9.0
Reclaimed
XXXXX
Rey hadn't felt this nervous since his first acceptance into the Spartan program or when he was caught off guard in his training with his master back on Sanghelios. The young Spartan found himself waiting for the arrival of the UNSC fleet, and in no time 350 ships appeared off of the portside of the massive space station, the station may have looked impressive, but the arrival of 350 massive ships of an assortment of shapes and daunting size was something that the council fleet didn't like nor did the council.
But it wasn't just the UNSC fleet, the Covenant fleet had also come into view of the citadel, the massive super carriers were as long as the length of the citadel wings and that was no small feat of sheer engineering and resource power. When the main fleet came into range they contacted the citadel.
"This is Admiral Ender Markov of the UNSC 82nd fleet, we have arrived to demand the end of the war on the UNSC and the human race, any vessels attempting flee from this point will be halted either by force or otherwise other methods. We shall not move, but if need be we will engage should you attempt to resist." The admiral stated.
The council paled at the sight of the UNSC, Rey seemed to smile at the thought that he no longer needed to be afraid of being isolated, the UNSC would be the icebreaker in this, either the council made the turians surrender, or things would get messy in the capital. The council members discussed what actions they should take.
"This is preposterous, to allow the humans to force us down!" Valern hissed.
"We have no choice, and this still is a democratic system Valern, we shall all decide." Tevos replied.
It took a few moments before they all nodded. Tevos addressed the UNSC fleet via the communications channel on all bandwidths. "This is councillor Tevos of the asari republic and acting representative of the council at this moment, we shall desist in the conflict, however orders will take time to be processed. Your Spartan here has already taken control of our tower and we have already come to an agreement, we shall submit for now."
The admiral came over the com channel to Rey. "Good to hear that you're alive Spartan, is this true?"
"Yes sir, the docks are secured by the major and the other survivors, they'll guide you here if you'd like to speak with the council." He said.
"Good, we shall discuss the UNSC situation with the council as soon as we can get there, hold your position Rey, we'll be arriving soon enough." The admiral stated.
XXXXX
Shanxi- Regan Capital City
Anderson felt as though he was trying to run the damned decathlon back on Earth for the best runners competition, which he did and received 5th place. He ducked under a pile of collapsed crates as he fired in quick succession at the turians hiding behind a wall. The M6 rounds left their marks as the HE rounds blew chunks off of the cover. He received a friendly response as a dozen MA rounds peppered his position.
Marlow fired to cover the younger marine as he then rushed from cover over to Sargent Avery where he ducked with a BR and then grunted as he shifted fire to the left, his rounds picked off the turian on the roof of a building dropping the body down. Anderson was surprised at how many turians he had killed in the last 30 minutes since they arrived here in the plaza, they had yet to break through the enemy battery, but still it was a feat of pure awesome.
"Stop gawking and get some kills boy." He said to Anderson who suddenly snapped from his awe.
Anderson joined the fight once more, bad company was pushing on through soon enough, they just needed to break from this fire fight and head over to the main turian cruiser and the rest is self-explanatory with the explosives expert that they had, they just needed to deal with this enemy AA battery and then they'd go and kick some ass.
Anderson peaked from cover and lay down some fire at a turian squad, but he ducked as a blue sphere came hurtling over his head, he had a nasty feeling that if that thing hit him he'd have less to worry about being slow to respond. The turian who fired off the blue sphere hid behind a wall, a wall that the explosives expert Hags could see with his M40 grenade launcher.
The turian didn't know what hit him as he was suddenly blow apart along with the support beams of the wall he was taking cover with, the balcony above collapsed and crushed the doorway which allowed the turians reinforcements. In seconds the firefight ended and Johnson said.
"Damn, might as well retire, too bad for those poor bastards."
"You mean the turians?" Sweets asked.
"No I meant the repair guys who're going to be cleaning up that mess." He replied smoking away with his large cigar.
They cleared from the shopping plaza onto the second level and then they rushed out from the plaza to the main parking lot, the building that they were aiming for was just across, it had a single AA battery which just covered the street and that they needed to remove to advance on the turians cruiser and then it was going to be fireworks and sunshine for the next 2 weeks on Nu Caledonia.
Redford took point with Marlow and covered the entry way into the apartment complex next door, they brought out their MA5Cs and began to search for any targets; once they cleared the ground level they began a slow advance to the first. Marlow took point with a shotgun, the CQC of the situation made it perfect for him to take charge for this part of their mission.
It wasn't long until they came across a long hallway with absolutely nothing, Sweets was about to move ahead when Hags pulled him back. "Hey what's the big idea?" Sweets hissed angrily.
