tobiisagoodboy94 here. Finally, after a long time I finished another chapter, yes I'm slow and lazy. Still here's the new chapter, so have fun.

Halo chapter 9

Freedom under siege

„What the hell is going on?" Marc stormed out of the government building, weapon at the ready and immediately scanning his surroundings. They had been in the middle of some rather boring discussions, which of course had been filled with snarky remarks against the UEG and UNSC, as the whole building had been shaken by the massive explosion outside.

The streets of the colony were now filled with people, civilians trying to reach shelters, militia men running to their position and in between that mass of people, his two squad members tried to not get washed away by the tidal wave of humans. Two aliens, Marc didn't recognize their species were standing next to his soldiers and he made his way towards them, followed by Liara, while Garrus stayed with the colonials.

"What just happened?" he asked but Mina and Daiki only shook their heads, just like the aliens, so Marc turned his head around and tried to spot where Garrus and militia commander had stayed. The older men seemed to be talking to somebody over the comms and finally the wave of colonists and militia men seemed to slowly thin out. Almost everybody lay down flat on the floor the sound of heavy engines filled the air again, as fighters of unknown origins raced above their head, chasing the few colonial fighters that were still in the air. No AA-gun or rocket launcher opened fire on these attackers, so Marc could already guess what had just been blown up.

"The central defence control hub was blown up. We have no idea who did it, but its gone and some sort of virus is blocking the local controls for the guns. We are defenceless." The commander said out loud, not really caring about who was around and who heard it. Yes, this was the worst-case scenario and it just got worse. They had no radar anymore, but the naked eye was enough to spot the dozens of dropships racing down towards the colony.

"God damm slavers. They really hit us with our pants down." The council women said out loud, while the elder soldier was busy organizing the defences of the town. A low rumbling, in the beginning not even noticeable, downed out by the roar of the overhead fighter's engines, but soon it became louder, as the sky got filled by at first small black spots. Dropships, hundreds of dropships were raining down the colony. Where the hell was the Bastogne? Wouldn't Shepard do everything to prevent these slavers from reaching the colony?

Once the Dropships were only a few hundred metres up in the sky, the defenders finally returned fire, but only with a few mounted heavy machine guns and some shoulder mounted rocket launchers and not more than maybe one or two spacecrafts were shot down by this pitiful resistance, as the AA guns and Mass drivers stayed silence and no additional militia fighters raised into the sky. However, the slavers seemed to recognize the largest concentration of militia men and women and avoided these as their dropships landed.

"We have probably several thousand slavers inside the colony, the defensive net is down, just like long range sensors or communication. Anybody got any smart ideas?" the colonel asked, as everybody hurried into cover and he actually got an answer to this rhetorical question.

"While searching for Vitor, I couldn't help myself but notice that you use an old salarian network system to coordinate your guns, right?" Tali asked and after a moment of surprise the colonel answered with a short nod and Tali went on, as the first raced over their head. A group over slavers tried to storm the small plaza they were on and immediately one of them got torn apart by a burst from marc battle rifle into his chest and shot from Garrus between his eyes.

"That system has several smaller sub stations that can control local defence clusters. If I could reach one of these clusters, I could purge the system and reinstall the original software. While this wouldn't give us back the full grind, we'd at least have some guns." Tali spoke, while casually firing her pistol at the Batarians. For a few moments the colonel thought about this, as the others slowly decimated the Batarians. To the human's surprise, Liara created a singularity behind the Batarians, who got lifted into the air like they were in Zero-G, making it easy to pick them off one by one.

"Alright, Miss Zorah, I'm not sure about this, but it's out best chance at the moment. You and the UNSCs" he just shortly nodded towards Marc's team," make your way to the nearest cluster. My troops will take care of the other clusters and reset the communication, your friend will stay with us here, he'll be safe. If you're right, we may just make it out of this mess." He grinned shortly and then started to talk into his radio, barking orders into it.

