6th of August
Uncharted space
UNSC Hyperion
"Our target is a Covenant comms relay station." On cue, a holographic representation of said station popped into existence above the table - it was vaguely flower-like in its shape; a long central beam with a saucer-shaped section on top. A great deal of antennae jutted from its surface. "It's floating in the upper atmosphere of a Class I gas giant, right in the middle of a storm. This station receives and relays dozens, maybe hundreds of orders every day."
"So we fly there and blow it to pieces, Commander?" Johnson was the first to speak.
"Not this time, Sergeant." Evangeline shook her head. "We infiltrate the station and upload a virus Cortana's been working on. It will edit the orders before dispatching them to their recipients. Instead of travelling to their assigned muster zones in UNSC space, the Covenant ships will instead jump to dangerous stellar remnants - like neutron stars or black holes, leading to their almost assured destruction."
"Sounds like a plan, ma'am. One thing, though - how are we going to get at the station if it's in the middle of a storm on a gas giant?"
"Well, I thought that was self-explanatory - we'll brave the storm."
"Oh." Johnson blinked.
"Yep." Evangeline nodded. "Get everything that's loose tied down. It's going to be one hell of a bumpy ride."
"I take it you've done this before, Commander?" Sawyer inquired as the ochre-streaked gas giant grew steadily bigger, many megametres ahead of Hyperion.
"A couple of times, yeah." Evangeline nodded. "Not as efficient as refuelling from a star, but it's saved my skin a few times. Cortana, do you have the trajectory ready?"
"Affirmative, Commander." The AI reported.
"Great. Put it on-screen." Immediately, a dotted line appeared on the windows, trailing away from Hyperion's prow down towards the edge of the storm cell. "Crew status?"
"Sergeant Stacker reports all cargo is secure, and all personnel are ready for the final approach."
"Guess it's now or never. Let's do this." With that, Evangeline gunned the throttle, sending the corvette hurtling towards the gas giant. With seasoned ease, she manoeuvred her ship in accordance with Cortana's trajectory. With every passing second, they drew ever closer to the planet's exclusion zone. To their left, the yawning chasm of the storm cell swirled relentlessly.
"We're dropping from supercruise in seven seconds. Brace for turbulence." Evangeline announced over the intercom before tightly gripping the controls. Sawyer and Miller did the same.
When Hyperion dropped down, it was almost immediately snatched up by a ferocious current of wind. The gees exerted upon the ship's crew would've likely knocked them out were it not for the inertia dampeners working overtime. The masterpiece of Core Dynamics was capable of maneuvers that would snap any atmospheric craft in two, but the storm's currents tested its airframe to the very limits - groans of tortured metal echoed throughout its hull as Evangeline wrestled with the controls to keep the ship from spinning out of control.
"Talk about a view to die for…" Johnson muttered in awe, his usually boisterous voice barely audible over the rumble of Hyperion's hull. The cargo bay's holo-emitters were active, displaying a live feed from the exterior cameras. The ship was skirting the very edge of the storm, providing a spectacular view down to the very bottom of the churning walls of gas and dust.
"Initiating burn in three, two, one, mark." The engines roared fiercely as Hyperion banked to left, its built-up momentum pushing the ship out from the current. As the maneuver was completed, they found themselves soaring through the relatively calm eye of the storm towards the relay station.
The Covenant installation was a smooth and shiny construction almost the size of a Halcyon-class cruiser, kept aloft by a set of repulsor engines on the underside.
"We'll be docking in just a moment. Check your hardsuits, everyone."
The Marines did as ordered, helping each other inspect the hardsuits taken from Hyperion's inventory.
The suits were a drab grey colour, composed of a one-size-fits-all undersuit, a pair of magnetizable gauntlets capable of adhering to most known materials, a pair of mag-boots, a reinforced cuirass containing vital life support systems, and a reinforced plexiglass helmet capable of auto-polarizing its visor in less than a hundredth of a second. Each suit was capable of providing oxygen for almost five hours, had an IFF tracker, and each gauntlet had a built-in hydrocable harpoon for getting around when walking wasn't an option.