The explosives expert pointed out that the lighting in the room made a faint line from the side of one wall, a mirror reflected a straight beam of light from another corner of the room, and it was obviously a trap. "Looky here, a light mine, pressurised explosive air canister with an explosive trigger, someone knows their explosives." He commented.
"Okay aside from the admiration can you defuse the thing before we head across to the other side?" Marlow asked.
"Disarming this will be easy, just give me a second to figure out where this sucker put the mine." Hags said as he looked around, it didn't take long as the explosives expert found the trap, he removed the explosive and pulled the detonator out.
"Well guess that's one down, so how many more to go?" Marlow asked.
"About 12…" Hags said eyeing the corridor carefully.
"You're fucking kidding right?" Sweets said.
"Nope, that's 12…" Hags pointed at all the reflecting lights.
"I swear to new catholian god that the asshole who had the idea to trap an entire corridor has a lot of time on his sorry ass."
Somewhere else…
"ACHOOO" Garrus sneezed.
"Geez man what did you do sleep in a freezer?" The turian marine next to him commented.
"Hey that happened once when Garell decided to play that prank back at the academy."
"So likely that we're going to get ambushed?" Another turian asked.
"Not that likely, seriously who the seven gates of Sidel's Hell would try to get through Garrus's intricate trap web?"
"We'll they're gonna be there all day…" Garrus muttered under his breath.
XXXXX
It didn't take long for the UNSC pelican to land at the main dock, Heather and Mathis went along to greet their arriving superior with Duran and Lieutenant Nathan. It was a rare occasion that the UNSC marines were not within their usual dress codes, but who could honestly blame them? The quarian outfitted marines saluted as their superior arrived; the only way to tell the difference was by the hands of all suits and the shoulder guards that they wore in order to differentiate from the quarians.
Admiral Markov didn't waste any time travelling from the docks to the presidium, the crowds down in many sections of the station looked around concernedly about the state that the Council was in, this military coup or confrontation was never expected especially on the Citadel. Once they arrived down in the council tower they met with Rey.
Rey saluted as his superior arrived, the admiral returned his gesture and asked.
"Spartan, I see that you've well and truly outdone yourself this time, minimal loss of life and done in record time, you probably won the entire war yourself. Well we better get through with the proceedings; the council is going to have to consider how they'd end the war and how the turians are going to have to cope with helping pay off the damage should they accept."
Markov walked into the main chambers with the UNSC marines he had, the council had still be in decision to finally accept defeat. Markov addressed them. "Have you decided upon how this should end?"
The councillors took their sights upon the admiral and Tevos replied. "A compromise has been decided to which we believe will suit both sides just fine."
XXXXX
Shanxi-
Marlow had point once more, this time they had managed to finally get through the ridiculous amount of traps and successfully breached the turian position, Marlow was to head off and destroy the AA while the others in the squad had fallen back to cover his escape and devise a distraction for him. That didn't settle the fact that he was on his own for the whole thing while the others drank out at the local bar.
Passing the 3rd group of guards from his ventilation passage, he arrived at his destination, the emergency exit to the roof, he pulled the metal grate from wall near the exit and stepped out and replaced the grate carefully. He was amazed that no one could hear him swearing from downstairs.
He climbed the stairs and checked his IFF on his VISR; he found that there were 5 contacts on the roof, 3 on guard 2 manning the AA guns. He removed his knife as he selected the closest to the door he was waiting at, once he had chosen his target he pulled the door open enough to see where the guard was positioned. One was facing off towards AA and another looking over the edge, and one walking around.
Marlow waited for the guard to move past the doorway and then crept up behind him; grabbing the helmet he slid the blade under his throat and dragged the twitching body back through the doorway. No one had taken to his presence yet so he'd use the advantage, he pulled out his M6 and locked a silencer to the nozzle. Carefully stepping behind another turian he fired at the guard facing the edge of the building, he dropped off as the loud AAs kicked in.
The last guard noticing the lack of fellow comrades walked around to see where they had all gone, Marlow waited as he arrived at the door, no longer there was a need for subtlety, he smacked the door into the face of the turian as he walked past and fired into the stunned turian guard. Once dropping the alien he crossed the distance over to the AAs and threw 3 frag grenades, the gunners had no chance as they were blown into blue bits of gore and limbs.
As soon as the silence came to the AAs Marlow had 2 dozen contacts rushing to meet him from the stairs. Thankfully the others of B company had remembered that Marlow was still alive, the whole building shook as Hags set off all the captured explosive packages down 3 levels, the turians were now scattering to meet with whatever was attacking, which was Marlow and B Company.
Now all he had to do was survive until someone called in that damned pelican.