"Alright, he may not have command over us but he's right." Marc commented and, to his dismay, Liara had already put position next to them, making it clear that they would come with them, while more bullets flew over their heads or slammed into the low walls they had covered behind. The first wave of Batarians was already decimated and a poor gunship that tried to support them had just crashed right on top of them, after two rockets blasted of both of its wings.

"Thanks to the map we got provided, it is no problem finding the cluster, if the Colonel tells his troops not shoot us. The Batarians won't expect any counter attacks, so we go in fast and hard and with a tiny bit of luck we might just survive." Everybody nodded or showed their approval otherwise, while the gun fire intensified, the militia men had managed to bring a mounted machinegun to the front and now mercilessly put the slavers under suppressive fire, tearing several of the attacker apart, while seemingly endless reinforcements took their place.

"Go!"

Orbit above Freedoms Progress

"We were lucky really lucky." Jane Sheppard thought to herself and yes, it was true. Nobody could have thought that the demands from colonists, to stay away from the colony as far as possible, would have come in useful. When the slavers had come through the relay, the Bastogne had been covered by the planets moon, while a few recon drones the ship had set out during their approach warned them about the attackers. The ship was now in low orbit of the planets moon, still hiding from the slavers who didn't even seem to think about scouting the system for any stragglers or enemies. Good for them, against two cruisers and half a dozen frigates their chances of survival would have been zero.

"Sir, one of the slavers cruisers is heading for the Relay." the young female officer responsible for the ships sensors almost screamed, but Sheppard could already guess what was happening. The ships were most likely full of slaves and they were carrying them to their base. Such a horrible fate, but right now there was nothing she could do, if she attacked and destroyed the cruiser, the second one would kill them, and they'd kill all the captured colonists. No, they had to let these leave, as much as it bugged her and made her uncomfortable.

But she couldn't dwell on that, her thoughts already raced around the issue at hand. The second cruiser leaving was improving their situation immensely, they could deal with a single old, batarian cruiser, especially with its escort occupied on the planet. But they had to cross far too much distance, being on the other side of the moon had allowed them to stay undetected, but now it also worked against them, the long distance clearly favoured the longer-range weapons of the slavers. She had to find a way around that.

"The moon…" a thought blocked out anything else in her head and with shaky but lightning fast hands she made some calculation on her computer. Yes, it might just work, it would give them more speed and if the captain of the slavers cruiser was stupid, even shorten the distance they had to cross. The math seemed to fit, at least her crude calculation, so she addressed the bridge.

"Navigation, I am sending some basic plot and acceleration calculation, checks some and tell me once you're ready to set them into motion." The female officer, after checking the calculations, looked at her superior in amazement for a few moment before she replied with a short "Yes sir." And did as she was told. While the other members of the bridge crew now also returned to well organized chaos of managing a warship, Jane leaned into her comfy Captain chair for a moment and weighted their chances again. Yes, it might just work.

"Ahhh!" the screams of the batarians slaver got lost in the gunfire, as a warp threw him of the rooftop he had taken cover on. The resistance had become stiffer and stiffer as Marc's small squad had gotten closer to the secondary nexus, seemingly the Batarians knew what their aim was, but with the support of some militia men they had been able to keep on moving the whole time. They needed to, the moment they got bogged down would be the moment the Batarians could regroup and effectively counter their advance. Keep on moving, keep on attacking. Marc kept on telling himself, as he emptied the last three rounds of his rifles magazine into one of the slaver, who's head turned into bloody mash, while quick and trained hands changed the magazine. He had to be conservative with his ammo, the militia probably had no ammo for a new rifle type like the one he was using and their Pelican full of ammo was probably blown up.