"All suits are in working condition, Commander." Johnson replied before slipping his helmet over his head. There was a hiss-click as the atmospheric seals engaged, and the helmet's HUD winked into life. Everyone else had a triangle hovering above their heads, along with a small tag and vitals readout. His own status was displayed in the upper left corner.
"I'm glad to hear that, Sergeant. DERVISH is active. Be ready to disembark."
DERVISH was the name for a prototype ECM suite Cortana had developed following their successful sabotage of the Covenant supply station. In passive mode, it would conceal Hyperion from most known Covenant sensors. In active mode, it used the ship's emitters to conceal its signature as something that wouldn't be out of place in the particular area. In this case, the relay station's sensors saw the corvette as nothing more than an errant gust of wind. The only way they could be seen was if the Covenant looked out of a window, or knew the emitter frequency.
A tremor ran through the cargo bay's floor as Hyperion landed. A second later, the cargo platform began to lower - almost immediately, everyone's audio filters kicked in as wind began to balefully howl through the mostly-empty cargo bay. Blue Team were the first to disembark, taking up positions as the corvette's Marine complement followed.
"I've never been afraid of heights, but this is making me reconsider." Bisenti muttered uneasily, sparing half a glance to the edge of the landing platform. Despite the energy fields surrounding the platform, the gale-force winds still would've carried the Marines off their feet, if not for the mag-locked boots. Even the Spartans had to hunch over slightly to lower their centre of mass.
"Then just don't look down, Bisenti." Mendoza piped up.
"'Don't look down', really?"
Before they could continue bickering, Evangeline joined them, laser carbine held in one hand. "Alright, you two can gossip later. Blue Team, you got your copies of the virus?"
The Spartans nodded.
"Stacker? Johnson?"
The two Marines nodded as well.
"Good to know. Let's move out." With that, they set towards the airlock that would lead them inside the station. The door's software didn't put up much of a resistance to one of their modified spoofers, dubbed 'Agent Smith'. No alarms were raised, and the cameras kept broadcasting a looped video feed as the infiltrators crept inside.
"You know, if it were me, I'd have kept at least a single ship keeping an eye out." Mendoza muttered as Evangeline went over the station's schematics.
"Well, from what I've seen, arrogance and overconfidence is something the Covenant have in spades. I mean, they've don't even bother encrypting their communications. And we're going to make the most of it. Like good sergeant Johnson said, 'feed them humble pie until they beg for mercy'. High five!"
Johnson obliged.
"Eureka!" Evangeline exclaimed quietly a moment later - the station schematics spun for a split-second, outer layers of the hologram peeling away to reveal a complicated-looking cluster of cables near the core of the station. "There we go - that looks important. Cortana, what can you tell us?"
"I am detecting a great deal of data being uploaded and downloaded from this location. Temperature readings suggest that this data core has significant cooling systems devoted to its operation. This installation's bandwidth capabilities likely are much greater than those of standard Waypoint hubs."
"Then that's our target." Evangeline nodded before turning to face her crew. "Alright - I'm sure that I don't have to explain to you that we really can't afford to screw the pooch this time. We want the Covenant to be none the wiser about this act of sabotage. It's why you've been given silenced weapons this time around." She gestured to the M7S SMGs and M6C/SOCOMs they held. "Any questions? No? Good. Autobots, roll out."
The relay station's interior was no different than that of any other Covenant construct - dark purples and bright blues, with cavernous corridors and doors that slid open with a soft chime. The only thing that gave away the station's unsavoury position was the subtle, but persistent rumble of the winds battering it. There were few open spaces, too - just about every nook and cranny was occupied by one sub-system or another, leaving the saboteurs with precious little cover as they proceeded deeper inside the station.
