The shipmaster looked approvingly at what was happening.

The unknown species had attacked his forward bases as expected, and destroyed half of their defenses in a massed air assault. His forces couldn't fire back at the long-ranged missile-equipped vehicles, but the aircraft and gunships were a different matter. As ordered, after the first volley, his forces had returned fire and shot down a quarter of the attacking strike-craft, damaging all the rest and forcing them to retreat.

Then he had sent his Seraph fighters out, using the opportunity to to bomb enemy positions, and strike some of their rear installations, before eventually being driven back at minimal losses. He wielded his remaining air forces sparingly. Only deploying Banshees in areas where he had air-superiority, and the enemy ground forces were engaged.

The forward bases were serving their purpose quite well. The advance has slowed down across most of the front attacked by the arrivals, as they sent small squads ahead to try and clear paths through the Covenant defences.

The humans and their allies were winning these fights, but their advance was slow and costly. And while this was happening, the corvette that would transport him could approach the ship, using the chaos of the battle as cover.

It had already dispatched Special Operations teams via shuttle to capture examples of the arrivals technology, as well as soldiers, although the latter had not succeeded yet. The arrivals had a tendency to turn their weapons on themselves if capture seemed imminent. But one of their Ultras had managed to recover a working enemy communications device. In an hour the Corvette be able to dock with the Cruiser.

He looked at the battle again. The humans and their new allies had already overrun the forward bases due to their extreme usage of missile weaponry, which made him question just how much ammunition they had left.

"Major." He 'Susamee, a somewhat generic unscarred Sangheili, stood up and offered a salute. "When will the ship be ready to be scuttled?" He asked.

"The progress is slow, Shipmaster. The Huragok are working as fast as they can, but the human mass drivers damaged several systems which would be vital for a successful self-destruct detonation. An unacceptable amount of salvage would remain, the entire front half of the ship, in fact."

The Shipmaster grimaced. That just would not do. Not at all. The thought of the humans salvaging so much... The shame alone would see his bloodline expunged for failure. He couldn't imagine forcing such a fate upon his children. Especially not his daughters. Even if the Ultra had been correct about what he had recovered, it was still a great risk to take. The Hierarchs were not known for their compassion. It was always good to keep some form of political leverage on hand when dealing with san'shyuum, although he was wise enough not to say so to anyone.

-

General Pallonis and Major Ross looked at the tactical view with increasing worry. The Covenant defences were inflicting heavy losses on their forces, far too heavy. It was going to be a gamble to attack the shield generators and try to open a hole for the shuttles to board the cruiser. The Turian Cabals and Armiger Legion were too rare to lose in droves to anti-air defenses.

But the Covenant defences were formidable, and his numerical superiority wasn't as good as he would prefer it to be.

After several costly aerial assaults upon the forward line, the Hierarchy and UNSC forces had managed to break through and destroy most of the bases, with the handful of holdouts being mopped up. The loss in men was negligible in the long run, but the loss of material had been expensive. Too many tanks and fighters lay broken in the field.

The major spoke up. "I can't say much to help you here. I'm experienced in fighting defensive battles against the Covenant. Attacking them? Much less so. We'll be up to our necks in blood taking out their bases."

The latest reports were starting to come in.

The drone swarms had almost all been taken out, but gathered good intelligence on the enemy capabilities before being destroyed.

His Jiris vehicles had taken minimal losses like before, whereas his Tyruss MBT's and IFV's had taken heavy losses. Not crippling, but more than he was comfortable with. Only the UNSC vehicles had not taken such horrific losses, their armor being more suitable to going up against plasma. He would have to ask the Hierarchy to trade for some human experience in plasma-resistant armor.

When the turian artillery had cleared a way, the human armored forces had immediately closed in at high speed, all guns blazing as they broke through the Covenant defenses. But they left dozens of tanks behind them as piles of slag. They took minor losses to Grunts popping out of foxholes and firing their anti-tank weapons at close range, most casualties being at the hands of the dug in defensive emplacements

Human personnel piled into the Warthogs leapt out of their vehicles to attack these bases head-on and clear them of what the missiles could not root out, while turian shuttles landed troops to outflank and encircle the enemy positions.

The Covenant hadn't been able to stop their advance, but they had slowed it to a crawl, and losses were starting to pile up.

The fighting was bloody and vicious, fought with knives, grenades, and shotguns, but the defenders fell quickly. The Grunts and Jackals were fierce, but they lacked armor and training compared to the humans and turians.

After clearing the forward Covenant defensive lines, hundreds of wounded soldiers were evacuated back to the ONI compound that served as the base for their makeshift alliance. Palavan would have a lot more cyborgs by the time this war was over.

The human and turian tanks were lighting up the shield generators defending the Covenant anti-air defences with every weapon they had in their arsenal.

The ONI agent, Lieutenant Commander Rickard, entered the room again.

