

The AI sighed at his curt response.

"Motion Sensor tracking shows many more Covenant troops inside the tree line" the AI replied with just a touch of a huff in its tone. "This Grunt attack is most probably just-"

"-a probe to test our defences for the real attack to follow" Buck finished as he swept his rifle over the tree line, but any Covenant forces were in too deep in the darkness to pick out. "I have done this before you know". Switching his attention back to the Grunt wave, the rangefinder on his scope counted down the last few meters as he settled his crosshairs on the Green/Emerald armour of one of the higher ranking grunts, waiting for-

"Engage!" the command was barked from Major Dare back in her CP and Buck gently squeezed his trigger, the snap of the shot lost in the sudden cacophony of sound as a hundred ODSTs opened fire, the Grunt in his scope spinning to the ground with its face a shattered mess. Scores more Grunts were cut down in the front row, staggering and rolling to a halt, but the wave kept pushing, moving around and in some cases over the dead bodies as tracer rounds shot downrange. Some grunts returned fire wildly with their Needler and plasma pistols despite being way out of range, but the useless gesture seemed none the less to encouraged the pack to redouble their screaming as they charged forward. Some ran into the lines of Razorwire and became tangled, all but throwing themselves into it to clear the obstacle, while the smarter ones simply used overloaded plasma pistol shots to vaporize holes in the defences. Mines detonated and scathed through yet more of the crazed animals, but it only seemed to encourage them, and every mine detonated cleared the way for future attacks.

Switching targets, Buck traced his optics back downrange to the Jackals, confident in his people's ability to shoot down a wave of Grunts without his micromanagement. A new wave of flares was launched into the sky as the first wave started to fizzle out and in the reinforced light he spotted a new wave of Grunts moving out of the treeline ... except this group was not moving in a mindless charge but with clear purpose, carrying with them a number of 'Shade' portable turrets to backstop the Jackals settling into cover at the base of the hill. The triple barrel emplaced weapons were not at all something to take lightly; with near unlimited ammunition in the short term and a high rate of fire, the dozen turrets he could tag on his VISOR display could put an incredible amount of suppressive fire downrange, but he knew that situation was probably well in hand ... and he had an increasingly more pressing concern to worry about right now.

The Grunt wave was still pressing forward at full speed, and their returned fire while poor in accuracy, had sufficent volume that at this range it was getting to be rather more serious. Increasing numbers of plasma strikes struck and exploded on and around the lip of the trench, making Marines shy away and choose their shots more carefully, the diminishing of outgoing fire providing an opening for the equally diminished numbers of Grunts to make one last push forward to plasma Greande range, many of them already clutching the tiny spheres in their claws as they paid the price to get close enough to lob them in as Buck made a quick calculation of distances and barked a codeword order-

And almost before the word was out of his mouth, the Confetti Makers opened fire.

The old .30 Caliber Light Machine Guns had been a favourite of various separatist groups, but rarely seen in UNSC service. Almost useless against a target beyond forty to fifty meters thanks to its incredible recoil, the weapon was almost a contradiction in terms; a close combat machine gun. Useful if you wanted to kill everything in a room in no time flat perhaps, but with limited endurance and woeful accuracy making it of questionable value in a sustained engagement. The combination of 'faults' however had endeared it to various rebel groups who were often far less discriminating of their targets than UNSC troops. But in the planning for RED FLAG, Buck had decided if they were really going to try and pull off a boarding action against the Covenant, a weapon that could be used to fill the tight confines of a starship with hundreds of rounds of .30 AP might just come in handy at some point.
He hadn't expected to be using them on against a wave of Grunts screaming for blood on the surface of Reach of course, but ...

The last desperate lunge of the wave of Grunts simply disintegrated, there was no other word for it. The dozen machine guns chewed through their 300 round magazines in ten seconds flat, the gunners not so much firing their weapons as pulling the trigger and holding on for dear life against the recoil, screaming roars filling the air and tracers scathed through the final push of the Grunts and stopped it dead in its tracks. Literally.

Then, as if to rub salt in the wound for the Covenant, the valley blew up.

The Jackals at the bottom of the hill had, perhaps understandably, settled in and around the only real cover available to start sniping; the discarded HEV pods. The Grunts too had made for the same area, probably in the expectation that the Jackals could cover them as they set up their weapons. Combined, the snipers and heavy turrets could probably put enough firepower back on the hill to at least force the ODSTs to keep their heads down while the real attack started...in theory anyway.

And as tactical thinking went, it was a decent enough idea.

The flaw with the thinking however was that while they were fully qualified and highly experienced in HEV use, the Spartans who had deployed with the ODSTs were not ODSTs. Neither, technically speaking, was Veronica Dare who had transferred out of the Corps into ONI, where she had learned the hard way that any and all equipment was expendable for the sake of the mission. And while an ODST would generally take great umbrage with filling their signature piece of equipment with a couple of kilos of C7 explosives from the ample supplies that had been stockpiled at the Generator Complex the Spartans merely thought of it as 'expediency'.

The explosion as every one of the rigged pods detonated simultaneously was spectacular and a number catcalls came from the ODSTs as their most prized possession turned into shrapnel and smoke. Night was turned into day for a moment as the hundred or so Jackals and Grunts in the kill zone of the IEDs simply disintegrated - except one somewhat unfortunate Grunt at the edge of the detonations whose Shade was sent rocketing into the air on a ballistic arc back towards their deployment zone, riding a trail of flaming methane, passing through the rising clouds of smoke and fire and vanishing from sight ... as other shadows and shapes suddenly formed in the twisting night air, Buck frowning as he focused in-

-just in time for dozens of dark, winged shapes to tear through the smoke at speed, heading right for them.

"Drones!" he snapped to Wellesley as he raised his weapon, his VISOR display automatically tagging and passing along the contact information to Wellesley - but the flyers opened fire before he could.

A wave of overcharged Plasma bolts tore through the sky towards the defensive line. Green blobs of plasma crashed down in a punishing wave into and around the trench lines, throwing up dust and smoke as the Drones closed in. ODSTs were forced to dive for cover as the blasts slammed down around and among them.
However, with the sheer speed of an AI, Wellesley was already reacting, making the targets and passing them onto the heavy weapons units in the bunkers backstopping the firing lines. The nests of M41 chainguns opened fire moments later, sending streams of orange tracers through the smoke filled sky as the gunners sought their targets. The insect-like drones were swatted from the sky as the AAA fire swept their sectors under the AI's guidance, but more than enough pushed through to turn and dive almost directly overhead, a blue glow appearing in many of their hands as they plummeted towards them defensive line-

"GRENADES!" he warned and the Shock Troopers just getting back to their feet again dove for cover as a wave of blue plasma grenades were flung down by the insect like creatures into the trench. In that instant, unit cohesion was lost as Marines sought to avoid having the terrifying weapons adhere to them, the screams of Marines unlucky enough to have one of the blue orbs adhere to them being cut off in explosions as they and anyone within a few meters were consumed, tons of dirt exploding all over the place. The lack of Shrapnel from the Covenant weapons was a blessing, keeping casualties surprisingly light despite the visible devastation, but casualties were ultimately not the point. The ODST's were hardly broken by any stretch of the imagination and even as the Drones zipped past to land inside the permitter, the bunkers doors slammed open and the reaction teams from Charlie Companies Marines moved out, firing from the hip as they started a murderous close quarters game of hide and seek. Few soldiers however were looking down the slopes as agile purple vehicles punched through the curtain of smoke at the base of the hill, the IEDs, mines or barriers that might have dissuaded them now cleared away to give the Covenant light armour a straight shot at their disorganized defensive line.

"INCOMING VEHICLES NORTH, ENGAGE" Buck shouted, suiting actions to words as leaned down and appropriated an M19 launcher from a weapons cache that had been emplaced specifically for this situation, shouldering it and releasing the safety in a smooth practiced motion. The screening line of Ghosts opened fire as he started to aim, sprays of Blue fire splattering all across the defensive line to keep as much pressure up as possible, as heavier Revenant's and Spectres behind them threw a withering hail of heavier plasma bolts at the bunkers to try and suppress the crews inside frantically trying to reload the Chainguns.

Buck ignored the firepower streaking towards him with an indifference born from a great deal of training and experience. The Ghosts were closing far too fast to bother trying to lock them up so he just dumb fired from the iron sights, a number of other rockets jetting out on trails of fire along with his as other AT teams engaged the incoming. Four of the Ghosts exploded as the heavy rockets connected, one hapless vehicle taking three hits simultaneously and disintegrating, the surviving quartet however just ignited their booster pods and accelerated, one heading straight for him as he stood there, caught with an empty launcher and no time to react, as it hit the lip of the tightly packed earth in front of him -

-and used it like a ramp, leaping over the trench and clearing his head by millimetres, his teeth chattering from the antigravity waves as it skimmed over his face and pushed him down at the ground, the Ghost crashing through the wrecked perimeter fence behind and above him as he smacked his head against the side of the trench. He watched, stunned, as two other Ghosts followed the firsts example successfully further down the line, a forth just a tad too slow to do so as the nearby ODST's rallied and poured fire at it, a half dozen rifles on full auto tearing into the vulnerable underside and sending it into spin as its power systems failed, the helpless vehicle cart wheeling into an intact section of the perimeter fence before exploding.

Trying to shake off his dazed head, he ignored the familiar tang of copper in his mouth in favour of his bio-monitors that remained solidly in the green, the comforting bulk of his rifle slipping into his questing hands as he turned down slope to face the rest of the enemy wave-

Just in time to come face to face with an Elite.

Time continued to move in slow motion for him as his rifle slowly came up on reflex, the snarling alien jumping with a number of others off their vehicles as they cruised past, parallel to the trench line. Instead of following the Ghosts over the line and into the inner perimeter, the Elites were deploying directly into the primary defensive lines while the Grunt gunners on their vehicles covered them, charging into the close quarters battle that rendered the ODSTs advantages of numbers and firepower useless in the face of their shields, physical strength and close combat weapons.
Buck furiously willed his rifle to come up faster, but his hands continued to move at the same glacially slow pace that the Elite seemed to be falling at. He knew the Elite would certainly get its sword through his chest before he could fire, and even if he did fire first, it was unlikely it would be enough to deflect its descent or strike away from him in time - in short, it seemed that he was dead.

...Or at least so it appeared, until an M60 Shotgun interjected itself over his shoulder at an oddly normal speed in the otherwise agonisingly slow moment, gripped by an enormous green gauntlet that casually shoved the heavy weapon like a pistol into the chest of the slowly reacting Elite, fired-

The shotgun blast shattered the frozen moment - along with the Elites head; the alien slammed back against the lip of the Trench it had been leaping over, the sword shutting down as it lost its grip on the activation button, barely centimetres from stabbing into him. Buck snapped his weapon up from the hip and sprayed on reflex for good measure, the heavy AP rounds from his Battle Rifle tearing the Elites chest apart as the Elites Energy Sword shut off, still clutched in a death grip by its owner.

Two more scarlet painted Elites landed in the Trench close by, a half dozen ODSTs desperately trying to gain a line of fire being picked up and thrown bodily backwards as one smashed some kind of exotic war hammer into the ground, a shockwave rippling out and throwing the Marines away as Buck pushed himself back to his feet. The second alien roared a challenge with a brandished sword as it spotted a worthy opponent; the Spartan who had saved his life diving past Buck into roll that let him snatch the sword hilt from the dead hand of the First Elite before coming smoothly back to its feet from the roll, igniting blade and bringing it around in an overhead cut at the Elite in the same motion.

The Elite almost contemptuously parried the thrust, the two weapons locking together and swinging away to tear into the side of the trench-

-Which was apparently the Spartans plan all along as the other hand thrust the Shotgun it was still carrying into the face of the Elite and jerked the trigger, a look of outrage at the idea of bringing a gun to a sword fight crossing the Elites face for a millisecond before most of it was removed.

The final Elite started to turn away from the Shock Troopers it had been facing as it belatedly woke up to the critical threat behind it but it was far too late. In a blurred motion between blinks, the Spartan closed the distance and slashed the sword viciously with enough force to send the Elites head flying out over the trench line, the Elites body remaining upright for a fraction of a second before it slowly toppled backwards and crashed to the ground of the trench.

"Secure the Area" Buck shouted, forcefully shaking off his amazement at the Spartan killing three Elites in less than six seconds and forcing himself to get back to work, the ODSTs responding on instinct to the NCO tone in his voice and picking themselves up. Buck almost absently ejected the half used magazine from his rifle and slapped a new one in, the automatic movements of his hands bringing his focus right back as he looked around. The Covenant vehicles had mostly been neutralized now, a brief spurt of chatter from Captain McKays sniper teams on overwatch telling him that they had picked off most of the surviving drivers and gunners. And even as he started to bring his weapon up to deal with the few remaining Grunts in the vehicles, the Spartan casually pulled a M6D Magnum from a holster and fired four rapid shots, each one striking one of the diminutive aliens in their head and ending the threat from their heavy support weapons they were firing wildly at everything as the attack was stopped cold.
Shaking his head slightly at the sheer carnage the Spartan had managed to pull off, he turned his attention back to his part of the line, double checking that the Elites were definitely down in passing. "Get the Medics to the injured!" Buck ordered as he double checked that the Elites were down for the count. "This isn't over yet Marines, keep your eyes open!"