Nonetheless, John had to admit that the planetside exercise on Reach had been a good decision - the rest of the Marines now moved fluidly, never leaving an angle uncovered. Well, at least ones that they knew of - a Spartan would still find a weak spot. But it satisfied him to see everyone work together like a well-oiled machine, instead of a bunch of Marines tagging along with Spartans. If nothing else, they seemed less jumpy around his team. If you could not rely on the soldier next to you, you might as well be dead, as Chief Mendez was fond of saying.
They passed through yet another junction - yet again, the cameras covering the entrances remained inert, and no patrols were encountered. To think that the Covenant would leave an important component of their military infrastructure so grossly understaffed beggared belief. Then again, examples of the Covenant's arrogant overconfidence were commonly seen throughout the war, most tellingly when Admiral Preston Cole had annihilated two entire fleets at the cost of his own life in the battle of Psi Serpentis. By blowing up a gas giant, no less. But his death had been a greater loss - for five years, his campaigns through the Outer Colonies had kept UNSC's defences from crumbling in the face of their merciless enemy. After Psi Serpentis, the Covenant hadn't wasted any time swarming the colonies, and large swathes of UNSC space went dark in the following years.
With a bit of luck that UNSC sorely needed, the battle of New Venture would mark a turning point in the war.
It was damned cold in the Covenant data core - so cold, that even the Spartans felt it. Fortunately, everyone's suits ensured the temperature remained a minor inconvenience. Just about every surface was coated in a layer of ice, except for the hulking device occupying most of the room, glowing a faint 8.16 degrees Celsius on their scanners.
"This is it." Evangeline grinned victoriously as she made her way over to the thrumming data core. She knelt down in front of the control terminal, affixing the spoofer to its interface.
"Mister Anderson…" 'Agent Smith' droned ominously as it sprung into life, lines of green code crawling across its black screen. It wasn't long before its decryption software had cracked the terminal - with data fragments salvaged from Covenant wrecks above New Venture and polymorphic decryption software given to her by Evangeline, Cortana had spent the better part of a week marrying the three disparate systems together. The result was a cyberwarfare software that few networks could resist, whether UNSC or Covenant. Its only limitation was that it needed open symmetric keys to work its magic, and Hyperion's data storage only held a finite number of those.
"Alright, we have access. Chips, please." A short moment passed before six data chips were placed in her outstretched palm. "Thank you kindly." She plugged one of the chips into 'Agent Smith'. Its screen blinked again as the malware was uploaded into the station's network. Several seconds passed before it beeped once, and she plugged in the next chip. Each of the thumb-sized devices held a copy of Cortana's virus. While one of the copies would remain in the station to tamper with the communications, the others would piggyback across Covenant ships, causing whatever trouble they could make, wherever they went.
Of course, given the distances involved, it would be months before any effects would be seen. Not that this was meant to stop an enemy as relentless as the Covenant. UNSC was in a dire need of breathing space that could only be achieved by hamstringing the Covenant war machine.
"And that's the last one." Evangeline announced a couple of minutes later, double-checking that there were no traces of tampering that would give anything away, on the off chance someone actually decided to investigate the data core.
"That's it? Feels a little anti-climactic." Kelly quipped.
"Well, I mean we could shoot our way out, but that'd kinda defeat the whole point of infiltration." Evangeline replied as she stood up. "Let's double-time it back to Hyperion. Time to make like a tree, and get out of here."
Light of Devotion was a fine vessel. The assault carrier was a brand new ship, with a fine crew that had performed admirably during its trial runs.
Yet a dead star still snapped it in two like a dry twig. Even before it had finished its transition from slipspace, the high-energy jet from the neutron star had swept the warship up, simultaneously cracking its hull and bathing it in lethal amounts of radiation. A couple of seconds later, its accompanying fleet arrived. They fared no better, unable to escape to slipspace due to the stellar remnant's immense mass.
In the deep darkness of uncharted space, none heard the screams of thousands as their ships were torn to shreds. In less than three minutes, the Fleet of Reverent Piety was no more.
A/N: Neutron stars are fucking scary.