Unknown Location
Haley Liston was completely terrified.
There was just no computing way that this could've happened.
It started out just as another nightmarish dream, the newest of the many that plagued her sleep months on end. One moment she was out with her friends having an enjoyable time, the next she wakes up in the medical wing of the resort with the doctor lying down at the room's floor entrance, covered in a pool of his own blood. Now it was all too real and it easily outclassed any nightmares in the past.
Liston found her arms shaking. She had seen her fair share of apocalyptic forms of entertainment, but the death of the doctor was all too real. Even worse, the entire building was eerily silent. She never heard anyone walking or talking.
She was only twenty-three years of age, growing up at a place far away from the war-torn planets. Now with the conflict over, she had joined a prestigious university, enrolling in dual majors of communications and business.
The stay at the resort was her best friend's idea. While it seemed nice to lounge on the beaches and look at cute boys, she suspected that Isabelle knew that a particular boy was staying with his friends as well. She had practically groaned when Kyle had been in the sun, topless putting a wolfish grin upon seeing Isabelle brazenly approaching him in her red bikini.
Aside from her friend's crush, Haley had to admit that until now, the Sub-Aqua resort was a very nice touch, featuring the top of this unique beach getaway as a hotel that would run underwater in the clearest parts of the ocean possible. Many colorful forms of wildlife would be viewable from the customizable dimming glass panes in the spiderweb of tubes that were several inches thick to keep the water pressure from ever caving if it took a serious pounding. Ports were everywhere for all ocean based activities, surfing, waterskiing and Haley's personal favorite, scuba-diving.
Within five hours, the resort had turned from a happy, cheerful place full of jubilant men, women and children into a gloomy barren abandoned warehouse. The exterior had hardly changed in that time, but it was a scene of a massacre when someone went inside the sole building on the island.
The blood pool was unavoidable if she wanted to find safety in her own room. Since the shoes that the doctor wore were too large, she was going to have to go barefoot.
Her face turned to one of disgust and horror when the blood made contact with the sole of her foot. Trying her best not to think about it, she grasped the doorside and moved through. Looking down, Haley nearly fainted from fright.
The blood was black.
At the same time, Maverick was flying blind. Not blind as in unable to see, but rather flying through clouds at midnight blind. However, there was no real reason for him to panic. He ran a check on instruments every ten minutes to make sure everything was okay. Even in the midst of combat, he always spared the time, however brief to make sure his ride wasn't malfunctioning. When he saw the confirmation order of the Blades' new AV-14 Hornet, he automatically dibbed on flying it first.
In front, the pelican had finally cleared the cloud cover spanning forever into the horizon. The familiar dark shape of the UNSC Ballista loomed straight ahead, hangars open and anticipating their arrival.
As soon as Maverick began to power down the engines, Aegis and Rayson immediately lowered the hatch from inside the cabin, practically sprinting towards the bridge. As they crossed the hangar, crewmen were using lifts and shifting aged-looking shipping containers to obscure the dropship from outside viewers.
The corridor they strode through was dimly lit, with a thin layer of dust on the chipped linoleum floor. Aegis found a hidden door and turned inside. It appeared as a janitorial style closet with a broom, buckets and half-empty containers of cleaning fluid that was actually dyed water. The small water pump had a valve that was twisted into the drained bucket below. The action when turned correctly unlocked a door that led to a corridor straight behind.
The old saying of ugly is only skin deep rang quite true for the UNSC Ballista and her crew. They were far from the pressured skeleton operators of a dilapidated ship. The Ballista was formerly a high-capacity stealth frigate. One of the short-lived Guardian class conceived just a couple years before the Covenant encounter, she was modified to maneuver behind enemy lines and fight off larger attackers if ever discovered. The Guardians were scrapped, but the Ballista's new life was only just beginning.
Aegis had purchased her at an auction, of course with all the ONI sensitive data and devices purged from her innards. He took it to the planet Vola where she was refitted in a private drydock that aroused no suspicion from even those working on her.
Her outer appearance was definitely ugly. Paint wasn't completely mismatched, but it was clear that her master had intentioned a bad taste combo in a gray and forest green. In reality, the paint helped to buffer incoming radar waves to mask its signature. If that wasn't enough to fool the enemy, the Ballista's active camo system was just as good as the ones on a Covenant stealth corvette.
The old engines were removed, replaced by the latest cutting edge powerplants that could provide power effortlessly to the new drivers, ship electronics and advanced shielding. The energy shield was hardened to protect against a magnetic pulse disruptor. The reactor's output was tremendous, similar to new ones outfitted on advanced UNSC warships. It required no coolant pipes, rather pumping the heat into space, where it would dissipate. It was a minor flaw, but the Ballista could be detected if someone was using top-grade thermal scanners. However the engines would be able to cool themselves as well and it increased the more the engines were worked.