Acknowledgements were yelled back mixed with more than a few 'Ooh-rah's!' as the Marines cleared their sectors, reloaded weapons and helped each other get back on the firing lines. He waved off Corporal Harper, the medic assigned to this part of the line as he moved in on him and instead, pointed the man to Marines further down the line who were lying in the trench - but still moving, turning his attention back to the big picture. Wellesley was still updating and broadcasting the Tactical Map tied in from the hundreds of sensors in the area, and at a glance he could see the last couple of red icons inside the perimeter wink out in time with a couple of explosions; the five surviving Ghosts that had tried to make for the Generator complex had run into a force of Warthogs, the chain guns they carried ending the debate rather decisively after a brief high speed pursuit through the ancillary buildings of the complex outside the massive cave entrance. The other Spartans appeared to be enjoying themselves as they cleaned up the remaining Elite teams with the help of Captain McKays sniper teams with the same cold efficiency as this one here had demonstrated on the Southern side, and while personnel losses were light, there were a number of buildings continuing to burn fiercely, along with the wrecks of the Covenant vehicles blown to bits and-

He froze as his gaze traced back down towards the cliff at the far end of the trench line where a fiercely burning Spectre lay glowing in the night air. There had actually been little action that far down the line, the Covenant offensive much more concentrated on his part of the line, but for a split second he had seen the oddest blurring outline of what looked like men moving along the cliff-

"Zero Three Nine" he shouted as the reality of what he had seen clicked, leaping up to the lip of the trench by using the body of one of the Elites as a stepping stone, "on me, now!"

It was one of the more remarkable attributes of Spartans. Other people might be slightly taken aback by such an order from a higher ranking soldier outside of their regular chain of command ... but not a Spartan.

"Sir" the other simply acknowledged the order, vaulting up beside him as Buck hurried for the APC twenty meters away sitting there, a second Spartan materializing as if by magic from the darkness to join them, Buck rapidly opening a link on the set-aside frequency for the rest of Omega Team as well as his own squad with Veronica, knowing Wellesley would be monitoring them and pass on the alarm.

"Look alive people" he said, pointing to the driver's seat of the vehicle as he vaulted into the gunners position and kicked the dead grunt out of the way, hoping and praying the Spartans knew how to work these things, a hope rewarded as the vehicle shuddered and then lifted smoothly off the ground as the two figures leaped aboard, "I think we have cloaked Elites heading for the primary objective inside the perimeter; converge on the CP!"

0617 Hours, September 22nd, 2552 (Military Calendar) /
Alpha Team AO, Orbital Defence Generator Facility A-331, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System

"... Did he just say cloaked Elites?"

"No, he said 'convoy of Grunts with early Christmas Presents', dumbass".

"All right, shut your holes, both of you before I shut them myself. Check your sectors, if they're incoming, they've got to be heading this way. These are stone cold killers, they aint cute and cuddly like me" Corporal Taylor 'Dutch' Miles growled to the men of 'The Squad' as they called themselves - mostly for lack of consensus over which name to use. "Just stay chilled till the Sarge gets here, and for God's sake don't hit him by mistake, cause that'll just mighty piss him off"

The quartet of ODSTs standing guard at the access door next to the gigantic blast doors locked down across the roadway down into the massive Generator complex hefted their weapons and spread out slightly. The Cave was well light by floodlights, although large amounts of smoke had cut visibility down, the perfect environment for a bunch of stealthy Elites to sneak through. And if they wanted to get into the Generator complex, perhaps set a few small anti-matter charges deep underground, then this was the only way in.

The door behind them opened to his surprise and he glanced back, stiffening slightly as Major Dare walked out, inconspicuous in her ODST armour from anyone other shock trooper, except of course the IFF tag on his HUD as he turned to face her.

"Ma'am, the area isn't secure, you really shouldn't be-"

"I hope Corporal that you are not about to make suggestions about what I can and cannot do" the others voice came back in a somewhat amused tone as she glanced around, Miles glad to see that at least her sidearm holster was unbuttoned and her gun hand was hovering near it. "There is only one person in this unit presumptive enough to try that, and you are not him".

"No Ma'am ... I mean yes Ma'am" he corrected himself in confusion, still not knowing what to make of his CO. She was a hard person to pin down, even with the knowledge that his Boss clearly had a 'history' with her. She seemed to be half spook half Helljumper, sometimes seeming like an Angel of God for her looks, other times a chillingly cold killing machine in human skin from her training, leaving him utterly confused about how to relate to her in his capacity as the leader of her protection detail. Especially given that she had more field experience than any other person in the squad by far. "We have possible cloaked Elites heading for this entrance, I would strongly recommend ..."

Okay, he guessed from her initial reply that he may have pissed her off somehow, but drawing her weapon on him was a hell of a response-

Her gun fired twice, the bullets passing so close in front of his face he would forever be telling everyone when he told the story, that he could read the 'Made Proudly on Reach' stamp along the side of each slug as they passed by, a heavy pair of thwocks sounding from next to him as he spun, turning towards a section of smoky air that was shimmering vividly as shields tried to dissipate the impact of the heavy slugs from the silenced pistol, the Elite's active camouflage failing even as it raised a Plasma rifle and aimed at him.

'Vera', his modified full auto BR55 with a customized trigger and heavily reinforced butt stock proved her worth to him again as he snapped it up in a long practiced move, the weighted edge slamming into the face of the Elite. Most of the blow was absorbed by the remaining power from its shield grid, but it was enough to knock it off balance as he shifted his shoulder and charged, the sudden impact enough to cause the off balance alien to lose its footing entirely and crash to its back, Dutch reversing his grip and putting a bust through its head that killed it instantly before he bothered to take a good look at it.
Grey armour, with what looked suspiciously like the Covenant equivalent of Satchel charges lopped over its chest-

"It's a Demo Team" he concluded warningly, looking around everywhere and seeing nothing, the smoke was rolling around so much it made any hint of a cloaked Elite impossible to see, and equally screwed up his motion sensors. They were fighting this one blind. Great, just great ...

"Four man Elite SpecOpps Team" the Major added almost casually, "should be three others ... there!"

He snapped his weapon up and fired a pair of three round bursts in the direction Dare indicated with her own weapon, trusting to whatever ONI issue tech she was using and was rewarded by the flashes of several shields taking hits in the smoke, but nothing more. He swore and took a long step to the side, congratulating his foresight as a pulse of blue Plasma fire tore through where he had been standing and blew craters into the rocky cave wall, knocking the Rookie of the squad over as a wave of semi-molten stone exploded out under the touch of the beams impact directly behind him-

"The door!" he snapped as he realized the Elites were not engaging, but just suppressing as they ran for the open door the Major had just come through-

The Major was already moving, her pistol held two handed, tracking something only she could see through the smoke as she fired on the move. One Elite shimmered into view from the hits as its cloak and shields failed, in the process of aiming a Needle pistol back at the Major and sending a flurry of the razor sharp projectiles homing in on her a split second before a 14.5mm slug from Corporal Agu tore through its skull.

The cloud of razor sharp pink projectiles continued on, oblivious to the fact that the person who had fired them was dead. The Major however didn't so much as flinch, leaping forward off her momentum and leaving the pink projectiles behind to shatter harmlessly on the massive blast door in her wake, tucking into a neat roll as she hit the floor and coming up with her pistol-

-which was promptly slapped out of her hand by nothing and no-one.

Again almost faster than Dash could follow, the Major pivoted with the strike and planted a stylish yet functional combat boot into thin air, a ripple of light shimmering from the impact point along with a very alien grunt of pain before she stepped up and delivered what would have been an utterly brutal right cross against a human, given that ODSTs gauntlets were typically reinforced with a Titanium-A frame around the hand that could do very bad things to anyone it was punched into.

But this wasn't a human, and she wasn't a Spartan.

The Elites head became visible as its camouflage failed, rocking back only slightly from the blow its shields deflected as it seized her wrist, yanking her off balance and spinning her around to crush her against its chest with an incredibly thick arm holding her down, a Plasma Sword in its other hand igniting with its edge directly in front of her face as it glared out at the Quartet of ODSTs training their weapons at it.

"Son of a bitch" Dutch snarled as his crosshairs trained on the now visible Elite, angry with himself for missing the play and angry with the Major for being a Gods Damned Hero instead of staying in the CP where she belonged as he tried to line up a shot, knowing that if he didn't kill it in one, it would have plenty of time to slice the Major open and evade, assuming a ricochet from its shield didn't kill her anyway -

"God Damn it!" the Major snarled in rage and futile rage as she struggled in against the iron strength of a race that could come close to matching an armoured Spartans in hand to hand combat, her arms mostly pinned and her legs hammering its armour probably not even being noticed. "Take the shot!"

"Wort Wort Wort!" the Elite barked out at the ODSTs as they started to spread out and flank it. Dutch didn't have the first damn clue what it meant, but could guess it was some kind of variant on 'Back off, or she dies'.

"Dutch, what are we doing man?" PFC Crespo asked urgently over their COM frequency, his own Magnum sidearm aimed at the Elite, having dropped his Rocket Launcher as a somewhat ... impractical option to resolve this situation.

"Romeo?" Dutch asked the third member of the squad, seeing the Rookie slowly getting to his feet from the concussion and dismissing him as irrelevant to the situation.

"No good, shots not clean" the Sniper replied, having crouched down and aimed with his heavy rifle from only ten meters away. He could hardly miss that close, but trying to hit the Elite somewhere it would not kill the Major, even in death reflex-

"Take...the...shot" the Major gasped out over the COM channel with a priority override, clearly not breathing well in the Elites iron grip it started to slowly back away towards the door twenty or so meters behind it, its left side protected by the massive vehicle blast doors it was walking along and its eyes burning with incredible zeal as it seemed to watch everyone simultaneously. Dutch knew full well that the Major was dead the second it made the door, and what the odds were of finding it inside the maze of passageways beyond once it re-cloaked. And if it got to the Generators, given the power of Covenant explosives...

"Fire On my mark" he made the call over the COM linked to the both the squads and the Majors Helmet, settling his scope as best he could and knowing he was about to get her killed -and almost surely him moments later when the Sarge caught up with them. "Three, two-"

- he was rather suddenly cut off as the scream of a Covenant anti-gravity drive broke the stalemate; a somewhat damaged Specter coming out of nowhere and crashing into the massive blast door behind the Elite, cutting it off from the access door, a very pissed off looking Master Sergeant Edward Buck, jumping down from the gunners station without his helmet on, heading for the Elite. Clearly caught between the threat of the other ODSTs circling around and the new human stomping towards him with every sign of not being willing to stop, it flattened itself against the metal barrier and spat something at the Sergeant, a warning that Dutch guessed started to translate along the lines of 'If anyone moves any closer-'

Dutch didn't even see the hand move, let alone see the draw. One second, the Sarge was walking forwards with death written on his face, the next, a double-tap from an M6D that had all but materialized into his hand blew into the Elites head , the first smashing its shields and snapping the Elites head back, the second turning most of said head to pulp as the armour piercing shell tore through the armour and into the soft, fleshy bits underneath, the Major instantly pushing the sword arm up and away, the blade raising a shower of sparks from the armoured door as it traced along its surface before it and the body fell away from her, the sword cutting off as its fail safes kicked in.

"The HELL?" Buck demanded as he shoved his sidearm back into his holster with great force and turned on his men, who lowered their weapons and managed somehow to look sheepish despite their head to toe body armour as the Major gathered her feet, taking the offered hand from the NCO to help her up. "I give you people one job - ONE job! And you can't even get that done right? What the hell does the UNSC pay you for?!"

"Uh Sarge" Dutch tried, "to move this into a not-Dutch's-fault direction, I'd like to point out that-"

"Do you want to lead the Squad?" the Master Sergeant demanded with a glare that could melt hotter than a plasma torpedo.

Dutch paused, and then figuring he was already knee deep anyway as the nominal leader of the fire team while Buck was away, shrugged.

"Yeah?"

"Oh..." Buck said, momentarily nonplussed at the response. "Well, you can't! Now, as for-"

"Bigger problems people" the Major said firmly as she dusted herself off and slapped a new clip into her pistol. "We're one Elite short of a-"

The sound of two MA5B rifles on full auto suddenly sounded from the doorway and everyone whirled, just in time to see a silver/grey figure came half falling and half flying back outside, its chest an utter wreck from highly accurate small arms fire as it crashed to the ground. Two tall figures in green power amour followed it out, splitting up in a fluid movement to cover the body before snapping their weapons down and turning to face the Major, giving her the slightest nod.

"That's four Ma'am".

"So it is" she agreed, as Dutch wondered how in the hell the two Spartans had gotten inside the blast doors without anyone seeing them, having been stationed at said door since the drop ... but deciding in the end it would probably be better if he didn't know. "Now Sergeant, Petty Officer, I need a detailed butchers bill from everyone, we have to be prepared for the ..."

Her voice trailed off as she stared out to the West, and everyone around her turned to follow her gaze, freezing as they saw what she had.

It looked almost like a giant purple insect, so enormous that it was visible even from the back of this cave on a taller hill as crested the final ridgeline before the valley and surveyed its choice of targets. A green glow on the front of it starting to form, getting brighter and brighter as it braced its feet, the front of the vehicle shifting slightly until the maw of its great cannon was pointed right at them.

There was just enough time for an incredibly crude Chinese curse to come from the Master Sergeant's lips -

0624 Hours, September 22nd, 2552 (Military Calendar) /
Alpha Team AO, Orbital Defence Generator Facility A-331, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System

Timing, was everything, Fred knew.

