Authors Note: Thanks for all the feedback. Two votes are yes for the Elites and One for yes, one for no on the flood. I'm still taking votes though so please review and enjoy the story.
Unknown System, Forerunner construct surface, 6:17 September 1st, 2552.
Theta Two's POV
Guardian then teleported them away to a different hangar. The two Spartans then looked around the place to see 2 confused brute minors along with a brute stalker and three jackals barricading the door while preparing to leave in a Phantom approaching the hangar. The twp Spartans opened fire, One with her suppressors and Two with his boltshots. Two of the jackals died before they even activated their shields. A brute fired with its spiker while the Stalker hid in active camo.
Two jumped at the brute minor that was shooting them and broke its neck. He then fired at the last jackal with his boltshots, killing it. One killed another Minor and looked to see the phantom, and the brute stalker running towards it. She chased it and shot it in the back with her scattershot, disintegrating it. She then heard a loud roar and looked up as a Brute Chieftain jumped out of the phantom. A279 rolled to dodge, and a laser blast hit the chieftain. Unhallowed guardian's eye cooled down. "Reclaimers, take this gunship and destroy that cruiser before it escapes. I will arrange your evacuation, here take this." The monitor throws a device at Two, he catches it and is about to ask what it does when the monitor teleports away. The Spartans get into the Phantom and fly towards the enemy cruiser.
As the Phantom lands inside the hangar Theta one jumps out the side, landing and killing the three grunts in the hangar. After they got out they disabled the phantoms anti-gravity drives, sending it falling to the floor. After they had been wandering the empty halls for a while, Two finally wonders why they haven't seen any hostiles when a swarm of red appears on his tracker. A lone jackal runs through the door and it shuts behind him. By the time he notices the Spartans a hard light round hits his head, ending the things life. They hear a repeating clang on the other side of the door, before more red dots crowed around where the door is on their trackers. The noise turns into a crescendo of clanging and banging as the door shudders, dents appear after a few seconds and then the door flies open as a swarm of things fly out at them. They retaliate with a flurry of hard light rounds, killing the swarm of combat forms and infection forms. Two kicks a corpse and examines the body. "This used to be a brute." He says. "I know, I guess we found the flood, now where is the control room, we need to overload the engines from there." Suddenly a plate slams into Theta one, pinning her against a wall. Two fires his dual boltshots rapidly, doing damage to the monstrous tank form that blew open the wall. He then switches to his Binary Rifle, one shot disintegrating it. He then pulls on the plate dislodging it from the wall which it was stuck in, releasing one. "Thanks" She says. "Not a problem." He replies as they walk down the hallways once more. They meet an increased amount of resistance from the flood, due to the combat forms finding them, but no covenant. After a few brief skirmishes they encounter a large group of flood trying to get into the control room of the ship. The two Spartans open up with their forerunner weapons but there are too many and they run out of ammo. One picks up a needler she finds laying on the ground and renews her fire on the creatures, while two picks up a carbine and starts firing. When it was all dealt with, two placed a UNSC spoofer on the door. It opened shortly and they walked in, rifles ready.
They notice two dead brute captains and a few grunts and start looking for the rest of the crew when they see a ball of flesh and bio-mass gathered up on the platform where a shipmaster would give orders from. The most distinct figure in it was a brute shipmaster, face in a snarl for eternity. They access a panel and initiate the overload, but notice a lone brute walk out with a concussion rifle. "Die!" it snarled and fired two shots of its rifle at them. They dodged and hid behind a short wall. When they looked again it was to hear screams coming from the brute as it mutated rapidly into the fiends they had been fighting. Two killed it before it could fully turn though, stopping it from becoming even more of a monster. "No-one deserves that fate, you did good Spartan, now lets get out of here before the engines blow up." Artemis speaks inside his helmet. As they ran out of the ship they noticed a hangar. They saw two hunters fighting on ground level, while a few brutes were fighting back the flood, buying time for a chieftain to escape in a seraph bomber. The Spartans ran forward and jumped onto the bomber. "Sorry, but this is our ride" Theta One said as she kicked the chieftain off the vehicle. Two meanwhile jumped in the cockpit as Theta One disengaged the clamps holding the vehicle. She climbed in and closed the hatch as they rocketed forward out through the shields of the hangar, escaping the doomed ship as the engines detonated, throwing the ship forwards as explosions rocked the ship. The slipspace drive then went off, but something was strange, the portal reacted to the installation in an unknown way sending the ship through a portal into the unknown, heading away from this galaxy into deep space.
The two Spartans flew back to the installation, where the flood was being eliminated, largely due to the fact that there were no new bodies coming for them to infect. The sentinels restored the flood containment on the installation, and the covenant CCS vessel was moving towards the edge of the system. But it then started turning back. They then saw the whitish blue of slipspace portals. Three SDV class heavy corvettes were coming out of slipspace. "Reclaimers, you must leave this system at once, there are far too many for your ship to take. This installation can activate a portal that can leave here, just use the device that I gave one of your kind to come back." ["Alright you heard him."] The commander spoke through the comms. ["We need to leave and to do it fast as it looks like they spotted us.] "We copy, this is Theta 1, we are heading to your location." The UNSC vessel then flew towards the top of the installation. The stolen seraph flew into one of the hangar bays along with about 25 sentinels that Guardian gave them before the four spires on the ball started glowing. Four beams shot upwards and merged, forming a sphere shaped portal that disappeared after the Frigate past through it.