"With Ash, Häkin and the Flight lieutenant inside." He mumbled to himself under his breath, he hadn't really thought about that until now, but for the moment he tried to bury that thought as deep as possible and focus on the situation at hand. Two magazines left, not counting the one in his weapon, he'd have to change to his sidearm soon if he wanted to save at least some bullets. Or, while nobody was looking take the weapon and ammo of a dead militia man, not that he or she would complain and hey he would be using it to defend the colony. It was these moment that he got a little jealous of the weapons that Garrus and Liara had, with their super-fast, super small projectiles reloading was literally never an issue for them in combat. Yes, these guns could overheat, but of them were so quick at swapping between their weapons that you hardly noticed any pause in their fire. Still, while their weapons were more primitive than even the most basic small arms available to the species of the Citadel, they had some advantages. They were far more reliable and wouldn't break as easily, in fact you could beat somebody to death with a UNSC firearm and only scratch its paint job a little, and what they lacked in sophistication, they made up for with raw power.

Another headshot from Garrus let the head of slaver explode, as they finally broke through the last group that stood between them and the local defence hub. They raced around a corner, right towards a low, single story building that had tiny windows and seemingly massive walls. For the first time since they had moved out they were not under fire and for a moment they felt a slight relief. Tali ran straight towards the door, which turned out to be a massive armoured bulkhead made from Titanium-A, painted to look like a simple door.

"The door is sealed; the virus has blocked it. I need a moment to open it." Tali explained as she went to work on her Omni-Tool. Mina knocked on the walls of the building and the sound made the three humans pray to any god they knew that Tali could really open this. The walls of the hub were made of ceramic-concrete, probably reinforced with more Titanium-A, that thing could withstand a direct hit from a tanks main gun with no problems.

"Hurry up Tali, we are sitting ducks here in the open, if the slavers attack now we'll all be shredded." Mina told the Qurrian, who got ready to tell her that tech is delicate and so on so forth, but the sound of gunfire stopped her from doing that. The first few shots hit the ground around them, since the slavers had not taken proper aim and just started firing the moment they saw them and within a split second, the bullets started to bounce of a blue force field, that seemingly out of nowhere had appeared around them. Liara had created a biotic shield that now took the brunt of the attack, a feat which visibly exhausted and drained her within seconds.

Moments passed by like they were hours as the soldiers returned fire, to little effect as now seemingly whole platoons seemed to bare down on them. "They know we're up to something, hurry up Tali." Garrus screamed as he blew the head of one of the attacking batarians, but two more just took his place. "Got it." The massive door slid open, cruelly slow and Tali pressed herself into the building before it was even completely open. Within two seconds the entire team jumped into the massive bunker like building, except for Liara, who still stood in front of the door and kept up the now wavering biotic barrier.

Suddenly, a pair of arms wrapped around Liaras wrist and dragged her backwards, right through the door. Several shoots raced over Liaras head as she fell into the building backwards. The door started to close before Liara hit the floor, but to her surprise she fell in something rather soft. For a few moments the room was in complete darkness, before a few small lights came on and a slight, nervous giggle filled the room.

"Lt, there are really better ways to get close to a girl than that.". Liara, still shell shocked, needed a few moments to realize what just happened and especially how had grabbed her and who's arms were still around her hip. She could feel how the breath underneath Andrews armour plates increased slightly and she blushed slightly, before the young Asari freed herself from the grip of the still shocked Marine. She tried to orientate herself and just now she noticed the dulled sound of bullets and explosives hitting the massive walls of the building.

"Let's hope they have no real military grade explosives to get this door open." Garrus commented as he watched through the crates that filled most of the room. The entire base level of the building was just a single room and except for the mountains of crates there was a large computer console on one of the walls. Tali had already started working on the console, constantly muttering Quarian curses, while Andrew finally stood up, gave Mina a stern look and started to look through one of the crates.