Give the signal too early, and this whole plan would end up as little more than a fancy way to get killed. Go too late, and Reach might still be saved, somehow, but neither the Daredevils or Omega Team would be around to see it. And probably a lot more besides. Hitting the 'sweet spot' between the extremes, was now in the hands of good luck as much as good planning. And he could only hope that some of the Master Chiefs had been gifted to him along with the command of the team.

The larger, trailing Scarab continued to move up steadily in the wake of its smaller brother, clearly content to let the lead walker cause what promised to be incredible, if short lived, carnage on its own. Covered in a silver/blue alloy of the same type Covenant ships used, the bigger trailing walker was all but immune to any single use weapons system less than Fury Tactical Nuclear Device, and strode with an almost assured gait that came with its crew knowing this fact. A covered upper deck was crowded with any number of Jackals and Grunts keeping a casual lookout for any threat stupid enough to get close as they quietly thanked the Forerunners that they had pulled this duty rather than been assigned to the ground attacks, and with no less than four Wraith tanks screening its advance, its crew probably had good reason to be confident in their invulnerability.

Fred, laying just inside the tree line on ground vibrating increasingly violently as the Scarab approached, was counting on that attitude, as he went over his hastily developed plan for the last time.

For all its awesome power, this type of Scarab was less a combat vehicle than a mobile HQ. It carried a significant and well protected command deck inside its armoured bulk that let high ranking Elites oversee ground operations on the move, and some ONI reports had even suggested that the larger variant might actually serve as an excavation machine of all things - although the reports such claims were based on were apocryphal enough that ONI had not put much faith in them.

Fred however, suddenly thought it made sense. It neatly explained the walkers presence on the field behind the far more common Lekgolo controlled variant, if it had been brought in to dig down to the fusion reactors after the defences had been broken, eliminating even the possibility of collapsing all the access tunnels to buy time.
Well, unless his team pulled off this plan anyway.
Fred had taken a risk and led his Spartans back through the forest at speed, trusting that it would still be clear of hostiles. Luck was on their side as it indeed proved to be the case, reaching his intercept point a good minute ahead of the lead Scarab. Again, they froze into good cover as it and its Wraith escort moved past them, and again they went unseen before they moved up to the edge of the tree line and took their places.

Here was their only chance; a place where the clearing the Covenant heavy armour was using narrowed modestly, with a higher rise on either side matching a correspondingly modest fall in the clearing; probably a minor ridge that had been cut in half by whatever ancient glacier had ground out the clearing countless eons ago, in effect artificially raising the tree line on either side roughly seven meters above the clearing that had formed here.

A single click followed by three clicks came over the radio signalling that Anton was in position and Fred clicked back twice to signal his acknowledgement, still loath to risk anything but burst transmissions this close to such sophisticated Covenant hardware until absolutely necessary.

The shaking got heavier, and clanking of actuators got louder as the Scarab closed, his eyes not even blinking as it came into view through the tree line as it look step followed by step followed by step-

And when it took that final critical step, he rapidly flashed one acknowledgement light three times.

Hundreds of meters up-slope to the West, Kelly erupted out of the tree line in a blur of motion, skidding to a halt dead in front of the Scarab and the quartet of escorting Wraiths like a deer caught in their headlights. In a blurred motion, she raised the M19 rocket launcher she was holding and fired both rockets precisely at the Scarabs particle cannon 500 meters away, even as the Elites who had been sitting with their hatches open enjoying the cool night air scrambled for their weapons controls. That done, she dropped the spent tube and ran for the other side of the clearing in a blur, tearing up the slight slope as a blizzard of plasma bolts from the Wraiths secondary guns blew steaming craters into the ground in her wake. Quickly realizing they had no hope of actually pegging her with their secondary weapons, the gunners went to 'Plan B', the lead pair of Tanks accelerating forward and sending Blue streams of plasma from their main guns into the forest at point blank range.

Dozens of trees exploded as the unbelievable energy superheated the water content and detonated them, immolating three hundred square meters in a second and fusing the forest floor into glass as a fireball raced from and set fire to everything even remotely flammable around the impact.

The gunners watching with a mixture of epinephrine and terror searched vainly for any sign of their prey, gripping their controls as they looked for any excuse to keep firing at the Demon that had appeared and then vanished so quickly that some of them were not entirely sure that they had actually seen one at all ... except for the physical realty of the two rockets streaking downrange of course.

An experienced Elite was at the controls of the Scarab, one who had fought in dozens of campaigns across many human worlds. Instantly, he identified and analysed the threat on his screen. The human weapons were no match for the armour plating on his walker platform, this he knew from great experience ... but the weapons had not been fired at his legs or body, but at the gaping maw of the massive accelerated particle cannon directly in front of them, which was only partially protected by armour and against which a hit would be catastrophic.

No human could possibly make such an accurate shot, it was a one in a million chance.

A Demon on the other hand-

Almost violently, the forward half of the Scarab simply fell ten meters as the Elite slammed his controls down, shock absorbers and gravity beams in the legs preventing them from snapping at the sudden shift of weight as the Scarab lowered itself out of the way of the incoming missiles. The desperate manoeuvre was perfectly executed with the exquisite skill of a true master of his craft, the two rockets passed harmlessly over the upper plasma turret, making it another kilometre before the short-burn engines expired out and the rockets self destructed, a complete and utter miss in all respects - the Demons best efforts clearly in vain.

Of course, he couldn't know that they had never been intended to hit.

Simultaneous with the Scarab crashing to a halt and 'hunching' down on its legs, four green figures exploded into action from inside the tree line. Fred mentally willed the Scarab to stay still as he pushed himself to move faster, the quartet accelerating to almost fifty kilometres per hour and covering the thirty meters between their starting position and the edge of the cliff in less than five seconds, the Chiefs luck clearly with them as they leaped into the air with all their considerable strength, sailing across the gap to the now level upper deck of the Covenant Walker.

The top deck of the Scarab was guarded by an infantry unit of roughly squad size. A quartet of light plasma cannons had been fixed around the edge of the platform for close protection against any flank infintry manoeuvre like this, each manned by a Grunt. The Elites in charge along with the rest of the Grunts were busy on the far side of the deck, searching in vain for Kelly inside the tree line with their weapons raised and ready, but the remaining grunts on the right hand side were being unusually diligent for their species, tracking their weapons around as they looked for any threat in the black darkness of the forest ahead of them.

Which meant they were the first to die.

Vincent and Malcom fired their silenced DMR's simultaneously, cutting down the two side gunners before they had even noticed the four green shapes materializing out of the darkness. A rapid appraisal of the situation by Fred as he sailed across the seven meter drop to the ground spotted two more Grunts manning the left side Plasma cannons, another two Grunts hefting dangerous but cumbersome looking Fuel Rod cannons next to them. Motion tracking showed additional contacts sitting in the small sheltered area created between two walls in the centre of the deck - probably Jackals - and in command of the unit were a pair of Elites in blue armour, one searching in vain for Kelly, and one who was turning back towards them, probably at the sudden noise of the Grunts clattering to the deck.

Reaching up as he flew into the compartment in a blur, Fred grabbed onto a convenient protrusion in the roof and pivoted on it, letting all the all the momentum he had built up from his sprint form into a solid kick into the Elites head. There was a sick sounding crunch as his foot crashed through its shields and caved its face in, but Fred ignored the gruesome sight as he pushed back off, sending the Elites body flying out of the Scarab and into the forest as he back flipped, landing in a crouch and drawing his weapon.

Next to him, Grace had landed into a rolling dive as effortlessly as her name implied, transferring her momentum into a fist that crashed into the middle of the second Elites back with an explosion of light that killed its shields before she thrust a silenced SMG in her other hand up and tore through the back of its skull with a quick burst. Li and Joseph arrived together and crashed into the 'wall' in the middle of the deck as the Jackals, who had indeed been sitting down lazily on the other side in the relatively sheltered area, started to react to explosion of chaos around them and spun about at Fred, reaching for plasma pistols as they fired up shield gauntlets. The Spartan noted their presence but ignored them in favour of joining with Grace to pick off the two Grunts on the plasma cannons, trusting his teammates to watch his back.

His faith was well rewarded moments later as Li and Joseph swung around behind the Jackal pack and sprayed their silenced MA5Bs into them at point blank range. Loaded with shredder rounds, the Jackals quite literally fell to under the shower of flechettes, eliminating the last of the Covenant presence on the top deck and the Spartans in control of their entry way.

Engagement time from Kelly emerging from the tree line, fourteen point three seconds and counting.

Three clicks came over the COM channel from Vincent and Malcolm as the Spartans moved into phase two, reforming aft as Fred sent two of his own clicks back. Four seconds later, the two remaining Spartans flew in from the side and joined them, Fred shooting them a quick series of hand signals that told them to take up sentry rearguard positions, before joining his fire team at the ramp down to the interior of the Scarab.

The lack of troops pouring up the ramp or shouts of alarm from the cabin was a good sign they had taken their position without being detected, but Fred assumed they had only moments before someone wised up to the fact that the upstairs crew were not answering. Their access point, a ramp down to the core of the Scarab, was protected by the hazy blue glow of a Covenant shield, but that had been expected. Powered by the Scarabs reactor core, none of the Spartans weapons could hope to permanently disable it, but they had dealt with similar situations before.

Grace had recovered what she needed from the Covenant troops, using an instant adhesive from her demolitions kit to carefully place a pair of plasma grenades into precise points in the door frame around the force field. Without looking away, her light on his COM board blinked yellow and in response, the Spartans moved into a very close formation, as close as they dared to the explosives, before Fred flashed his own light blue, twice. Grace hit the grenades, the Covenant weapons glowing a azure blue as they activated and fused themselves even more solidly into the frame, the Spartan jumping back into the line in a blur as they grew brighter and brighter ...

Then they detonated in a cloud of blue plasma.

The physical damage was minor, with the grenades barely heating the armoured frame around the impact points, and didn't have a fraction the raw firepower to blow down the defensive shield. They did however give off a highly localized EMP as a by-product of whatever strange technology they used, which although generally useless for any real work, was conducted into the frame and into the power conduits that kept the shield active, shorting it out.

For roughly zero point eight seconds.
Far too little time for any normal person to do anything.
But it was more than enough time for a Spartan.

In perfect unison, the fire team jumped through the blue explosion and down the ramp, all four clearing the doorway with milliseconds to spare before the barrier reformed behind them with a crackle of static electricity, the Commandos positioning themselves flat against both sides of the ramp and reforming instantly into their assault teams, knowing that someone had to have heard that explosion. The ramp they were on terminated a few meters down on a landing, which in turn led both left and right to two smaller ramps, directly into the combination control room and troop compartment. Fred, at point on the left side of the ramp glanced across at Li and made a hand signal, the two Spartans quickly pulling cylinders from their belts stepping forward in unison to throw them around the corners and down into the control room where they bounced off walls, floors and one somewhat annoyed Jackals head, before their two second fuse ran out and the Sonic grenades detonated.

To the Covenant troops caught in the detonations, it was as if for a moment all sound around them was taken away before being thrown back at them at once thousand times the intensity. A deep vibrating scream passed through the enclosed compartment, reflecting unmercifully off the metallic walls to blast into the ranks of Jackals and Grunts waiting in the deployment area just outside the twin ramps, the nearly two dozen troops simply falling where they stood, out of the fight.

The quartet of Elites at the front of the Scarab however were a different matter. Their shields rallied under the sudden blast of noise, refusing to let the sound waves pass through to manipulate the thin layer of air between the energy field on such an extreme level, all of them snapping around with whiplash speed and drawing weapons as the Spartans came down the left and right ramps.

Bolts of blue fire crisscrossed with tracers from MA5Bs as Li and Fred led the charge, pouring firepower into the faces of the lead Elites on each side facing them. Before their new shields had been installed in their armour, such a tactic could have best been described as 'risky' - even with the element of surprise on their side, but now he pressed forward fearlessly into the teeth of the Elites reflexive fire.
Surprise was on their side and the Elites were completely off balance, taken aback by the sudden appearance of a quartet of Spartans inside their control room and their reactions showed it, more of their hastily aimed fire splashing across the walls of the compartment than the Spartans and before they could try and correct their aim, their shields collapsed and a hail of bullets tore their faces apart. As the opponents fell, Fred and Li sidestepped out of the way, allowing Grace and Joseph to leapfrog forwards as the remaining two Elites flinched away from the aggressive charge backed around the far side of the Bulkhead, the two Spartans pressing the advantage with M90 close quarters shotguns, as Fred spun around to cover the rear, ejecting his spent magazine.

But even as Fred started to reach for a replacement magazine, he locked his gaze on a new threat. One of the Jackals in the pile of Jackals and Grunts the sonic grenades had neutralized was moving, somehow having managed to stay conscious and pitifully trying to push a Fuel Rod Cannon taken from the hands of one of the stunned Grunts next to him to point at him. The Jackal was clearly fighting to stay awake and aim the bulky weapon it was bracing across the body of another Jackal, but it didn't really need to aim with such a weapon. Even with full shields, Fred was not confident that his new armour would survive a direct hit from one of the anti-tank projectiles. And with his shields depleted from the necessary frontal assault...

