Chapter Nine

19:51 September 11th, 2533. Aboard a Covenant Cruiser 'Fleet of Dawn'

The Pelican crashed into the Covenant Cruiser with such momentum it toppled two Covenant's Seraphs which were parked near the opening of the Hangar bay. Due to the thick armor of the Pelican and the endurance of the Mjolnir armor the Spartans were in one piece as the Pelican came to a skidding stop. Meanwhile the Covenant was not prepared for this unexpected invasion therefore there was not much resistance in the bay for except few Jackals and Grunts, which were easily cleared by Alice using the Pelican's outer turrets.

"Remind me never to get in with you in any vehicle while you are driving," Douglas said as he struggled to get out of his seat straps.

"Will do," Alice said as she exited the cockpit and yanked Douglas' seat straps in a single pull.

"Let's exit before the reinforcement shows up," Jerome said as he tossed the weapons to Alice and Douglas and he shouldered his shotgun along with the detonator. Now this Pelican was a hot package since it was carrying a Havok nuke, which is the backup plan if their invasion goes sour. The nuke's detonation will be enough to punch a hole in this cruiser to disable it forever.

Alice popped the hatch and the Spartans exited in a triangular formation covering each other's backs. They picked any stray Grunts or Jackals that were too timid to exit thier covers, with their weapons as they kept their march toward the far end door, which lead them into the Cruiser's engine room according to the ship's schematic send to them by Serina. Their goal was to invade the Bridge and take control and they had to be quick about it because the Captain and the Spirit of Fire didn't have much time.

Just as they reached the door, the hangar doors opened up and the other two Seraph fighters entered the bay. Immediately the Red team ducked and took cover near some craters. The Seraph fighters hovered within the bay as they scanned the Pelican and found out it was empty. Then they started to scan the bay as both the Seraphs hovered ten meters high.

Jerome was able to make out the pilots through the narrow glass at the tip of the birds and it was two Elites who looked enraged since they lost three of their brethren and they were looking for vengeance. Jerome made a silent hand gesture to Alice and Douglas to work on the door, as they were planning to exit this bay without inviting those Seraphs' attention because those fighters can't follow them through the door.

Alice slowly inched toward the door controls yet making sure she was behind the cover of the crates and out of the view. Just as she touched those controls they blinked blue and the doors moved apart. Alice eyes widened as she saw a pair of Hunters stood on the other side of the door. The hunters raised their massive hands and charged their Plasma Cannon rods against the Red team, while Jerome, Douglas and Alice looked back in horror.

Aboard Spirit of Fire; Orbiting an unknown moon.

Serina was running millions of calculations as she kept the ship under control and out of reach from the Covenant. The Spirit of Fire was making a trip around the moon in reverse while being chased by Covenant cruiser in front of them. No matter how fast the Covenant's ship gained, Serina made sure they were in just enough speed to keep out of reach, and she kept hitting the Cruiser back with MAC gun every time it recharged, which took 5.7 seconds between the reloads. Since the fight exceeded more than ten minutes, which the Captain and crew were not expecting, the Spirit has depleted all her missiles and torpedoes. So Serina had only MAC for defense.

The Other presence in the system now started to make more noise in the system which kept distracting her. She wanted to push this new problem to Anders as she had enough in her hands. In fact the very lives of this ship's crew, including the Captain's was in her hands, so to speak. This distraction might cause them dearly, so putting aside her 'So called' Ego subroutine aside and she send a message to Anders in her lab along with the Other presence's algorithms.

Anders monitor flickered once as the message from Serina popped. The tensed scientist first disregarded the message as she was very keen on tracking the Covenant cruiser's every movement and the Red team's. After couple of minutes she opened the message and saw the content. She was shocked to the core. 'How could she hold back such information,' Anders wondered as she saw the odd patterns formed by this Alien presence in the system. It was nothing she has ever seen before and it was hard to decipher, which was first. The presence behaved more like a living thing than some random codes. It kept fighting back the ship's firewall as if it was trying a way to break it and take control. It behaved more like an AI than anything. 'But how is that possible?' Anders wondered.

She tried to lure the Alien AI to her personal system, away from the system's mainframe so that she would have better control over it. But it kept ignoring her or avoided her. Sign of 'Intelligence' Anders thought, which was bad. Just as she was studying the Alien AI, the entire ship shook momentarily which made her to lose balance for a split second as the whole ship reverberated as one of Covenant's Plasmas bombarded the ship. Just as she regained control over her bearing she found her monitors to be dead. And it wouldn't turn on no matter what she tried. Then within seconds the entire ship went dark.

Anders tried to hail the bridge but the Comms were down. She wondered whether that plasma hit was a fatal hit to the ship as she picked up her datapad, which was the only thing that was working and went running to the bridge.

Captain Cutter was furious, the entire ship was shut down and Serina was nowhere to be found. As if she just disappeared from the existence.

"What the hell just happened?" Cutter screamed at his bridge's crew as they were running through the controls like fanatics as they were trying to figure out the cause.

"Sir we have lost power on all the decks," one of the pilots replied back in a panicking voice.

"Sir we have lost all controls," an engineer shouted as the entire ship started to pull toward the moon's surface. "Even the AI core is offline, Sir," he said, which was impossible. They got hit not hacked Captain Cutter thought.

"Oh no!" Cutters muttered as he saw his ship sped toward the surface of the moon as the Covenant Cruiser gained on them. "Brace for impact," Cutter screamed as he strapped himself to his seat and prayed.