"MREs in this one, Pistol ammo in the other one. Seems like they also used this as a storage room for emergency supplies." he explained, as he took some pistol magazine and package of ammunition out of a crate, sat down on another and started to load the magazines one bullet at a time. Garrus eyes were fixed on him for a few moments before he sighed and sat down. He knew why Mina had made that completely unfitting remark and why Andrew had immediately started to look through the crates and kept himself busy. A protective mechanism to keep themselves busy or distracted from the war they had just fought though and that was now kept outside by Titanium and Concrete. Honestly their situation was bad, this building had only one small entrance and was surrounded by hundreds of slavers. If they really wanted entrance they could just bomb the building to rubble, with them inside, which they would probably do once they realized what was inside. Andrew and Mina and Daiki knew this obviously, which is why they tried to not think about it.

"Yes, you little son of bosh'tet, got you." Tali exclaimed triumphantly, with an almost maniacal laugh following, ok not what anybody here expected. They now piled around here to see what was happening. One of the screens was radar, they could see the fighters and frigates that raced above the colony and dominated the sky. Another was a small map of the colonies, with the guns marked on it and then there where half a dozen smaller screens, each the live feed from a defence gun.

"I have 4 AA-guns and 2 Onager mass drivers that are still operational in this cluster. Also, the radio network is working again." Tali explained, her chest visible lifting in pride.

"Give me the colonel, let them know what's about to happen." Garrus ordered and Marc accepted this without a problem, and a few seconds later, the low boom of a hypersonic round being fired shook the massive building to the core. The frigates and fighters of the slaver had no chance for the first few moments, too big was the surprise of sudden fire from the ground.

Each AA-Gun fired 100 20mm rounds per second, filling the sky with air, as fighters were shred apart like paper. The first shot from an Onager hit a frigate and collapsed its barriers, just for dozens of AA-projectiles to riddle the ship with holes and finally the second Onager blasting a big hole where a second before the ships cockpit was. The second frigate and the remaining fighters regrouped, getting out of the immediate range of the defence cluster, but now another sound filled the air, the deep roar of human jet engines.

"Skipper, the colony is fighting back." Sheppard shot up in her seat, having focused on trajectory calculation for the last few minutes, as a radar feed filled the main screen of the bridge.

"Several guns have come to life and are shredding the slavers, one frigates already down. Also... holy…" the lieutenant just stopped his curse and took a moment to calm down before he went on.

"The colony seems to have a secret air base, located inside a mountain range about 20 miles outside the settlement."

"Cheeky bastards, this might just give us a chance. Execute "Slingshot" now, this might be our chance to take out that cruiser." She ordered her crew and immediately, the until now motionless ship came to life again, burning its engines with 20 % force, slowly moving away from the moon towards the planet."

"Unknown contact, probably human seems to have hidden behind the moon." Exclaimed one of the slaver cruisers bridge crew members, as their captain checked the scans of the ship. It was only a human 'frigate' not one of these monstrous destroyers that could take out a cruiser within a minute and take main gun shoots right to the face. No this would be easy.

"What the hell are they doing?" another bridge crew member asked loudly, and the Captain returned his attention to the screen. The human ship had just pecked out behind the moon, only to make a 180 degree turn and burning its engines at what looked like 100% power. Did somebody make a mistake and now they're trying to escape?

"Get us closer, maybe we can snatch some more goods if we take out these clowns." The crew followed the order and slowly the ship moved towards the moon.

Jane Sheppard was pressed into her seat, just like the rest of her crew, even with artificial gravity, which wasn't that good on human ships to begin with, the current acceleration of the Bastogne was almost unbearable for humans or any living creature. They were now again racing towards the moon, or to be precise, around the moon, in a slingshot manoeuvre. One, if not the biggest problem human ships had in combat against Citadel ships was range. While the main gun of a turian cruiser was less potent than the standard light MAC used in both Stalwart and Charon-class frigates, their range was far greater. Citadel guns fired "small" projectiles with immense speed, while UNSC MAC guns fired massive 600 tons slugs at a "decent" speed. This lowered the precise range, the range in which the projectile reaches its target before any bridge crew worth even a little bit can react and evade it. Since Ships, considering their speed and the vastness of space, were rather small targets, which are hard to hit.