Almost before the thought had entered his mind, Fred triggered a spring loaded compartment in the right pauldron of his armour. His empty rifle fell away as his right hand moved up, time seeming to slow and stretch out in the way Kelly called 'Spartan-Time' as his focus narrowed to the Jackal and its weapon, his hand catching the heavy combat knife ejected from his armour with the ease of long training, before he shifted his weight forward and snapped his arm down as the Jackals hand started to close on the trigger-

The Jackal didn't even cry out as the heavy blade crashed into -and through- its head, sending the dead aliens corpse spinning away as the knife crashed into the aft bulkhead.

The roar of shotguns then traded with the hissing of plasma rifle fire before it all fell away as he retrieved his rifle, slapping in a fresh Magazine into place as calls of 'Clear!' echoed from behind the bulkhead, declaring that the Scarab was now free of hostile units.

He looked across at Li, who had likewise just finished reloaded his own weapon and made a quick pair of hand gestures, the other nodding and moving out with him, the two Spartans carefully placing a single shot into the head of each Grunt or Jackal twitching unconscious or semi-conscious on the troop bay floor. To some, the cold blooded executions would appear to be little more than murder, but in the world the Spartans lived in, it was simple expediency. They had no capacity to take on prisoners, nor were they under any obligation to do so, and given all the times they had seen hoards of Grunts and Jackals tear cities worth of captured civilian prisoners apart in a frenzy of blood and gore for entertainment, they like most other UNSC personnel, were not exactly interested in keeping Covenant personnel alive when not a mission objective.

Their grizly work was finished quickly enough and Fred turned, hurrying forward around the bodies of the Elites the Spartans were dragging out of the 'cockpit' of the walker, including one in the golden armour of a Zealot class Elite that he ignored for now, looking to see what he had to work with. A large rectangular holograph across the forward bulkhead provided an almost perfect exterior view, as if they were looking through a giant window around the front of the Scarab. The four Wraith Tanks supporting 'them' were highlighted with sensor tags and he could see they were now slowly reforming in front of the Scarab, although they remained oriented at the still burning tree line to the left. Further away, the lead Scarab had almost reached the ridgeline over which the Generator complex sat, needing only to climb and assume a good bombardment position from which it could wipe out the ODSTs and Marines, leaving the Generator Complex wide open.

Which meant they had about a minute to figure this thing out.

"Li, Joseph, get upstairs with Malcolm and Vincent, prepare to engage the Wraiths" he verbally gave the first order he had given in some time, the Spartans nodding and hurrying back up top, pausing only to retrieve that former Jackals fuel rod cannon. Fred in turn took a seat at what he presumed to be the pilots station, running his eyes over the countless holographic controls projected around him.

All of the Spartans present had driven captured Banshees and Wraith Tanks before. Fred had even flown a Covenant Seraph once with Kelly ... but the Scarab was another level beyond even that. His suits systems did what they could, his HUD tagging translations on enough of the glyphs to at least get him oriented...but beyond that, there was an almost instinctive feeling as he looked over the controls, almost a gut feeling that he knew what the buttons did.
It was a feeling quite a few Spartans had commented about in their AARs after having used a Wraith or Banshee in the field, something that had reportedly driven Doctor Halsey to the edge of distraction trying to figure out. No conclusions had even been reached on the limited data, ONI ultimately dismissing it as some kind of exceptionally intuitive control and interface design, although Doctor Halsey suspected something much more interesting was going on.

Whatever the truth, he didn't really have any choice but to trust this strange feeling, reaching for the icon that looked like the number 7 with an asterisks overlaying it.

"Nothing ventured..." he muttered under his breath, before he reached out and tapped the button twice.

The Scarab rocked, hesitated, then with a clanking and humming, its front legs extended out again, raising the walker back to its full height and steadying it up as several lights flashed blue from red. In front of them, the four Wraith Tanks reformed into their escort positions, as Fred took a 'hold' of the prominent green holographic hemispheres to his left and right that looked much the same as those on a Wraith, took a deep breath and smoothly 'pushed' them forward as they turned blue... and his heart jumped as the Scarab smoothly started to move forward, the computers on board translating his relatively simple inputs into walking commands, the Wraith escort also getting underway ahead of him once again.

"Weapons status?" he asked, risking a quick glance at the other Scarab, feeling his heart sink as he saw it was busy hauling itself to the top of its ridgeline, its massive pincer-like 'feet' smashing into the cliff deeply enough with each stride to haul its fantastic bulk up the fifty degree slope, Freds faint hope that it would have to find another way around dying as it almost effortlessly seemed to ascend to its firing position.

"This appears to control the upper plasma cannon" Grace said, the intense concentration in her voice clear as she hesitantly moved her hands over several controls, a golden circle materializing on the HUD and moving back and forth as she did manipulated one hemisphere like control, similar to those Fred was using to drive the Scarab. "And this one should control...yes" she nodded, as a slightly larger green circle appeared, Fred feeling a shudder run through the Scarab as the partial armour plating around the main cannon pulled open like the petals of a flower and a rumble built under them, plasma lines heating in a manner similar to the much larger plasma cannons on capital ships as she settled the targeting circle over the other Scrab...

And nothing happened except a purple cross started flashing around the other Covenant walker.

"Safety interlock" Grace said, her voice calm but Fred for the first time heard the hint of tension in it as she rapidly looked over her controls, trying to find the override before the other Scarab achieved a firing position, Fred keeping his mouth shut in the knowledge that distracting her at this point could easily prove fatal.

Of course, as if to prove the old maxim true that it never rained but it poured, a window snapped open in the middle of the external view at that exact moment, a flashing red line connecting it to one of the Wraith Tanks visible in front of them. Inside the window was the image of an Elite in Scarlet armour, clearly manning the tank and speaking rapidly. Freds translation software caught enough to let him conclude the Elite was asking why they had just armed their weapons, before it appeared to do a double take at the screen, clearly seeing him and snarling out a single word that Fred did not need his software to translate for him, as it closed the channel.

Demons.

"Red Team; weapons free" he ordered over TEAMCOM. Radio silence would be useless from this point on and his command was rewarded by a salvo of Rockets and Fuel Rod projectiles streaking out from some point off screen above him to hammer into the thinner rear and top armour of the closest Wraith, the combined salvo breaching its armour and exploding the tank, whose commander was a second too slow off the mark. With commendable -if disappointing- swiftness however, the other three tanks ignited their booster systems and screamed ahead, clearly working to get out of range of the infantry before looking to do anything about the situation.
Fred ignored them for now as Grace worked her controls ... and his heart leapt as the purple icon flashing around the other Scarab suddenly changed to a red box, the yellow circle seeming to suddenly 'stick' onto the rear of the other walker and hold steady as the Scarabs fire control systems locked the target.

"I think that's it" Grace said, even as the other Scarab came to a halt on the top of the rise and started to shuffle around, clearly orienting itself to commence its artillery strike on the UNSC position. "Firing"

Dozens of tiny motes of light danced around the great maw of the Scarabs main cannon, ionized air illuminating in the night sky in a way that was almost beautiful if you were not on the receiving end of what came next. Milliseconds later a magnetic field formed as an invisible low powered laser pulse ionized the air between the two Scarabs ... and then a blinding blue stream of the stuff stars were made of arced across the kilometres wide gap to treacherously and mercilessly drill into the smaller of the two walkers.

While a powerful and well protected gun platform, the smaller Scarab had been designed for mass manufacture on the cheap, using cloned Lekgolo colonies instead of crews such as with the Spartans larger variant, with correspondingly less armour plating. While still a terrifying opponent that laughed at just about anything in the UNSC arsenal short of a heavy Air Strike, they were somewhat more vulnerable to attack if you could deliver the firepower, such as the weak armour that barely covered its oversized reactor core, centre rear.

The plasma burst smashed burned through the armour there like a blowtorch, plates of protection melting or spinning away from the awful firepower as it hungrily tore through the power conduits around the reactor before breaching the reactor itself, setting loose a second wave of plasma that had been about to be discharged against the ant like UNSC defenders it had placed under its guns. The white hot energy flooded out at once into every nook and cranny of the Scarabs interior, flash frying the Lekgolo worms in moments as clouds of blue plasma vomited from every opening and compartment as the secondary plasma cannon on the Scarabs roof exploded, to the stunned amazement of the ODSTs watching.
Then, almost comically, the Scarab toppled; rolling forward and crashing down the ridge with a thunder of noise, leaving fire and debris in its wake until it finally came to rest in the smoke filled valley.

On its back.

With its legs in the air.

"Target eliminated" Grace said tonelessly, switching her attention to the more immediate issue of the three closing Wraiths as they banked around malevolently, bringing their own Plasma Cannons to bear as they started to accelerate back down the clearing towards them, Grace prudently killing the main cannon and letting its armour plates snap shut to protect it. "Twenty seconds to recharge on the main gun".

"Target the right hand flanker with the secondary weapon" Fred ordered, tracking and pointing at the unit that had called in earlier, guessing it was the commander of the Tank platoon, as he brought the Scarab to a halt and tried to start backing it up as the Wraiths accelerated, spreading out to make themselves harder targets and ensure no one shot from the main gun could kill them all.

Grace instead opened fire with the secondary plasma cannon. Used more for anti-aircraft work than against ground targets, the chosen tank found itself bracketed by dozens of plasma rounds, many of which missed and blew steaming craters into the ground around it while others smashed into the tank itself, stippling it with dents and scorch marks as it rocked under the impacts. Its armour wasn't breached, but the sheer force of the impacts was sufficient to send it spinning out of control, the edge of the tank slewing into a sharp rise and flipping over, smashing back to the ground upside down, out of the fight for now. The other two tanks however didn't pause at the loss of their colleague, using the diversion of attention to accelerate down the hill and under the minimum depression of the secondary gun, the closer tank even contemptuously sidestepping an opportunistic fuel rod missile from one of the Spartans up top, Fred wondering if they were going to try ramming them for a second before he extrapolated their paths; one clearly aiming to pass directly under them, the other just outbound. Both were undoubtedly trying to get into their rear arc where dealing with them would become problematic, but before he could take action, Fred was confronted with a red targeting box being thrown around the outrider Tank, the control hemisphere under his left hand simultaneously flashing a bright red.

He didn't know exactly what that meant, but his reflexes were up to the task and he closed his palm into a fist anyway, as was the signal to activate such controls on Covenant vehicles, causing the left leg of the Scarab -which had been raised as the ungainly walker backpedalled - to slightly shift its aim and stab down as the walker came to a halt, straight into the top of the outboard Wraith.
For a fraction of a second, the antigravity drive of the tank battled with the mass of the Scarab, before it predictably lost, and the leg skewered the vehicle, punching through to pin it to the ground. Seconds later, the Wraith was torn apart as the plasma cannons capacitors overloaded into the tank, the leg of the Scarab retracting with what looked like a rather charred paint job, but its structural integrity not damaged one wit.

"Six O'Clock" Grace warned, nonplussed at the Scarab just squishing a tank under its legs as she tracked the last of the Wraiths, spinning the viewpoint around 180 degrees as the Wraith itself spun around, sending a ball of plasma crashing into the lower aft section of the Scarab and rocking the walker slightly. Its cannon, while intimidating enough to UNSC Tankers or Infantry, carried only a fraction the firepower of the Scarabs main gun, so its threat level was probably minimal against the far heavier armour on this Scarab.

Of course, there was also every chance the Covenant knew more about the weak spots of their own platforms than the UNSC did and so killing it sooner rather than later would be prudent. But how to kill it was a more difficult question, given that the single tank in his rear could easily outmanoeuvre him with its anti-gravity drives, even in this narrow terrain...
Eeven as he tried to come up with a plan, probably involving deploying his Spartans to try and flank it, or drive it away long enough for him to come around, the problem was solved rather unexpectedly.

She came in a blur, all but materializing from the tree line behind the Wraith as it danced back and forth, throwing plasma salvos at them with every sign of enjoyment at their predicament. It didn't detect her until she was almost on top of it, but it reacted quickly when it did; firing its lateral booster thrusters and spinning away, working get away from the threat before coming around to deal with it.

And against anyone else, it might have well been fast enough to get clear.

It wasn't anything like fast enough against Kelly.

She simply accelerated and overtook the desperately boosting Wraith like a Cheetah running down a hapless Springbok, leaping up and slamming into its aft section, next to the turret. The Wraith at once slammed to a halt and spun, before boosting off in the opposite direction rocking back and forth as it did so, but it was a useless attempt to shake her off as Kelly methodically worked her way forward until she reached the hatch. slamming her fist down with all the strength her power armour could generate into the centre of the metal.

And again.

And again.

And again.

Not even the alien alloys in the Covenant Tank could stand up to that level of force, the hatch finally buckled and twisted out of its frame. Seizing the edge in her gauntlet, Kelly pulled, tearing the edge back just enough to force a gap open in the frame as the tank started to wildly spin around like a demented top in a last ditch effort to throw her off. But it was a useless gesture as Kelly braced her legs and jumped, somersaulting backwards twice from the boost before sticking her landing so perfectly she would have won the Gold Medal at the Reach Summer Olympics as the grenade she had dropped into the crew compartment detonated, shredding the Elite and causing the suddenly dead stick Wraith to go spinning off into the tree line, rolling deeper and deeper into the forest.

"The rest of those Wraiths are coming back" Grace warned in her business as usual tone, swinging the display 180 degrees back to refocus up the long slope, the four Wraiths that had accompanied the lead Scarab barrelling back down the slope, probably in response to the call from the dead tanks for support, perhaps thinking that the stationary Scarab had been either disabled or abandoned.
Well either that or they were just playing to type; Elites were generally incapable of or unwilling to back down from a fight, even if they knew they couldn't win it. "Main cannon is recharged".