"The prowler is in position. It can fire the nuke at any time." The ONI agent said, his eyes darting back and forth between the General and the Major. "I trust this "Armiger Legion" is ready to launch a boarding action?"

Pallonis nodded. "When we've punched a hole in their anti-air defences, I'll send the command for them to engage."

The major looked at the holographic display again. "At this rate, it is going to be hours before we can launch the assault.. Any chance we'll have reinforcements from your people arrive to speed things along?"

Pallonis shook his head. "It's been too soon since Admiral Karandis sent back word. Unless another of our exploration fleets tries to use this system's gas giant to discharge its drives, although I wouldn't count on that." His own fleet had run into other Turian exploration flotillas during their exploration of the Orion Arm, meeting at strategically located gas giants to discharge their cores.

Rickard let out an uncharacteristic sigh. "We'll just have to wait and hope Covenant reinforcements don't show up. "

Pallonis nodded and looked at the holograms of the shield generators protecting the Covenant anti-air defenses. They were covered in near-continual explosions and mass-accelerator impacts. They just had to wait for those to break.

-

Nialla woke up and screamed as the medic injected the contents of the canister into her wounds.

She tried to move, noticing she was lying down on a stretcher in the Covenant prefab, which was now filled with human and turian medics.

"Stay still. That's an order, soldier!" The turian medic holding her said as the human injected her with something that hurt beyond all recognition. It sounded like a whipped cream canister being emptied. The Turian jabbed something into her neck.

"You've been heavily wounded. We're going to get you out of here." The medic said.

Whatever the injection was, Nialla's sight began to clear, and she began calming down. She could now see who was tending to her.

She was surrounded by three turians and two humans, working her body over with medical equipment.

"Sterile field generator is still active." One of the humans said, pumping another spray of the weird foam into the chest cavity.

"I'm losing this one." She heard someone say. She turned her head to look, hey eyes going wide as she saw Gedrus surrounded by Turians.

"I am doing everything I can to keep his brain oxygenated, but his lungs are as good as gone. Send word to base to prepare a full set of cybernetic organs, as well as a heart-lung machine." One of the Turians said. "His chest cavity is… I've never seen anything like that."

A human next to the turian medic spoke up. "He won't survive being moved."

"No. He won't." The turian confirmed. "Which is why that sterile field generator you have is so useful."

"These cybernetics of yours are fancy, though. What did you say they were?"

"Bio-synthetic cybernetics."

Nialla realized they were talking about her, and peaked forward to look at her chest. She tried to touch it, only to notice she didn't have a right arm anymore. She was too shocked to scream.

Everything came back to her. The Elite appearing and slaughtering his way through her squad, cutting off her arm, and slashing her across the chest. Then her falling on the ground, unable to move. The Elite picking up her arm and running off with it as a prize..

Gedrus being lifted up by the Elite. The last thing she'd seen before she'd collapsed from blood loss was a surviving turian calling in an emergency medevac.

"G...Gedrus." She groaned, catching the attention of her medic. "Please save Gedrus." She said, tears in her eyes. The plasma wounds just hurt so much. "Please sa-" The medic gently put a hand on her lips.

"Save your energy. We're doing all we can for him."

She heard a shuttle land outside. More turian as well as human medics came into the building. She looked around again. Nialla and Gedrus were the only ones being treated as far as she could see. Two human marines sat in a corner, looking ahead with a thousand yard stare. One of them had lost an arm and the other an eye. They each had a human medic working on them.

She felt herself being moved onto an antigrav bed. The pain making her too delirious to properly take in everything going on around her. She reached out for Gedrus, who wasn't being moved and now had four turians working on him. The sounds of drills, machines, and omni-tools burrowed into her brain as they worked.

She was lifted into the shuttle and placed down on a secure table. A medical shuttle.

"Wh-why aren't you moving him?" She asked, delirious with pain and the chemicals in her blood.

The medic carrying her looked over at Gedrus.. "If they move him, he dies." She reached out for him with the stump of her right arm, coughing up blood."

"Do you have the biofoam?" A human asked the shuttle pilot. Who nodded and took a crate of canisters out of the cargo compartment. "Thank you!" The human said, running over to where the human medics were working on some marines and handing out the canisters.

She stayed, unmoving, in the shuttle, waiting for it to take off. After an agonizing minute, two humans on anti-grav stretchers were placed in the shuttle beside her, a human climbing in next to each of them, working on them with their own medical instruments.

One turian medic sat down to her and began working on her stump, doing something to it, connecting to some kind of machine that fit onto the stump. He looked down at her. "You're going to make it Sergeant. Just stay calm."

Another medic came walking up to the shuttle, holding something heavy. Then she saw it.

He was holding a pair of armored legs.

She grabbed the blanked across her chest and tossed the blanket aside with her intact left arm.

Nialla screamed when she saw her missing lower body.

She grit her teeth and tried to focus, closing her eyes and trying to escape from the horror that had happened to her.