There was however a way to at least lessen the fact that UNSC MAC rounds travelled at about 30 km per second, when fired from an unmoving ship, while the main gun of a Citadel Dreadnought accelerated a projectile to about 4000 km per second, also from an unmoving target. Accelerating the ship and making the enemy coming to you were the two-way USNC officers had focused on, since a slug fired from a ship that was already travelling at 1000 km per second would retain that speed, plus the acceleration from the gun itself, making it incredibly deadly, enough to easily punch through a ship.

Of course, this tactic had limited use against the Citadel, their ability to make micro FTL jumps meant that they could easily evade any ship racing towards them using this tactic. But under the right circumstance and with an opponent not knowing what was going on this was possible.

The slingshot around the moon had just been a manoeuvre to gain more speed, to use the moons gravity for their own benefit. Thankfully UNSC ships were built sturdy enough to withstand far more acceleration than what they were doing right and after a short time, the Bastogne had finished her flight around the moon and now shoot towards the approaching cruiser, with, by UNSC standard, an almost suicidal speed. The thruster immediately started random evasion manoeuvres, getting hit by a slug at this speed would be a certain death sentence.

"What are they doing?" the batarian captain muttered, as the ship was now firing volleys of rockets, that slowly accelerated ahead of their 'home'. Their own main gun came to life now, but the frantic movements of the enemy ship made it impossible to hit over that distance, but we'll their speed would only increase the chance of hitting them with every second.

"Ready MAC, fire second Archer volley 0.2 seconds afterwards and immediately perform the evasion manoeuvre once they're out." Sheppard ordered, as the computer finally announced that they were in effective range.

The Archer barrage, the second which had been fired to make sure that the cruiser was finished of for sure, was unnecessary. The ships barriers did almost nothing to stop the almost 1000km per second fast 600-ton projectile, which at contact seemed to pop the ship like bubble, before it continued its travel through space, only slightly slowed down by the obstacle it had just destroyed. To not collided with the remnants of the cruiser, the Bastogne had immediately turned its nose up by 90 degrees, accelerating away from the now expanding field of metal and frozen air, water and bio mass that had once been a ship and its crew.

There was no celebration on the Bastogne's bridge, just dozens of relieved sighs once they were no longer pressed into their seats. Sheppard's eyes directly returned to her personal monitor and after a few seconds she ordered.

"Get our Marines ready and bring us back to the colony, they're going to need our help."

The lights had gone out in control room, just like the consoles and the entire power in the building, not surprising after several hits from rocket launcher and what seemed to hand grenades. Thankfully both the massive concrete walls and the titanium door had still not given in, but still the slavers had achieved their target. The control nexus was offline and with it the guns they had controlled, so the fight in the air was back to fighter plane vs fighter plane, not that the small group trapped inside the building knew. No signal could make it out of there, so they had taken cover behind the crates that filled most of the room, aiming their guns at the door and walls that were still maltreated by the slavers outside. The only source of light was the weak shimmer from Talis, Garrus and Liara Omni tools, giving them just enough light to not run against anything and shoot each other.

No words were spoken and the sound tensed breaths from them all was drowned by the dulled sound of explosions and shoots from the outside. They were ready to unleash hell on the poor soul that broke through the door first, as hell broke loose. They didn't know what it was, but from one moment to another, the ground and the entire building started to shake like the strongest earthquake imaginable just happened, while deafening explosions, hardly dulled from the massive walls ripped through the stale air of the room. The whole hell just took a few moments and then everything was silence, completely silence except from the shocked, short breaths from the inhabitants of the room. Garrus was buried under several, as it turned out thankfully empty, crates and after digging out from underneath, they started to inspect the still, to their surprise intact wall.

"Whoever build this place deserves a price." Mina mumbled, as flashlight now illuminated the room, their light dancing through the clouds of concrete dust that filled the air, while Marc's hands ran across the wall inspecting it, finding deep fracture and long cracks running across the entire front. Still, nothing but eerie silence outside.