"Wait until they reach one thousand meters, then kill them" Fred ordered, before switching back to TEAMCOM. "Nice job Kelly. Someone throw her a line and get her up here, we're not finished yet" he said, as he pulled up his TACMAP and started to plot their source from here. "We're not finished yet".

0634 Hours, September 22nd, 2552 (Military Calendar) /
Anchor-1 Shipyard Complex, Reach Orbit, Epsilon Eridani System

The sixteen Longswords of Knife Squadron were perfectly silent as they shifted into a loose formation that would let them cover each other in the expected dogfight to come, yet the silence was not imposed by any order from Fleet Command, nor was it the result of Covenant signal interference.
It was simply because they knew there was an excellent chance they would all be dead shortly, and each in their own way was busy steeling themselves for the possibility of what lay ahead.

Knife One-Two quietly thought of his Squadron around him. Good people, friends all. Some he had fought alongside for years, others were new transfers barely a month into the squadron and fresh out of flight school. But young and old, all of them were dead people flying, their wheels would not be going back down later today.

Knife One-Four silently bore witness that there was no God but Allah, and Mohammad was His messenger, commending his soul to Allah as he prepared to die in defence of his world and his people; a warrior in the Jhiad that had been declared decades ago when the Covenant had declared in turn their own holy war on humanity.

Knife One-Eight thought calmly of his Parents and Sisters, dead these long five years under the hellish caracaras of a Glassing beam. And then he thought of causing pain to those who had taken them from him, relishing the opportunity once again to kill Covenant pilots and soldiers in large numbers until he could kill no more.

The pilot of Knife Two-Six, barely out of flight school down on Reach just tried to force her hands to stop shaking, trying to keep her focus on the targets that had been designated by the local command ship, and not on the chaos of the massive dogfight raging through the shipyards above them, explosions silently consuming dozens of lives a second, knowing in her heart that in her first combat mission she would be joining the very long list of the dead in this war, the sheer scale of the massive battle between the fleets staggering her as she swung her head around, seeing explosions from horizon to horizon as defender and attacker laid into each other with quarter neither asked for nor expected.

Then the silence was shattered in the worst possible way.

"Knife Lead, Knife One-Six" one of the pilots called in, the strictly 'All Business' tone not quite removing the dread the words brought up to everyone listening. "Contact, tally two-zero plus Seraphs. Nose, two hundred klicks and closing"

"Copy that One-Six. All flights, go weapons and sensors hot. First Squadron, engage by flights. Second Squadron, prepare to mow through and go after the primary targets. Watch your spacing, check your six. Good hunting, out".

Lieutenant Commander Justine Richards switched off her COM link as tightened her straps, deciding not to insult her people with glib comments about seeing them on the other side or demanding the person with the fewest kill counts buy everyone else drinks back on Reach. She, and they, all knew full well that the odds of them being alive more than an hour from now were ... limited. As such, she had made the decision to take second seat this time out, despite her status as one of the best Longsword drivers in the 4th Fleet. She could do better by her people watching over them and the battle ... and as she strove to make sense of the incredible clutter across her tactical board, she was damn well glad she had.

This was the biggest battle she had ever seen in a very long war.

Above them for a thousand kilometres in any direction, were a clutter of shipyards, space stations, orbital refineries, cargo depots and holding pens that made up the Anchor-1 complex, the biggest shipyards in the UNSC. In the middle of it all was Gamma Station, a massive ring three kilometres in diameter. Normally spinning sedately, it was frozen and dark now, illuminated only by the discharging lasers of the five remaining Covenant capital ships in the area around it, hoards of Seraphs and Phantoms with the occasionally Banshee unit fighting fiercely to keep anyone from getting to the station, as the UNSC craft equally furiously worked to eliminate any more enemy reinforcements from getting to it.

Knife Squadrons job was equally straight forward.
If the Spartans on Gamma Station failed their mission, their mission was to destroy it.

She and her unit had been holding in low orbit, part of the final line of defence fighters ready to be unleashed if - when - elements of the Covenant fleet started to break through the main battle line and made a move on Reach. Her Longsword and that of her second unit leader Lieutenant Mike Cortez each carried a pair of Shiva fusion bombs that could take out a Covenant Corvette or Frigate, and at least blow down the shields of anything up to a CCS class starship, giving their Medusa Missile packs and heavier AGSM-10 missiles at least a fighting chance to do real damage, or at least tie up the enemy long enough for support to arrive.
But that planned had been thrown out, with a retask order to be prepared to blow up one of their own space stations with their nuclear ordinance, as nothing less could guarantee the NAV database the Covenant were trying to capture would be eliminated without any chance of salvage.

That using the nukes would shut down the orbital guns for at least half an hour and probably guarantee the fall of Reach was understood by all concerned, but against the possibility of the Covenant getting a roadmap to every human world, even that sacrifice was the lesser of two evils if the Spartans failed. So she was under orders to be prepared to make the call to destroy the station, if it seemed necessary.

But she didn't want to be responsible for making that call! Didn't want to be responsible for sacrificing one world to save others!

And so as the Covenant fighters closed in, breaking apart and accelerating individually as was their preference for single combat, Justine Richards closed her eyes and silently prayed to a God she didn't really believe in after ten years of war, begging just this once to step in, to stop her from having to condemn an entire world.

And for the first time in a long time, someone listened.

A MISSILE WARNING alarm sounded in her ears, and she snapped her eyes open, just in time for a hoard of missiles to streak by her cockpit, faint exhaust trails arcing downrange toward the red icons superimposed on her HUD, as the first flickering of plasma fire lanced out towards them.
She clenched her jaw as she saw the wasted salvo of missiles streak downrange towards the Covenant fighters, even as she wondered what idiot hadn't set their IFF up properly and caused her EW systems to throw a fit. The missiles would probably not even track at this extended range and whichever idiot had fired them...

Her anger at the waste of ordinance fell off however, first to mild surprise and then to astonishment as the missiles cleanly acquired the lead enemy elements and weaved towards them on her tactical board. In response, the Covenant ships ceased their speculative long range shots as they elected to manoeuvre, breaking off into sidesteps that should easily force the small missiles to overshoot.

They were rudely surprised then when the missiles in turn shifted track, cutting the corner almost before the fighters had moved and slammed into them, tearing the heart out of the enemy squadron with explosions far greater than a Medusa salvo had any right to cause. One missile she watched actually overshoot its target, but it simply turned around without losing velocity to slam into its targeted Seraph, neat as you please!

"What in the hell..." she started to demand, only for a voice to suddenly break in over the top of her.

"Contacts! Six O'clock - Christ, they're right on top of us!"

Justine didn't know who had yelled out the panicked contact report - although from the high pitched voice and lack of RT discipline, she would have put money on it being Knife Two-Six, but she did see a rash of yellow UNKNOWN contacts suddenly appear on her board, approaching with her formation, merging with it-

And with a scream that she heard somehow even through the vacuum of space, a wave of dark black shapes streaked past.

They were small craft, tiny compared to her Longsword, probably about the same size as those Sabers she had heard about on FLETCOM running around causing merry hell for the Covenant, but these were clearly not YSS-1000's. They were angular, with forward swept wings and a trio of engines centre rear, twin tails and moving like nothing she had ever seen before. Her unit was at full standard thrust, and nothing that small should have been able to match their acceleration .. but whatever they were, these fighters were overtaking them with almost contemptuous ease.

Even as she watched dumbfounded, a second missile Salvo rippled from the lead fighters, a half dozen missiles all but leaping off their rails, which curved away at a breathtaking speed, heading for the remaining Covenant fighters. The Elites piloting the Seraphs scattered in all three dimensions as the second salvo bore in at them, going to full throttle and conceding the field in a desperate -and mostly futile- attempt to survive, clearing the immediate area of any hostile craft.
Then, space...changed.

It was the best description she could make, words like 'distorted', or 'shimmered' or 'blurred' just didn't seem to match the reality of what had been perfectly empty space directly above her changing to no longer be empty, replaced by a grey starship of a class she had never seen before that was following the tiny fighters through the new gap in the Covenant perimeter towards Gamma Station at similar speeds.

"Everyone, change of plans" she ordered over the squadron channel, feeling a sudden surge of hope as her sensor board went wild with track changes as Covenant fighters broke away from the larger dogfight to interpose themselves between the new threat and their capital ships around Gamma Station, the newcomer and its fighters in turn shifting their own course slightly to intercept them while still maintaining their ridiculous high speed path towards the massive ring in the distance. "Hit the throttle and follow these guys in, I think we might just have ourselves a new ballgame!"

0632 Hours, September 22nd, 2552 (Military Calendar) /
UNSC Trafalgar, Reach Orbit, Epsilon Eridani System

"I know full well what it isn't" Vice Admiral Danforth Whitcomb said with no small degree of exasperation to the tiny holographic figure at the edge of his command station as he stormed around his bridge in frustration. "What I want to know is what it is!"

"I am afraid I do not have that information Admiral" the small blue figure said with an almost invisible shrug. "I've run every database I can think of, there is no record of anything like it in the UNSC inventory, not in the fleet, nor in ONI databases Cortana, uh, 'Acquired' and passed on to me"

"Which doesn't mean that it never existed in those databases" the Admiral pointed out, running a hand over his shaved head as he studied his screens, most of which were showing wireframe diagrams or sensor replays of the unknown ship that had just shown up and blown a Covenant Super Cruiser into a debris field like it was a mild irritant, after laughing at its best efforts that should have killed it ten times over. "We cleared out most of Section IIIs black projects, but we haven't accounted for all their resources or people as yet".

Including James Ackerson the Admiral didn't add, but thought it none the less.

The man had not precisely done anything wrong while attached to ONI - at least as the shadowy organization defined 'right' and 'wrong' compared to the rest of mankind - but he had tap-danced along the edge, and mysteriously vanished just before the massive shakeup of ONI had taken place. Some thought he had simply decided to go off and fight his own private war against the Covenant with his own backers, others that he had too much information in his head that could be used to incriminate -or blackmail- ONI higher ups, so they had taken the opportunity to assassinate him as part of a plan to pin everything nasty Section III had ever done on him to keep their own hands clean.
Personally, Whitcomb didn't believe either was true, but if it was him in some kind of super secret ONI super ship he promised himself that he would be lenient and ensure he was given the Medal of Honor before he let the firing squad open up for withholding such incredible technology from the fleet...

The bridge of the Trafalgar, pride of the UNSC fleet, was appropriately large and equipped with the finest technology. Dozens of officers and enlisted ranks manned stations scattered across the room, a constant chattering of communications and orders flowing as the massive carriers tactical staff coordinated the battle waging through Anchor-1, as others kept tabs on the main Covenant fleet via the network of Clarion spy drones Keyes had thoughtfully deployed after their mystery ship had shown up and then vanished. His command station sat elevated in the centre of the room, countless tactical readouts and displays around him at waist height letting him manage the battle with the help of Arthur, his personal AI of several years now. Taking the form of an ancient Knight in plate armour, the AI was invaluable in helping him manage the dataflow of a battle stretching across such a massive volume of space ... even if like most AI's he knew, it could get a bit full of itself at times.

"If I may ask Sir" his AI continued diffidently as he took his seat, "this unknown is clearly helping us, why are you so concerned about it?"

"Because I'm trying to run a battle to save the second most critical world in the UNSC from an enemy that outnumbers me three to one, and isn't behaving like they normally do" the other growled as he issued orders with a tap on a screen for the next Longsword wave from the Trafalgars flight deck to push into the Shipyards and continue slowly squeezing the Covenant forces therein to death, wincing slightly as he saw the casualty statistics update with the latest loss counts for the fighters, even as he sent yet more good people to their deaths. "And I don't have time to deal with rogue ships that don't answer to me" he finished explaining, before shifting topics. "What's the status groundside of my defence guns?"

"Wellesley reports the ODSTs are handling it" Arthur relayed the data after a second of digital chatter passed back and forth between the two AIs. "Two Spartan teams have eliminated Covenants LZs and it looks like a third group have borrowed a Covenant Scarab, used it to kill another one, and are currently having a jolly old drive in the country while shooting most of it up, so the Generators are secure for now".

"Good" the Admiral replied, fighting the smile that threatened to work its way onto his face at the thought of a Spartan team casually hijacking over the Covenants most powerful ground weapons platform and turning it back against their owners, sitting back and studying the tactical display for the orbital battle instead, wishing things were as straight forward up here as down there.
The Covenant were playing this battle with something he had never seen before; subtlety. It was a word he rarely associated with the Covenant, but over the last few engagements they had acted with surprising levels of deception and misdirection in place of their normal brute force approach. At Sigma Octanus IV the Covenant had used deception, misdirection and diversion to hide some kind of groundside intelligence gathering mission before leaving the system, even though the UNSC fleet had been on the ropes.
So what was their purpose here?

That was the question. It was only a gut feeling ... but it was none the less a strong feeling to him that the Covenant wanted Reach as intact as possible, hence their reluctance to follow standard procedure and simply bull through irrespective of losses, break the orbital defences and start glassing as they had on a hundred worlds over the last twenty years. Their tactics seemed to be less about attacking Reach so much as eliminating its defenders and leaving the planet entirely to themselves, without any interference.
He would wager every cent in next year's military budget that their infiltration force had been sent in to find something very specific, but had been discovered and destroyed before they could finish searching, and that this fleet had been called in to help finish the job. What they were looking for, he didn't have the first clue, but he knew that it could only be a bad thing for the UNSC if they found it.

