Chapter 7: Once upon a time, there was an invulnerable wall…

1100 Hours, September 19, 2552(Military Calendar)/ Unknown System, On the Construct Halo on board Covenant Warship Resurrection

Sharp and his men had just repelled the fourth wave of Covenant troops, the ship had sent a distress signal a long time ago for help, there'd been many troops coming to try to retake the ship, but the humans held a death grip on to it; indeed many humans had died trying to keep the ship under their control. The numbers were starting to dwindle like water in your canteen does when you're in the desert for a while. Creton had been forced to re-arrange the defenses, now there were fifteen commandeered Banshees constantly patrolling the ship, Creton had long ago disabled the cannons, all that was left was to take down the door and they'd be in. Except that the door seemed to be unbreakable. They'd tried many things to brake down the door, but like most of the material the ship had been built out of were extremely strong. The door now was under a new barrage of ideas to break it down. Now they'd decided that enough was enough and they were going to simply wait patiently for them to come out, but of course Creton was trying to get access to the door.

Unfortunately the Covenant that was inside kept the door shut at all costs; it was their life jacket in the middle of an ocean. Several Marines stood guard at the door; Creton had long ago been transferred to a maintenance port and was trying to access the door from there. One marine was on top of a shade in the hall way keeping his aimer trained wearily on the door in case of it opening. Sharp kept on walking with his stiff legs towards the hanger bay. He saw a few wounded men being tended to by Medics in the hall ways, one of the few places that were safe for them. When he came into the

Unfortunately the Covenant that was inside kept the door shut at all costs; it was their life jacket in the middle of an ocean. Several Marines stood guard at the door; Creton had long ago been transferred to a maintenance port and was trying to access the door from there. One marine was on top of a shade in the hall way keeping his aimer trained wearily on the door in case of it opening. Sharp kept on walking with his stiff legs towards the hanger bay. He saw a few wounded men being tended to by Medics in the hall ways, one of the few places that were safe for them. He kept walking at a casual pace towards the Bay Hanger that Beast had been assigned to guard with a group of twenty men, only thirteen other then Beast were left alive. Sharp passed through one of the automatic doors, as he approached it slid apart noiselessly as he came up to it. Spending his free time thinking about random things, one of them was the whole thing about the Covenant and purple. Just as the door slid shut behind him he heard Creton, "I've managed to open the door, it's under assault right now."

"Ok, thanks for the information." Sharp muttered and started running back to the corridor in which the attack was taking place. As he was running around the corridor he saw a big number big number of bodies littering the floor. To his relief was that by far most of the bodies weren't human, but instead Covenant bodies were scattered around. Most of the fighting had subsided, only a little of the original Covenant forces were still fighting, a few had surrendered. Those who had surrendered were now being led by ten armed Marines towards the cells which were shown on their HUD displays with a orange arrow. Sharp returned back to the real world and heard the whine of plasma flying over head and the roar of assault rifles as they answered back. Sharp ran up to the shade for cover, leaning out he set his sight onto anything that moved.

*

Beast was sitting a purple barrel and was watching the battle from the perspective of PFC Brian Hudston. The man was towards the front of the battle line and was advancing slowly towards the cover of the Elites, the mans pale white hand disappeared and when it returned it was clutching two fragment grenades. With a fast set of motions he threw out the pins and rolled the grenades on the ground towards the closest Elite hiding spot. Two seconds passed, and then a explosion went off blowing bits off the purple wall and the unfortunate Elite's blood was splattered all around on the walls around. The video feed went out, "Beast, it's your platoon's turn to do a search, so select ten people to pilot to go into banshees and the rest stays behind in this position."

"Ok," Beast switched his helmet to broad cast mode, "I want nine volunteers to come with me, we're going to patrol, Sergeant Blake is in command while I'm gone, let's move." Fifteen men started racing for Banshees. When Beast arrived to one of the Banshees he opened it up and got in. He was tired of just sitting back, he wanted to get out. He busied himself with getting familiar with the aircraft, he knew how to fly though, Creton had explained earlier. Once he felt roomy he spoke up, "Ok, everyone, let's get flying, Creton, I want you to put some markers up here for us." Nearly instantly there was a bright orange arrow showing the way. Feeling ready Beast pushed the throttle back and the banshee smoothly lifted off the ground and started to slowly drift backwards but it still went up. He tugged to the right making the Banshee pivot and then once he was facing towards the door he pushed the throttle and when he started to fly forward the doors silently slid apart and then he pushed the throttle to the max and the Banshee sped through the now open purple door followed by nine other Banshees.

He felt the cold air streaming in through the cracks and small holes throughout the Banshee's exterior. As he pulled up to go higher in altitude he felt his body being pulled towards the ground by gravity. He leveled off and felt the Banshee tremble slightly as some turbulence.

*

Sharp was walking back and forth throughout the control room as people where scavenging supplies and others were making sure that the Covenant that had surrendered properly cleaned up the bodies of Covenant and Human alike. All the Covenant bodies were to be thrown off the "ship" and the Human bodies were being transferred to the best thing to a freezer, a room filled with Methane which the grunts used to sleep in without their armor on them. The human bodies were stowed away and filled up most of the room. Sharp stopped over a dead body of a particularly young marine. He felt a pang of sorrow and a bent down to see if the mans dog tag had been taken, it had been. Sharp closed the man's eyes that seemed to go down for ever. He then stood up and let an Elite at gun point pick up the body and take it back to the room. "Staff Sergeant Beast is out with a group of nine other men patrolling the area, he has spotted a swamp and a downed Pelican in there, and he is going down to investigate. Casualty report for the last battle is a total of 32 marines, twenty are dead and the rest are wounded. I haven't been able to contact Alpha base, I've managed to communicate with the Covenant Engineers, they don't seem to have a side and will be willing to help us. I'm going to recall Staff Sergeant Beast and his squad, we're leaving Halo on this ship."

"What about the Master Chief and Cortana?" Sharp questioned being doubtful that leaving would be the best solution for their current state.

"The Master Chief and Cortana haven't been responding, I've failed to contact them but I haven't stopped. I have been able to contact Alpha Base though Wesley has told me to get this ship to them for extraction." Sharp nodded, and then finally agreed.

He breathed in, "Ok, let's get a move onto it, set the men into tactical positions, I'm going to see how much supplies we have." With that Sharp turned around and started heading towards the hanger bay which they'd used to enter earlier. Later he would find out that for the 176 men that were now left alive after the numerous battles that his men and he engaged, they'd be able to survive off the food supplies for two months with a possible +/- of one week. Sharp sighed and ran his fingers through his hair, he sat back on one of the benches in the Pelican. He switched on his radio and contacted Staff Sergeant Lenny Kirk. "Lenny, you're taking over until Beast returns, I'm going to take a nap I really need to, any ways, tell the men to check the ship in case any Covenant are taking cover, over."

Five seconds went by and then, "Roger that, I'll be waking you up in four hours, I'm going to give some of my men so R&A the rest will search with me, over." Sharp clicked twice on his radio to acknowledge and fell down asleep on the bench almost instantly.