"Tali can you open the door?" he asked and after a bit of typing in her Omni tool, the young Quarian woman replied.
"It's unlocked but jammed. Probably have to use manual force to open it." Great, now all they needed was a long crowbar.

"The remaining slavers are surrendering sir. The militia managed to capture a downed frigate and their air force now has total air supremacy. There are still a few pockets of resistance, but they'll probably be cleared out with the hour." The tactical officer explained to Jane Sheppard, while she looked out of the bridges window onto the planet. Thanks to Marc's team reactivating a defence cluster, the militia could gain the initiative and reset several more cluster, making it easy for them to first clean the air and now the ground. Several official of the colony had already grudgingly accepted the additional help from the Bastogne, two Pelicans worth of soldiers was simply too tempting with still thousands of slavers inside the main settlement. They were now busy getting Marc's team out of the almost destroyed command post. Sadly, they still had no intel on the lost Pelican, so Ash and the others were ….

A loud siren tore her out of her thoughts, as Sheppard's eyes returned to the displays and she didn't like what she saw. At least 4 more cruiser with several frigates had just passed the relay and they did not send any friendly signal, not even the ones used by the colony.

"Get to battle stations and accelerate, let's see if we can't…" Sheppard barked the order but was suddenly cut of by her astrogating officer. "Another Relay activation, it's…".

Long range sensors on star ships were, in difference to communication, limited by the speed of light. That was true for both UNSC and Citadel ships, although some researchers had tried to circumvent this limitation since the very beginnings of space travel.

Faster than light communication however was possible, thanks to Citadel tech and the Bastogne had been one of the first ship to get the refit. Inside a star system she could communicate with any other ship in real time, a tech which had also been used by the races of the Citadel to at least lessen the limitation of sensors a bit. Drones and frigates normally formed a veil around fleets, constantly scanning sending data to the larger ships.

The Bastogne had, upon entering the system, placed several small recon probes between the relay, giving her almost real time surveillance of the entry route. The slavers had overlooked these probes, they were small and very hard to recognize as something else than just debris or space rocks. Now the Bastogne had, thanks to these little drones, a live feed from the beautiful scene that just unfolded at the gate.

An Epoch-class heavy cruiser, two Halberd-class destroyers and a Marathon class-cruiser had come through the relay just after the slavers and once the confusion had worn down, had moved to crush them, before they could even turn. A combination a strong MAC volley from all ships and a full salvo of Archer missiles had annihilated the cruiser, while the screening frigates tried to scatter, just to get splatted like flies by the carrier's immense firepower. The whole spectacle took maybe two minutes and by the end of it the entire second wave of the slavers had been reduced to nothing but glowing debris.

"RnD didn't lie about the new toys they installed on the Epochs and Marathons, can't wait till the entire Navy gets the Upgrades." Sheppard thought to herself, as she sat up in her seat and got ready to answer the call from the fleet. She couldn't hide her surprise over the face that greeted her on the screen.

"Greeting Bastogne. This is the Alamein and her 'Battlegroup', good to know that we made it in time."

A man in his late forties, with already much grey in his once dark brown hair greeted Jane, an almost boyish grin on his face, one hundred percent knowing how awesome their little battle at looked for any bystander.

"Read-Admiral Morell, it is a pleasant surprise to see you and the Alamein here." Jane said and relaxed in her chair. Maybe this could still turn into a lucky day.

Chapter 9 End

Authors Note: So Chapter 9 done, what do you guys think about it ? I may rushed the battle a bit, but the plot will pick up after this chapter and i ddin't want to write four or so chapters about this battle. Let's just say Jane Sheppard will develop in a direction influenced heavily by a series of Sci-Fi books I'm currently reading. Also, let's just say Rear-Admiral Morrel might also play a role in the future. ^^

Well enough from me, but just one more question :

Would you people be interested in a OC contest ? There are a few characters that I need for the future chapters, so if you want it, I could insert one or two OCs into the story.

But now for real enough, tobiisagoodboy94 out.