Whatever their esoteric goals, the solution to dealing with this invasion was gratifyingly straight forward; kill them all and let their damn heathen Gods sort them out.

"Damage to Anchor One?"

"Approximately twenty percent of slipways destroyed or damaged beyond repair, another forty percent have taken some degree of damage " the sensor officer to his right called out in response to his question.

Whitcomb winced slightly at the report. Still, the loss of shipyards would be painful, even if he held Reach, but the loss of the NAV data would be catastrophic. He would have moved -what was left of- the fleet in to deal with the situation, but with the shipyards halfway around the planet, the main Covenant fleet no doubt would have moved quickly to intercept him if he tried to make the move, only his fighters were small enough and fast enough to make a difference, but not attract the attention of the enemy fleet.
Even so, he was quickly running out of time. He would give the Spartans every second he could possibly afford, but unless they signalled mission accomplished soon-

"Admiral" his tactical officer suddenly yelled out from across the bridge, causing him to snap his neck around, "they're back!"

Whitcomb bit off a Russian curse that made his AI off to the side wince slightly.

"Where?"

"Anchor One" the officer replied, the main screen that dominated the front of the bridge switching to a 3D tactical display, a highlighted yellow icon with a cloud of smaller icons around it materializing just past the designator for Knife squadron, a rash of red icons in their path loosing resolution and vanishing as they were swatted out of the way by impressively accurate missile fire.

"It's not alone this time" Arthur added, raising a palm, on top of which a wireframe of a small craft materialized, which he tossed off to the side almost negligently, the holographic generators inside the Admirals command area materializing it as if it had been thrown across to him, the wireframe spinning around in front of the Admiral slowly. "Some kind of fighter is with them and it's the devil to track; they appear to be equipped with some kind of stealth technology. Even data linking everything together from a dozen sensors in real time, even I can barely make out more than a vague outline".

"Unknown ships, unknown fighters..." Whitcomb muttered, dismissing the small but lethal looking fighter with a gesture, returning his eyes to the main screen as the wedge of yellow icons approached the main Covenant force around the station. The Admiral and more than a few other people on the ships holding in formation watched in fascination as the unknown closed in on Gamma Station, a large wave of Phantoms and Seraphs breaking from their shadow boxing with the Longswords to push towards the unknown, as the lead Covenant Capital ship moving in behind them discharged its plasma torpedoes towards it. "Would anyone like to tell me what the hell is going on here in my engagement?'

0632 Hours, September 22nd, 2552 (Military Calendar) /
USS Odyssey, Anchor-1 Shipyards, Epsilon Eridani System

"Enemy is locking us up, detecting thermal build-ups along their lateral hull, looks like they are getting ready to fire".

"Hold course" Landry ordered as he stared out the window. The bridge HUD had been activated, a holographic overlay over the windows marking enemy and friendly targets, with orange targeting boxes around the enemy capital ships and tiny orange dots for the enemy support craft heading in. "Let them take the first shot".

Ahead out and window and magnified on the main screen to his left, the Covenant ships slowed and turned, presenting their broadside as a red glow built up steadily along their flanks. Only one ship fired, which told Landry something about the Covenants OODA loop then and there given what they had 'just' done to that Covenant Super Cruiser, three balls of flame collecting on the lead ship's hull before leaping off, leaving a faint trail as they stabilized, accelerating smoothly into a curve around several shipyards in the way to streak unerringly for them.

"Punch through, steady as she goes" Landry ordered, deciding to see what these Covenant weapons were made of at full shields before they went any further into this engagement. Carter said they shouldn't be a threat, but such claims had a way of going wrong at the worst possible time...
The three balls of plasma fanned out around the course of Odyssey like an opening hand for a few seconds, before the Covenant gunners realized their quarry was not trying to evade, the bolts slowing and then spiraling inwards, twisting around and around each other until they slammed into the shields of the Odyssey as one, with remarkable precision and co-ordination.

The effect was...underwhelming.

"Damage?" Landry inquired as the red cloud around the windows faded quickly to nothing.

"Minimal" Carter reported with a shake of her head. "Some shield loss, they are already firming back up".
It didn't surprise Landry too much; the Asgard had designed their defensive systems to take on an enemy who used a wide variety of vastly more exotic energy weapons than the Covenant had ever dreamed of after all.
"Their primary weapons are quite a bit less powerful than their energy projector was, with the ZPM tied into our power grid, short of a massed salvo from large numbers of ships, Plasma salvos won't be much of a threat".

"Good to know" Landry said with a nod. "Let's step this up to the next level and see what reaction overwhelming firepower brings".

"Targets locked" Carter acknowledged as she worked her board. "Firing".

Much like their shield technology, so too were the Asgards Plasma Beam Weapons the final generation of technology developed in the eternal struggle to build weapons to effectively fight the Replicators, as the bugs consumed the Asgards technology and turned it against them, spurring them on to create more sophisticated, destructive and impressive means to trying to hold the line against their mortal enemy.
Landry didn't have any real understanding of how the weapons worked, vague explanations from Carter about phased hyperspace states of directed energy streams had mostly gone over his head ... but he knew what they could do, and that was more than enough for him as a brilliant white/blue beam lanced out towards the enemy ship.

The beam once again almost effortlessly passed through the enemy shields and through the hull, the damage highly localized ... but when that locale was the main fusion core, it was more than enough as a huge wave of plasma exploded back out, detonating the aft third of the enemy warship and sending the forward thirds, on fire and out of control, spinning away from the combat zone, wreathed in a cloud of breached atmosphere and plasma.

Credit where it was due, the stunned Shipmasters on the two Frigates had started to react almost at once to the impossible sight of a human ship laughing off their plasma torpedoes and almost casually obliterating a Destroyer, firing their Repulsor engines and shifting course, but at this range it was a pointless exercise as fire lanced out again from the Odyssey, slicing into both Frigates amidships, snapping the spines of the smaller ships whole and leaving this time only chunks of wreckage as the ships were consumed by secondary explosions.

"Good shooting" Landry said approvingly, a thin smile on his lips at the sheer power of these new weapons making him wish the Asgard had given it to them earlier, but grateful that in the end they had given it to them none the less. "Reaction?"

"I think that just got their attention, that wave of Covenant strike craft are accelerating - and more squadrons are breaking off from the battle and following them in" Carter replied as she studied the sensor returns. "It looks like the entire Covenant strike craft line is reorieneting on us, except for those smaller fighters moving around the surface of the station".

"Not the heavier ships?" Landry frowned slightly and Carter shook her head.

"No Sir, they are staying near the station ... in fact they appear to be moving closer to the station, behind it and out of our line of sight".

"Smart move" he admitted grudgingly. "They're playing for time, trying to stall us with overwhelming numbers of targets while their teams finish up getting the database - they clearly consider themselves expendable for the sake of the mission ... but we're not going to play that game. Cooper, turn the 302's loose. Carter, activate all railguns and stand by. Marks?"

"Sir?" the other asked, although he didn't take his eyes off his console

"Take is right through the enemy fighters to Gamma Station. Shortest route, and don't spare the ion drive".

"Yes Sir" the other said with a grin, sliding the throttle forward.

0634 Hours, September 22nd, 2552 (Military Calendar) /
F-302 Red Flight, Anchor-1 Shipyards, Epsilon Eridani System

"Well this just got interesting" Cameron Mitchell reflected as the Odyssey accelerated, the General played a game of Chicken with ten billion dollars worth of Battle Cruiser at the wave of Covenant fighters burning towards her. Stuttering streams of tracers blasted out from her railgun mounts Carter 'plowed the road', making any position direction ahead of her a very unhealthy place to be for friend or foe right now. "It looks like we have, oh, sixty or so enemy craft inbound?"

"I would say closer to eighty Colonel Mitchell" the ever dour voice of Teal'c put in from behind him.

"So eighty against sixteen of us ... sound a little unfair to you T?"

"They do indeed appear to be over-confident" Teal'c deadpanned from behind him as he studied his boards. "They are closing and will be in weapons range in twenty seconds".

"Alright people you heard the man" Mitchell said as his radar painted a picture of the Phantoms in the lead of the enemy formation. "Lock up your bandits, go to full throttle and stand by to break inside - outside on my mark ... mark!"

The sixteen F-302s kicked their throttles forward and jumped ahead like scalded cats, blasting past the Odyssey and closing on the swarm of enemy ships. The torrent of rail gun fire was forcing them out of the ships direct path and heading them into the F-302s defence zone, but there was still every chance that they were fanatical enough to try and ram the ship from the side. The F-302's job was to aggressively push forward and deny the enemy a chance to gather any kind of real momentum in an attack run on the Odyssey, but they had limited ordinance and numbers which would mean this attack would have to be carefully timed. The back seaters in the Interceptors worked together, their fire control systems swapping data to spit out shoot lists and lock in distinct targets with every one of the 302s, eliminating the risk of two fighters going after the same target with their few remaining missiles.

The pilots might get all the glory, but it was the guy or girl in the back seat who did the real work.

Everyone knew that.

Well, except the pilots of course.

"Target Acquired" was all Teal'c said as he finished his work, Mitchell releasing his safety lock as two green boxes materialized around two of the the rapidly growing dots on his HUD, a buzzing tone sounding in his ear as the missiles confirmed a lock. He waited a half second longer to close the range just a tad before his thumb pressed the launch button, holding it in for the requisite two seconds it took for his fire control systems to decide that he really did want to launch his missiles and made the call.

"Shaft, Fox Four Two".

A torrent more launch calls followed at almost the same time as thirty two missiles rippled from the sixteen F-302s and streaked downrange.

Externally identical to AIM-120 AMRAAMs, these were certainly no normal Slammer missiles. The standard blast-fragmentation warhead designed to shred relatively weak human aircraft had been pulled out and replaced by a high explosive variant enhanced with elementary Naquadah, giving the missile equivalent firepower of a half dozen Tomahawk Cruise Missiles for starters, giving it the punch to get through lightly shielded craft like Al'Kesh, or take out a discrete point target on a large ship like a. Raytheon had also rebuilt the solid rocket engine with a miniaturized version of the inertial manipulation technology the F-302 itself used to let it actually manoeuvre and fly through space with great agility and while it couldn't make the same level of Delta-V changes while holding its inertia that the F-302's themselves could, against Death Gliders or Darts armed with visually targeted fixed energy weapons it had been proven more than effective enough.

And so it was again now.

The missile swarm tore into the centre of the Covenant formation with a vengeance, indifferent to the facts that they were unknown alien targets from a completely different universe. Their human masters had told them 'KILL', their fire control agreed they were valid targets and so like happy little puppies that were both eager to please and utterly mindless, the missiles did their work, pointing themselves at the contacts and letting the sensor return grow and grow and grow on their logic boards...

The Brutes piloting the heavily shielded craft had scoffed at the idea that a human missile launched from a fighter that small would do anything but bounce off their shields as was generally the case, ignoring the warnings shouted from the Elites in the Seraphs as they prepared to start bombarding the enemy capital ship...

They paid for their presumption several seconds later as a series of enormous explosions tore through the heart of the Covenant formation and wiped almost all of the bombers out.

Again, shocked at the unprecedented effectiveness of the human missiles, the remaining Covenant fighters returned fire, a veritable storm of blue and red energy bolts saturating the area of space that should have contained the loose F-302 formation, but the 302s had already kicked in their heavy rocket boosters, streaking through the explosions of the Phantoms and the hole it had created in the Covenant formation, holding course for several seconds before half each moved into split-S and Immelmann turns, reversing their course and opening up their own formation as they broke into wing pairs, slashing for the flanks of the Covenant fighter force and rippling off another missile salvo as they closed to gun range, manoeuvring at speeds that caught the Covenant completely off guard as they tried to reform with far more awkward manoeuvrers.

Rail gun fire crisscrossed with plasma fire for several seconds as the Covenant units started to come about and tried to adjust to their foes incredible speed, even as another dozen and a half died to missile hits, abandoning their attack run on the Odyssey less for the glory of one on one fighter combat and more for reasons of pure survival. Two of the F-302s were hit as they ran the gauntlet of plasma to get inside the enemy formation, one shrugging off the loss of armour and shredding the Seraph that had made the hit, the other however was turned into a flaming comet as its fuel line was blown, a veteran Squadron Master killing his targeting systems and going to manual gunnery; relying on his instincts as opposed to his sensors to line up and fire, bracketing the 302 with lines of fire as it turned and tearing into the crafts underside.

"Blue Six, eject!" Mitchell yelled as he rolled through a barrage of plasma fire trying to get a line on him, concentrating on staying evasive as he watched the other F-302 start to try and break off, before a quartet of fighters detonated it with a withering barrage of fire that clearly could only have set off the fuel tanks on board.

Swearing, Mitchell rolled right again and dove, a hail of blue bolts shooting through where he had just been as he followed his wingman who he had given the lead, combining with him to drill cannon fire into a Seraph, the four railguns blowing through its shields and shredding the craft before they broke off, neither of the F-302 pilots stupid enough to fly straight and level in a dogfight for more than three seconds at a time, especially with a bunch of pissed off Elites on their six. In theory, being in the middle of the enemy with far more craft should make them much more cautious in shooting, for fear of hitting a friendly craft. It had after all been a proven tactic used successfully in the massive aerial battles of World War Two when dealing with large bomber waves ...