XXXXX
Citadel-
"The demands of the council are outrageous, that's being subtle as well, considering everything councillors. That's a demand to which the UNSC would happily disregard as genocide. AIs will not be deactivated just for your reassurance and the sheer scale of the UNSCs military power being reduced would absolutely cripple us in the face of any threat in the possible future." Markov stated.
The discussion had just become a free for all once the council began to state demands, the UNSC provided a statistic as to the UNSCs military and technological scale, saying that it wasn't impressive would have been an understatement, the council had never met a race that could dwarf it in technology or medical advancement.
Things had gone downhill though as the council began to push for the UNSC to disband over 60% of its total military strength and that was mostly the infantry side of things, the UNSC was also being asked to remove over 80% of naval fleets and decommission all planetary defences for council inspectors to determine what further purposes they might serve.
Saying that Markov was less than pleased was an understatement, he was furious, things had gone from simply bad to a ridiculous scale of bad, sure the UNSC had the gun in its hands, but the council made things harder to not pull the trigger when it wasn't necessary. Markov was getting sick to death by the damned scale of bureaucracy of situation, 3 voices against one.
"The council's demands are of the best interest of all races in the sanctuary of council space; these demands do not seem as crippling to us as it is to you." Tevos replied.
"That's because your space has never been absolutely crushed under a superior enemy with more technology or weaponry as yourself. The UNSC will not accept the terms of the treaty that you are trying to offer us, and I sure do not think that the covenant will either." Markov gestured to the elite standing only 5 feet from him.
"And what is your 'allies' take on this? Surely they can understand enough to be able to speak for themselves?" Valern patronized.
"I can speak fine, and I can understand you very clearly councillor." The elite responded calmly.
"Then what is your take on this?" Valern asked.
"You have nothing to gain from the UNSC and the UNSC does not wish to accept your terms, I believe a truce could be settled first though before anything revolving the complexities of the UNSC should be established. Unless you intend on a mindless slaughter for the next month, it would be prudent to recall all troops and await for the UNSC to prepare a full delegation, but in terms of this meeting now, you have very stubborn intentions councillor and they'll be your undoing in the long run." The elite replied.
"Well we'd like to call back our forces if it hadn't been for the crippling sabotage committed by the UNSCs Spartan pet, we won't be able to contact anyone for another week." Valern said.
"Well then don't complain to us and just figure out how you intend to come to a decision so we can all go home." Markov retorted.
Rey could honestly see the struggle between the UNSC and the council, he didn't get involved in the politics of such things but he was sure that UNSC HIGH COM was probably going to just wipe the slate and cut the UNSC off from the council regions just to avoid further aggravation. The covenant would probably have to call in someone better for the negotiations, probably the higher leadership of the Arbiter or hierarch.
The verbal bashing both sides traded continued through till the end, the UNSC and council agreed that as soon as someone managed to get communication restored they'd call the truce, the UNSC was already relaying orders for a stand by, but the time would take mostly a week to accomplish, once everyone had enough time, then the real proceedings could occur.
XXXXX
AN:
Yes, I think it's time to brush off the dust again, there have been failings of some of my stories so I'm just dropping the UCAF based stories which I see are going badly or need heavy revision.
1 solid month has completely mind fucked me over on exams and I have no good ideas for a while aside from requests coming through which I have yet to full acknowledge due to sheer time consumption, so I'll just lay this down as best as I can.
Halo/ME:
Era of Contravene will continue thankfully due to some desperate part of me holding on to the prospect of the future
Ascension is being cancelled due to lack of support and will be under revision next year
The WH40k based story on the Halo ME universe has yet to fully take off, so I'll get to work as soon as I finish my last exams, but not promise that it will be sufficient
Age of revelation will need to finish up in 2 chapters and that's it
Halo's Dawn for my 40k crossover before will also undergo a cancellation for a while until I can revise my ideas
Gateway to revelation is a failure off the bat, the idea was originally meant to form the 2 universes of the halo and the ME in the same one, but due to lack of thinking and half assed ideas I just screwed the whole thing up in a minefield of plot holes which will result in bad criticism from practically every author I know of.
Providence of the Young is also a failure due to its too rapid construction and badly written plot line, I have no idea how to express my views for an entire cast unless I be a multi personal psycho path with some serious disorder of mental thinking then that's also going to be cancelled as soon as I can think of something better.
Freelancer as you all know is just making the last dead run to gain support due to my lack of thinking now and I just want to finish the mini story.
The light of Halo will be on hold due to sheer scale of crap being tossed around, so just wait for it.
Tomorrow's Embrace is now under revision and will be considered, however please if someone else can take it off my hands feel free to.
3 new stories have been put on hold till next year and I don't think I can come up with anything right now so just wait for things to settle down as I have fallen into work pressure stress disorder for a while…
That's all I have left to say before I drop dead from lack of sleep.