As for the interior, it was just as luxurious as any four-star hotel, the kitchen staff trained at le Cordon Bleu; she probably had the best kitchen on a ship.
As for the crew, all of them were handpicked by Aegis himself, usually veterans and best of the best. Sure if he had told someone whom he'd never met before that, it would roll off as a cliché. In this case, it was entirely true. He believed that no other man or woman in their positions did their job better. If there ever was that, he'd go to the ends of the system to find that individual.
The majority of the senior staff was clustered around the meeting table when Trip and Drew had practically barged in. Everyone was present, save for Spartan Sofia Inselton, an Estonian medic who seldom attended meetings unless she was partaking in them.
Aside from acting as captain in lieu of the other officer's absent, Vasili Suvorov was a veteran ONI agent in Section III, the same part where Aegis was employed. While the two had never met prior to the Blades' conception, they both had heard harrowing tales of narrow escapes and tight situations had left a lot of respect to be paid. And paid it was.
Suvorov was also augmented as a Spartan as well, being a couple of years younger. He had an ability to meticulously carry out missions and even in reflex, always knew whatever he was doing. No detail that was too small ever escaped his attention and the intense concentration allowed him to penetrate well into many infamous terrorist networks, avoiding some of the most ruthless secret police groups ever to exist.
"What's the status on our ONI rendezvous contact?"
Vasili gave them a nod before sitting in his seat, "Their response was to move to this location and then nothing else. I assume that they'll be partaking the tracking markers there."
What the Storm Covenant hopefully didn't know was that near the muzzle of the weapons that the Blades had just delivered were hidden tags. ONI's real goal was to track their movements and locate important factions that were supposedly relayed to UNSC command.
"You know how the spooks like to lay low."
Alongside Suvorov were the ship's best handler, Danny Tyler and his partner-in-crime, Luke Riley, the one in charge of the awesome firepower the Ballista carried. The two were in their twenties and an inseparable pair, working together as if brothers. Both were excellent with computers and resident hackers.
The communications officer, newly-hired Tongju was in deep discussion with Pyra and Vaal Talam, a massively built sangheili who headed the group of ex-Spec Ops sangheili that operated with the crew. Aegis and Vaal worked extremely well together, leaving few doubts of their capabilities. All tension of human and elite working against one another had been put aside. Onboard, the Blades treated one another like family. Respect was key, no matter ethnicity or species.
"Helm, what's our ETA?" Aegis asked, just as they stood to adjourn.
"The ONI rendezvous site puts us at around eleven hundred tomorrow. There's a couple of freighter traffic that's lingering around, but it was considered thick as in New York City rush hour."
"Good, take us out of atmosphere and prepare for slipspace jump as soon as you're clear."
Although the Ballista was fully capable of atmospheric-slipspace jumps, the process was considered risky and he needed no mistakes to happen.
Aegis and the majority of the bridge crew reported to their stations. The room straight below a makeshift mess-hall was in a pyramid shape, with the commander sitting at the top with other essential functions more spread out on a lower level. He sat down in his command seat, relieved as soon as the cameras showed that Ballista had finally broken atmosphere. To his right was a pair of freighters, lazily moving around orbit. No sign of the Covenant cruisers. They might just be able to get away after all.
Then Tongju gave out a frantic cry, "We have a contact! Heading of three zero at Alpha ten!"
Aegis adrenaline began to course through his veins already. The Covenant had been waiting for their arrival and had used cover to cloak their two attacking light cruisers.
"I've detected launch! Two plasma torpedoes! One on a heading straight for us! Another one headed straight for the Miss Belle!"
The situation just turned from bad to worse. There was more than six miles separating the two ships from the plasma torpedoes. It was more than enough for the Ballista to maneuver out of, but the freighters had quite a horrid turning trait that made them a sitting duck. Add the crew onboard plus cargo and it was already going to be a huge incident.
"Third launch! It's headed for the Premiax fuel containership Pike!"
He would've been able to handle one or two torpedoes, the frigate's shields were strong enough to take a direct hit. Either the Miss Belle or the Pike was going to be hit and with her full load of volatile fuel, there was no way in hell that he was allowing it to be the tanker.
"That's a fourth launch." Tongju had been interrupted from his sending out warnings to the other two ships, "This one's going a lot slower than the others."
"It's going to see what the others miss." Drew looked up in familiarity at the display, "Then it moves in to finish off."
It was a simple tactic, especially employed by the Covenant in devastating ways. The concept was that the three torpedoes would go out to assault initial targets. Any ship not wise enough to avoid it would be destroyed. If it managed to dodge the fire, the reserve salvo would then nail it.
Any way of defense was obsolete, especially Aegis and his crew having to defend themselves as well as two other unarmed ships. He now wished he had heeded the warnings along with the other ships that they were heading into territory that Covenant were operating in.
Can the Blades stop the attack and prevent a headlining incident?
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