... but then, neither the Axis nor the Allies had been equipped with shields that would let them survive at least a few shots from a 'friend' made in haste, a difference that to Mitchells annoyance had rendered the tactic rather less effective than he had anticipated. This was a mistake, decelerating to fight inside their formation had robbed them of their speed-

And the fighters sticking to his tail were getting dangerously annoying and more accurate.

"There are eight enemy fighters behind us" Teal'c said in the tone he would use equally for ordering lunch and declaring the end of the world was neigh. "In tight formation and closing, trying to hit us with massed fire".

"Oh, good" Cameron commented dryly, glancing at the rear sensor display and making a quick calculation. "I've always wanted to try this; Sheppard tells me it's a whole lot of fun".

And with that, the Colonel slammed the throttle back.

Obediently, the F-302s inertial field fed back upon itself, bringing the fighter to near a relative stop inside two seconds. The Seraph fighters behind him blew past almost before they saw him, two barely missing ramming the F-302 as they passed bare meters away from each other. A heartbeat later he slammed the throttle forward again and triggered his last two missiles, both of which leapt off the rails eagerly, barely needing to make even a minor course change before they detonated in two of the Seraphs dead ahead, the explosion destroying several others and sending the rest spinning out of control, Cameron using the break to turn away and move to rejoin his wingman-

-just in time for another alarm to sound as a pair of Seraphs swung in from his 3 O'clock high, weapons blazing as they came.

Rolling to present a minimal profile, he kicked his rudder pedals and slewed around out of the line of fire, bringing his nose on target and triggering a quick burst from his cannons. He grimaced slightly as the hastily aimed fire simply bounced off their shields, the Seraphs tightening their turns to track him as they moved closer-

Then they blew up.

A quartet of Longswords streaked through the explosion, rocketing past Mitchell with a surprising grace that belayed the fact that they were bigger than a Boeing 767, falling upon another flight of the Seraphs without mercy, all guns blazing. Their cannons fired at a slower fire rate than the F-302s rail guns, but given that they were using calibres that were only used back on Earth in Main Battle Tanks it was a moot point as Covenant fighters shattered as swarms of UNSC fighters that had been ignored in favour of the threat of the Odyssey made the Covenant pay dearly for their mistake, flights of disciplined fighters ganging up on the scattered and off balance Seraphs and methodically working to pick them off.

"All fighters, disengage and reform on Odyssey" Mitchell ordered as the battle swiftly moved towards its logical conclusion, using his speed to disengage with the rest of the F-302s. A few Seraphs took parting shots, but found themselves rapidly on the defensive as they were in turn jumped by UNSC fighter craft, Mitchell using the break in short, sharp engagement to assess the squadron wider status report on one of his secondary screens, frowning at what he saw.

The good news was that only Blue Six's F-302 icon was black, although three more were now red and four yellow, and almost every single one of them was showing ordinance depletion warnings meaning they had just about reached the end of their combat effectiveness. Still, they had lasted just long enough to do their job and efficiently eliminated most of the Covenant fighter strength in the area. And if Odyssey could deal with the last of the enemy warships...

"Odyssey, Blue Leader, we are at Winchester status, fighter threat neutralized, down one bird. How copy?" Mitchell thumbed his hotlink as he ran his eyes over the wider sensor readouts, mostly filed with datalink information from the Odysseys vastly more capable systems. Their attacks combined with those from the Longswords had all but swept the Covenant fighter units in the Shipyards and cost them the core capital ship support they had here, what little remained of them reforming directly around Gamma Station in a final defence to buy time for their boarding parties.

"Blue Leader copy all" Megan Cooper replied from the bridge of the Odyssey, some static hissing into the link as the other ships shields were repeatedly slammed with laser fire from the last Covenant warships backing away towards Gamma station that might have just been starting to get an idea of how precarious their situation was. "Be advised, we got the crew from Blue Six, they're a little toasty but good. Orders are to stay clear until we finish these ships, we'll meet for recovery and phase three at point Delta. How copy?"

"Solid Copy Odyssey, out" Mitchell agreed before witching frequencies. "Alright people, reform on me. We're bugging out to Point Delta" Cameron relayed the order, waiting until Teal'c brought up the course on his navigational display before banking and pulling into a climb away from the massive web of space stations that made up the shipyard complex, engaging the auto-pilot as the remaining F-302 fell into formation around him. "The good news is that Oveur and Murdock were both beamed clear by Odyssey before they blew up, meaning they didn't get out of buying everyone a nights worth of drinks next time we hit Vegas. As soon as the Odyssey clears the final enemy ships, we'll recover".

And he silently thought as clicked off the channel, we pray that for the Covenants sake, they understand the message we just sent and get the hell out of here before 'Phase Three' becomes necessary.

0630 Hours, September 22nd, 2552 (Military Calendar) /
Alpha Team AO, Orbital Defence Generator Facility A-331, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System

"I can't see anything immediately on the other side of the barrier" Anton's report came over the SECURECOM channel from the Spartan crouching on their side of the massive active camouflage field that encompassed what Fred suspected was something bigger than a simple Covenant LZ. "I can still see and hear a lot of activity down the line, closer to the river, but the tree line is too dense to get a visual from here" .

"Copy" Fred replied as he considered the situation, glancing at the sensor readouts on the control board. According to the Scarabs sophisticated sensors - at least if he was reading them correctly - the area for fifty kilometres ahead of them was clear, without any sign of the artificial light or activity Anton had just reported seeing with his own eyes. Happily, this strange sensor confusing field appeared to work both ways, the Spartan commenting that the Scarab itself had vanished when he had moved past the barrier and looked backwards, which gave Fred both hope that the Covenant had not noticed the destruction of their attack force as yet, or at least not noticed the hijacking of the walker platform.

"Anton, get back here" he ordered after a moment's thought, deciding that it was time to be decisive. "Everyone else get inside, we're proceeding forward as a friendly Covenant Scarab into the field. Communications silence from this point on".
Blue acknowledgement lights winked at him as the Spartans standing watch on the top deck helped Anton back on board before heading inside, having disposed of all the Covenant bodies inside and outside the Scarab by the simple expedient of throwing them off the side several minutes ago, leaving no external sign that the Scarab was no longer under Covenant control.

The massive walker shuddered through the Active Camouflage barrier little more than a slight humming sound and ripple of light on the screen, the distant glow over the tops of the trees Anton had spoken of painting onto the screen almost at once before the view screen tilted almost sickeningly downwards as the Scarab worked down a drop in the terrain. The internal artificial gravity field negated any sensation of tilting or movement, something Fred found slightly disquieting as they clambered down what was easily a forty degree slope, the Scarab happily smashing its legs deep into the ground to provide purchase before reaching somewhat level ground and marching forward back along the path of destruction it and its 'brother' had smashed through the forest in the other direction a while ago.

Grace remained at the weapons console next to him with the rest of the Spartans crowding to the left and right where they could watch the screen, excepting Joseph and Li who were watching the doorway from behind the shield to make sure no-one tried to retake the Scarab. It made things rather tight up here, but Fred understood their need to see what was going on outside as they retraced the Scarabs steps.

"We're coming up on a clearing" Li put in, as he overlaid the satellite recon data that Cortana had scrounged up on his HUD, pinpointing their position on the map and making several quick calculations. "It's probably the only realistic LZ in the area, without resorting to glassing one anyway".

"Makes sense" Fred agreed as he stepped the Scrab carefully around a minor hill and approached what he guessed would be the final turn in to their deployment zone, accelerating slightly as he started to come around the corner, the blue glow getting much stronger now. "Let's see what we've got here..."

The clearing was larger than he had anticipated as he stepped around the corner and halted. It was sprinkled somewhat sparsely with trees that had lost most of their leaves, but it was mostly open ground with the Big Horn River backstopping it a few kilometres away. In this open area, a vast encampment of Covenant personnel had made themselves right at home on Reach's soil, something that irrationally made Fred feel a spike of anger that he instantly suppressed. A line of white dome shaped tents he recognized as airtight quarters for the methane breathing grunts, with a smaller number of far more elaborate golden polyhedral huts that Elites used mixed in were clustered in concentric rings around a grounded Covenant SDV-class Corvette - although at second glance, Fred noticed some interesting modifications that appeared to borrow from the much smaller DAV-class Stealth Corvettes. Its hull was not the burnished silver and purples of a typical Covenant warship, but a dull non reflective material that blended in with the environment around it.
Above it, stabbing into the sky, was a large spire that looked almost identical to the one NOBEL Team had destroyed days ago that had been hiding the Long Night of Solace and its deployment zone - clearly this was the source of the ECM field that was hiding all of this from orbital or air detection.

The entire encampment was ringed with guard towers, small platforms hovering above the ground that Jackal snipers manned, with a number of Shade turrets intermixed between them. The blue trails of Ghosts were clearly moving around the perimeter on patrol, and the whole area was alive with Covenant activity. A forward entry control point blocked off this trail that led up into the base, with a pair of Shade cannons backstopping a line of portable hexagonal shields, behind which Grunts and Jackals were leaping to their feet as the monster came around the corner and halted.

The sheer scale of the encampment momentarily staggered Fred as it became plainly obvious from the sheer amount of construction that it must have been here for quite some time. This could not possibly have been part of the force that had snuck by the fleet only hours ago - this had to be something left over from the initial infiltration unit that the Covenant had moved to reinforce with the new landings.
To be sure, when the Generators had come online the Covenant had no doubt decided to take out the target of opportunity, but it couldn't be their primary objective if they had been here this long.

So what was?

As far as he knew, as he zoomed out the map for a wider look at the AO, there wasn't anything for fifty kilometres in any direction except Castle Base, ONI Section III's HQ on Reach. And while he was sure the Covenant could find useful things therein, he had no doubts ONI in their institutional paranoia would have all manner of fail-safe systems in place to make any attempt to seize it short lived and highly explosive. Literally.

Shaking off the questions that gnawed at him like a bad itch inside his armour, Fred turned his attention back to the Corvette, focusing the display past the encampment and on it. A pair of Purple gravity beams linked the core of the ships primary hull to the ground and the large ring shaped 'wing' that supported the bulk of the Corvette off the ground had any number of open hatches, through which any number of cargo crates were being visibly offloaded-

"We're getting pinged" Kelly broke into his thoughts, mere seconds after they had lumbered to a stop. A box appeared on the screen with a red tag linking it to the Corvette, Covenant Glyphs pouring into it with a chiming sound. Kelly had disabled the communications link that had let the Elite in the Wraith Tank earlier blow their cover, meaning the Covenant were now limited to sending 'text messages'; a console in front of Kelly coming up with several possible responses. Without a direct translation though, he didn't really have any way of trying to respond to bluff his way through a conversation ...

So he didn't even try. He'd reply a different way.

"Target the Corvette" he ordered Grace, studying its profile carefully. RED FLAG had mandated study of Covenant ship design for the mission of breaching and taking over one, meaning he had a decent idea of where to shoot them to hurt them.

In theory.

"Dorsal hull, forward of the starboard flaring, the gap in the armour there-"

"-should give us a clean shot from this angle into the engineering compartment " Grace finished the thought, shifting the crosshairs on the ship to the target in question. "The first shot should take out their primary starboard conduit, but it'll take at least two shots to kill the Reactor".

"Well this could be interesting" Li muttered as he traced the secondary plasma cannon targeting box almost casually towards the Covenant troops at the ECP, some of whom were gesturing oddly at them, probably irritated with the lack of any communications.
Somewhat vindictively, Li settled the crosshairs on them first.

"Very well" Fred agreed with a nod, before grinning slightly and giving the other he had wanted to give since being kicked out of the Pillar of Autumn. The time for recon work was over, as was the time for defence. Now it was time for the Spartans to do what they were born to do.
"Spartans; destroy everything".

The primary plasma cannon snapped open at once, green light dancing around the muzzle as the Scarabs reactor output was redlined and diverted to the front of the assault platform. The Grunts in front of them along the entrance to the encampment tossed their weapons away and ran wildly and, for once, the Elites were not far behind -and in several cases rapidly overtaking- them, as the magnetic field formed and a torrent of plasma poured out in a shallow arc over the encampment, tearing into the side of the unshielded ship.
The energy blast was sustained over several agonizingly long seconds as the Corvette appeared to simply soak up the incredible firepower...

...Then, just as the plasma beam started to sputter out leaving nothing but a relatively tiny hole glowing on the side of the ship, the gravity beams died. A number of Elites moving up to or down from the ship suddenly found Reach's gravity back in control of their destiny and went crashing to the ground, the few lucky ones only falling a matter of meters inevitably crushed by others falling from much higher up in a rather messy pile. A secondary explosion ripped out through the breach in the hull as several plasma conduits were torn open in the attack, fires breaking out across dozens of decks for hundreds of meters, complete chaos breaking out on the ships bridge as its Shipmaster screamed at the skeleton crew to start shooting at the Scarab, get him engine power and raise the shields - all at the same time.

Simultaneously as the plasma beam cut off, Li swung the secondary cannon around and opened fire, rapid pulses of red energy blasting into the fleeing Elites and Grunts, vaporizing any they hit outright and throwing others around like dolls as the ground superheated and exploded under the hellish touch of the pulses of energy. The two Shades at this point of the camp returned fire, tracing their triple plasma cannons across the front of the Scarab in a desperate attempt to knock out its main weapon, a plan rendered useless as Grace snapped the covers shut and eliminated for good as Li swung the secondary cannon back down and detonated each of the weapons emplacements with a quick burst of fire before swinging the weapon up and exploding the Sniper Tower beyond them, the Jackals survival instincts proving somewhat more finely as the occupant leapt clear well ahead of the incoming firepower.