Unidentified system, 8:17, September 1st, 2552
Commander Fenwick's POV
"Status report!" She yelled after the Shadows of the Past emerged from the portal into an unknown system. "The engines cut out on us Ma'am." A crew member yells out. "Weapons systems too." The weapons officers adds. The navigational officer then looks at his screen. "Sensors are detecting four planets in this system, the green one looks like it could support life." "Scan that one until our systems are back online, if it can support life, then maybe we might have to worry about more aliens." "Yes ma'am" The crew member replies.
Unknown planet, Atmosphere, 21 BBY
Theta Two's POV
Two pelicans shot down to the surface of an unknown planet. Their orders were to investigate the planet, if it was empty then they set up a base there, if not then they would talk and hopefully get a peace agreement. Hopefully, if not there was a contingency plan but they'd rather not use it. The Pelican entered the atmosphere of the planet, shaking a bit from the turbulence. The rear hatch opened once they were in the atmosphere, showing the marines the jungles and an ocean on the planet's surface. Theta two stands up, a light rifle in his hands. The scans had shown a large group of heat signatures, possibly an animal rich location or a village. As they flew overhead and saw no life save a few new species of animals. They found a large plateau on a mountain clear of trees. They landed there and started to set up, the two Spartans and four ODST securing the perimeter while marines started setting up a base. More transports came shortly after, building a base. (Looks like a fortress base from halo wars without the turrets. Instead has towers with machine guns on them.) Alpha base, as it was to be called, was fully operational. They then started mining metals and finding other materials.
Aboard the Shadows of the Past
"Alpha base has been completed commander." A crewman tells the Commander as she walked back onto the bridge, having been gone eating lunch. "Good" She replies before a crewman yells out. "Ma'am, new contact in the system, unknown ship class and their sending us a transmission." What now. She thinks before saying. "Put it through" "Puny humans, surrender your ship or die!" A yellow and tan robot yelled through the comms. "You know what screw this" she says before cutting the channel. "Hey I was talki-" The robot yells as it is cut off. "Charge up the weapons, deploy pelicans. Prepare evasive maneuvers." Everyone rushed to their jobs.
Dozens of vulture droids poured out of the hangars of the Separatists ship, flying towards the UNSC ships. The Pelicans of the UNSC fired missiles and started firing their chain guns, destroying a few vultures.
Commander Fenwicks POV
"MAC gun charged" Hades said. "Fire" She replied. The ship then shook as the main cannon fired, destroying the Separatist ships shields. "Fire Archer missile pods" she said before they fired as well. But to their disappointment the ship shot down over two thirds of the missiles. The missiles that hit damaged the ships main cannon and some other cannons, allowing a few pelicans to get into the ships hangars.
Sergeant Adams POV
Just great, he was promoted for his actions and the ship escaped the covenant onslaught only to get attacked by robots. The droids kept coming from dropships, although their fighters would sometimes land and walk around firing until they got their head blown of by a rocket launcher or Spartan laser. A group of supers then started firing at him and a few marines standing by him. One marine wasn't fast enough and got shot, falling to the ground in a spasm until he died from more shots. A marine then chucked a grenade at the group, killing all but three. One of the marines on the machine guns on a tower mowed them down. More battle droids attacked, shifting his attention so that he didn't see that one of the supers survived, shooting him. Adams then killed it and a warthog came rushing from the underground garage, killing all the surviving droids. They then noticed another dropship. Why can't I catch a break he thought as he yelled for the marines to prepare for the next wave.
Theta Two's POV
The Pelican shook as it took fire from the enemy fighters. The Pilot announced that they were approaching the enemy ship and Theta Two got out of his seat and walked to the front of the vehicle to see if that was the case. As he looked out the front canopy they went into a spin, avoiding enemy fire. The enemy ship, (A Munificient class frigate, look it up) was a long vessel, having an elevated bridge near the front, along with a large dual-barrel cannon which the Past crippled early on in the fight. It was still firing with its secondary cannons though, which the Past was mostly avoiding due to the long range between the ships. One of the red blasts then caught the Pelican on the wing, sending it spiraling toward one of the ships hangars. It managed to fire a missile at the shield generators protecting the hangar. An emergency blast door started to close but the Pelican sailed through upside down, roof scraping against the floor as it slid across it. An elevator door opened and two battle droids walked out, only to have the transport crush them as it slammed into a wall. Another door opened and five droids walked out, pointing their guns at the ship. The droid commander shouted. "Please exit the vehicle with your hands in the air!" "Why did you say please?" Asked another. "Oh yeah." "Exit the vehicle now!" It tried again. The door then opened and to hulking armored figures climbed out, rifles in hand. Theta one held her Scattershot and two held his light rifle. The droids fired at them, draining their shields by a third. Two then fired three shots, killing some droids while One went invisible and snuck up behind the other two, smashing their heads together. The four ODSTs then came out of the pelican along with the pilot.
"Well that was easy." Artemis said inside Two's helmet.
Authors Note: Heres my longest chapter yet, hope you enjoyed it. My next update will be probably in a few weeks so bye until then.