Fred started to move the Scarab forward, mentally urging the main gun to recharge faster as he walked through the main entrance with the kind of contemptuous indifference only a massive walking death machine could have. Li wheeled the plasma cannon around to the left and exploded a pair of Ghosts moving in to attack - although exactly what they could have done was open to question - before shifting fire back the other way, tracing fire around the perimeter into two, three, four more of the Sniper Towers and their attached plasma cannons, more to cause chaos and confusion than to score kills, before he brought the gun back around towards the Corvette itself. The Spartan paused for a half second to consider the Target Rich environment before holding the trigger down and spraying pulses of energy into a number of the barracks used by the Grunts, breaching the methane filled interiors and mixing them with the oxygen outside, letting the superheated plasma ignite the mixture-

The firestorm that exploded was gratifyingly impressive, a wave of flame exploding out and through the rows of tents as the bulk of the methane was liberated and consumed, the flames only growing as they roasted alive any number of Elites that had barely started to react to the chaos and any number of Grunts curled up in balls trying their best to ignore it and continue sleeping, secondary explosions tearing through other tents as volatile substances stored in the cargo pallets and tents cooked off, and for a millisecond, Fred dared to think that this would be a cakewalk.

He regretted his presumption for daring that force known as Murphy, as several milliseconds later Kellys board started to chime, loudly.

"Corvettes Lateral plasma cannons are coming online" Kelly warned, their run of good luck coming to a screaming end in the sound of the warning klaxons. "We're being targeted!"

"Everyone hang on" Fred yelled as he braced himself.

The trio of guns on the side of the Corvette swivelled as on its bridge, an Elite finally managed to stagger to the gunnery console, releasing the safety locks and returning fire at their tormenter, a salvo of blue plasma bolts arcing out to smash into the walker stomping towards them.

It was both the first and last salvo they would fire in this engagement, the capacitors built into the weapons drained dry by this one salvo and the link to the main reactor severed by the Scarabs opening shot ... but it might have just been enough. While the Corvette may have been a relatively small warship compared to a Covenant Capital Ship, it was none the less a Covenant warship, and its guns weren't something a ground unit - even one as powerful as a Scarab - could ever afford to take lightly. The first bolt smashed into the front of the Walker, melting and ablating the armour covering the main gun, but not quite penetrating the heavy plating. The follow up bolts probably would have, but the hastily aimed salvo didn't have quite that tight a grouping, instead tearing the less protected secondary plasma cannon off its mount above the main cannon, as a third tore through the majority of the - mostly cosmetic - roof over the top deck, passing through the thin metal to explode in the middle of a group of grunts much further downrange who had just started to dare think they might live through the sudden chaos, vaporizing them at once.

"Secondary cannon is gone" Li yelled as the lights inside the Scarab flickered wildly for a few seconds as automatic systems rerouted the power flows, the walker staggering as a half dozen alarms started chiming, whole swaths of controls going black.

"Primary took a hit, but it's still reading as online, I think, recharge in nine seconds" Grace reported, as cool as deep space as she always was as she swivelled the main cannon back on target. "Isolating the damaged hull area..."

"Take the shot, don't wait for my order" Fred replied tersely as he fought to keep the walker stable, the surging power flow to the leg actuators and gravity beams causing the walker to stagger slightly before shaking it off and starting to walk straight again, desperately trying to keep steady for Grace to take her shot.

Grace hit the button to open the blast covering around the main gun, the cannon exposing itself with a protesting scream of metal from several of the warped members, one of the covers snapping off at the hinge and falling away in protest as green fireflies again danced, unnoticed to everyone and the Scarabs systems itself, the fact that one of the covers had not opened, but stayed fuzzed shut...

The beam of energy once again lanced out, but was drained somewhat as it was forced to waste part of its energy to blow through its own armour plate, the backwash frying the emitters in moments and causing the entire canon assembly to shut down as it was quite literally cooked by its own fire. The second shot was the last the weapon would ever fire...
But it had been enough.

The energy poured into the raging inferno and punched through the internal bulkheads of the Covenant ship into the ships engine room. Engineers had frantically been trying to shut down the fusion reaction as they moved to protect and repair the ships power plant, but with the Elites on the bridge countering their every effort as they furiously tried to get their ships weapons back online, it was still a roaring tempest of dense, superheated plasma compressed in a magnetic bottle, inside a containment chamber made of some of the strongest materials known to Covenant science. Against such a wall, even the Scarab gun couldn't penetrate with one shot ... but denied an easy breach, the burning stream of blue/white energy hungrily spread out around the spheres surface, vaporizing and burning anything along the way before the blast of energy finally dissipated...including a good chunk of the magnetic field generators spaced at precise intervals around the reactor that shaped and contained the plasma.

Within nanoseconds, the magnetic field became asymmetrical.

Within a millisecond, the plasma had crashed in full force against the weakened reactor chamber walls where the Scarab gun had done its work.

Within a microsecond, the plasma had melted its way through, and the equivalent of two full Covenant Plasma Torpedoes erupted inside the ship.

A wave of blue fire swept through the Corvette, down corridors and conduits vaporizing anyone in the way before they could even perceive what was going on. As the ship was not properly at battle stations, countless blast doors and hatches that may have contained the detonation were wide open to better allow cargo to be offloaded, and so the plasma rampaged through the main body of the ship. On the bridge, the command crew had just enough time to hear the scream of an alarm before the far bulkhead disintegrated, their personal shields not providing anything like sufficient protection from the inferno that washed over them. The tall spire rising above the ship sparked with huge bolts of energy several times, sending a ripple of white hexagonal patterns across the sky in time with each discharge before it snapped clean off where it joined the ship, falling with a scream of metal to smash into a Sniper Tower that thus far had been spared any attention; crushing both it and the unfortunate Jackal inside flat.

Back in the Scarabs control room, things were not much better as sparks flew, systems overloaded and every alarm built into every piece of equipment went off simultaneously. The reactor spiked and fluctuated from feedback from the main lines being burned by its own weapon, and Fred felt the war machine shudder to a halt square in the middle of the Covenant encampment as the reactor shut down, the Spartans frantic attempts to find an override failing as the safety systems kicked in and locked the walkers legs up, freezing it in place.

"Well that isn't good" Kelly quipped mildly as the Spartans stood, the Scarab around them making grinding and snapping sounds that really didn't sound terribly healthy. "What now Boss?"

"Everyone up top" Fred ordered, the distant sound of Covenant small arms fire increasing as the remaining enemy troops rallied at the sudden shut down of the Scarab and pressed in to attack, their utter terror turning to rage as they sought to kill anything on board. "Prepare to repel boarders".

Alpha Team hurried back up the ramp, the shield into the control room dead. The roof had been mostly torn away, but bits and pieces had been fused and scattered around the cratered upper deck, ironically providing decent cover for the Spartans as they crawled out into a standard 360 degree deployment, the hissing of plasma fire and chinking of needle rounds ricocheting off the armour plating growing as they took up position and Fred looked around.
From up top, the damage to the Covenant encampment looked even worse than he had expected. The Corvette and the bivouac the Covenant had set up around it were both cheerfully burning with countless other fires along the perimeter raging out of control, a light wind unfortunately blowing the thick smoke off towards the Big Horn River rather than back towards them, robbing them of possible cover they could have used for exfiltration. Worse, with nothing left to loose, it looked like every surviving Covenant soldier in the camp was drawing back on the disabled Scarab and pelting it with small arms fire. Their weapons really didn't do anything, but it was keeping the Spartans bottled up, trying to dismount or fast rope down would be suicide given the number of contacts that were settling in around them, and it wouldn't take long for the Elites to start lobbing plasma grenades up, or perhaps blow some of the Scarabs legs sufficiently to topple it over...

Shots barked out as the Spartans opened fire, a precise volley taking down a dozen enemy snipers in a couple of seconds and causing the local troops to flinch for a moment, but the return fire only increased as the moment passed, forcing the Spartans to stay down and trade fire with more distant enemies. Fred was about to ask for any suggestions, his tactical options reducing rapidly to trying to stall those forming under them with their few grenades, when a familiar whistling, screaming sound hissed through the air.

"INCOMMING!" Kelly shouted, faster on the ball as always, and the Spartans moved in a blur deeper into whatever cover was available, boosting their shields to full and minimizing their target profile, just as the first shells impacted.

A rapid series of explosions rocked the Scarab on its feet as blast after blast detonated in close proximity, Fred counting a pattern of six, followed by another pattern of six, than a third before the thunder slowly faded out to be replaced by an incredibly odd silence.

Well except the crackling sound of the cheerfully burning Corvette.

"What was that?" Grace demanded over TEAMCOM, although if it was because she was confused, or just pouting because massive explosions had just gone off that she had nothing to do with, Fred couldn't guess.

But it wasn't him who answered.

"That my dear Spartan, was the sound of eighteen fragmentation and high explosive mortar shells impacting in a time on target grid pattern around your disabled Scarab on the Covenant troop concentrations" Wesley replied without warning, more than a hint of a smirk in his voice as he broke into their tactical channel "Bad form I daresay to not ask you first, but when the Active Camouflage Field went down and I finally got a look at that encampment, spying that your transport was both disabled and surrounded by Covenant forces massing to attack, I just could not help myself. My drones show no more than two dozen left alive and moving on thermal scan across the area, I'm uploading their tracks into your systems now".

"Acknowledged" Fred replied, giving a quick series of hand signals that got the Spartans moving, the group standing and all but daring any troops left alive to take shots at them. And when none immediately came - hardly surprising given the incredible vista of destruction around the Scarab that Fred swore had not been there fifteen seconds ago - they fished out the blue glowing Covenant ropes from their storage compartment and moved to dismount. Malcolm and Vincent remained behind, the former un-slinging his so far unused sniper rifle and the later preparing to spot for him from their perch as Fred lightly jumped off the side of the walker, controlling his fall with the glowing blue rope to land in the incredible mess of bodies of Elites around the legs of the walker that the mortar fragments had scathed through. Already, his Spartans were going about their cleanup tasks and putting bullets through the heads of any that still showed any signs of life, as a counterpoint CRACK - pause - CRACK - pause came from the Scarabs upper deck, as their sniper went to work on more distant targets. "Can you give me a SITREP?"

"All Spartans accounted for" Wesley replied, "although we have a total of four wounded from the rest of your teams. Nothing serious I understand, but they'll probably be out of action for at least a few weeks with injuries they took. North and South LZs were completely destroyed, nothing anything like as elaborate as this zone though my boy, I have to admit I am impressed with the level of construction the Covenant achieved in such a short space of time here, what with the-"

"This whole area was set up days ago" Fred corrected the AI as the Spartans fanned out in two pairs to start their sweep, Fred holding under the battered walker as he conversed with the AI. "Something else was going on here, I think the attack on the orbital generators was opportunistic. These troops could have destroyed the Generator complex days ago if they wanted to, when it had nothing in the way of defences. Frankly, I think they were here for something else".

"For the record" the AI replied after a few seconds of silence, "it appears that Major Dare agrees with you, she wants to know if you have any theories as to what might be going on?"

"I don't know " Fred admitted to his annoyance, not exactly happy at being unable to give a real voice to his feelings, but pleased that the Major felt the same way. "Whatever it is they were after, it was a higher priority than blasting the reactors, otherwise that Corvette could have just risen to five thousand feet and glassed the whole defensive setup" he pointed out, pausing as as his motion sensor pinged at a contact closing, Fred stepping into cover and raising his rifle in the general direction indicated...

"The Covenant have been concentrating on the Viery Territory to the exclusion of most of the rest of Reach, except for probable incidental or critical strategic targets" the AI pointed out as Fred shouldered his rifle, aiming at an unclear shadow through the smoke that moved towards him, relaxing slightly as he saw it was the bulbous forms of a group of Covenant engineers wandering aimlessly. The group's leader chirped at him, before squealing slightly as it saw the massive form of the crippled Scarab, an excited series of chirps and whistles passing between it and the group as they hurriedly floated on over, their tentacles eagerly reaching up to start 'feeling' the hull of the walker, studying the damage to it as Fred shook his head slightly, still slightly unnerved by the creatures almost childlike ignorance of the war going on around them, just so long as they could 'fix' things. "I don't suppose you left the Corvettes computer core sufficiently intact to recover any data from it that might shed a clue?"

Fred glanced up at the burning Corvette, which with prompt and impeccable timing collapsed, the primary hull falling to the ground as the supports that attached it to the wide ring it had landed on finally failed, the noise impressive even from this distance.

"I would say ... no" Fred finally replied with considerable aplomb as he kept an eye on the Engineers, deciding to let them work and idly wondering what the UNSC would do with the Scarab if they did manage to repair it.

"Pity" the AI replied with an almost audible shrug over the COM. "At any rate, as soon as you finish mopping up, that should be it for the Covenant forces in the area. We've released all the operational Spartans to rejoin you and help you finish your sweep, upstairs looks like a stalemate, it doesn't appear that anything particularly interesting is going to happen anytime soon".

A massive explosion just above the horizon that turned the night sky into day for one glorious second gave a lie to that statement.