A/N: I had originally planned to upload this as a single massive chapter, but I've decided to instead upload it as a two part (second part is not finished yet). I have decided to enable Anonymous Reviews for the time being, please keep in mind that this is a privilege and it will only take one person abusing it with trolling and/or flaming to have it revoked again, since I have a rather strong distaste for such things.
Some of you may have noticed references to a number of different songs or bands throughout the story so far,if you can point out three or more, you may win yourself an internet. As always, enjoy the update and please leave me some feedback
Edit: A/N 2: Anonymous Reviews has once again been disabled and the review that caused it has been removed. It may have been funny in an odd sense and even drawn a chuckle or two from me, but like I said, I have a rather strong distaste for trolling and flaming.
OOOOO
Harvest, Surface
Mount Hieronymus
Suspected Forerunner facility, Expeditionary Force One, 12th Marines
"This place is huge," somebody said behind Private Weeks as sixty odd Marines advanced slowly through the utterly silent underground structure. The ceiling was a good hundred metres over head and the equally wide corridor they were in (which, he noted, was completely devoid of any kind of cover) stretched down into the earth at a constant twenty five degree angle for an unknowable distance.
Every five hundred meters, there was a door wide enough to drive a tank through on either side of the corridor. A few fire teams had attempted to effect entry through these doors and fail spectacularly; they were locked up tight and whatever they were made out of seemed to be totally impervious to the explosive charges the Marines carried.
The walls were made of an unknown material that was soft to touch, like warm velvet, but which clanged quietly when someone had tapped it with their field shovel, ringing with the unmistakeable sound of metal on metal. The soft, almost soothing light that illuminated their way seem to emanate from the walls themselves.
Somewhere ahead of them, Weeks could hear the distant rumble of a pair of main battle tanks moving swiftly to secure the bottom of the corridor - if there was a bottom. Behind them, another three or four hundred Marines would be making their way down the shaft, no doubt accompanied by the Hammer IFV's and the Elephant command vehicle that were going to be setting up a forward operating base at the bottom of the enormous shaft.
"Yeah," Weeks muttered, the oppressive silence making him speak quietly as though he didn't want to disturb this ancient place. "Wonder how we missed this?"
"A planet is a big place," another Marine said, also quietly. "The mountains were only really surveyed from orbit, I think, and not many people actually come up here."
"Can the chatter, everyone," a Lieutenant T. Hiroki hissed over the radio, his name appearing in Weeks' HUD beside a small icon that indicated the transmission was going out to his platoon only. "Just concentrate on doing your jobs."
The boom of explosive ordinance and chatter of machine guns erupted from ahead and the radio built into Weeks' helmet came alive with contact reports.
"Hostile infantry, hundred metres front," the voice of one of the tank commanders crackled in his ear. "Approximately forty foot-mobiles; we've got this."
The radio chatter cut out as another detonation reverberated through the cavernous tunnel.
"Sounds like they're kicking ass up there," the Marine that commented on the orbital survey of the mountains said enthusiastically.
"Yeah," Weeks grinned. "Sounds like it."
OOOOO
Covenant troops blinked out of existence in clouds of multi-hued blood as the twin Devastator MBTs raked their .30 calibre mini-guns across their lines, pummelling and puncturing purple crates that the enemy was using for cover with depleted uranium slugs.
The mini-guns on these two tanks were operated by a Marine inside the thickly armoured main hull of the tank, using a joystick and a view-screen that was provided visuals by a camera mounted on the gun, protecting the operators from harm. Plasma bolts washed over the lead tank, the thick Titanium-A battle plate glowing a dull red from the heat of the rounds but otherwise unfazed.
Captain Marcela O'Bannon, commander of the tank Betty Blue, smirked as the last of the resistance withered away under a hailstorm of fire. The mini-guns quieted, still whirring menacingly as their operators searched for fresh targets.
"Let's move on, shall we?", she said, tapping the driver gently on the shoulder. The man nodded quietly and opened up the throttle, accelerating the nearly hundred tonne beast forward.
They were near the end of the long slope into the earth and could see were the ground levelled off a few hundred metres distant, the corridor seemingly opening up into an even wider area. Alien light vehicles began streaming from the opening and moving up the slope towards the twin tanks, firing rapid-fire plasma weapons.
The tanks stopped moving as plasma splashed harmlessly against their thick armour, allowing the twenty Marines accompanying them on foot to use the hulking mass as cover. The Marines returned fire with rifles and light machine guns, targeting the operators of the small, fast hover-bikes as the mini-guns spoke again, this time joined by the twin 7.62mm machine guns.
Betty's left main gun fired, the round setting fire to the atmosphere as it tore through the air and obliterated one of the bikes. Another fell to her mini-gun, chewed up like a piece of Swiss cheese before detonating in a fiery blue explosion. Another was taken out by Betty's right main gun, and another still by her sister, before the remaining bikes decided that retreat was a good idea.
One the rapidly retreating bikes had it's operator killed by a well placed shot from one of the Marine Designated Marksmen, the bike careening wildly before slamming into a wall with a crunch and a squeal.
"New targets, bottom of the slope, two hostile tanks," Betty's main gun operator, Lieutenant James May, reported. "Engaging."
The twin blue hover tanks made easy targets as the manoeuvred to cover the retreat of their lighter counterparts, one of them holed clean through by the other tank before even firing a shot. The other managed to fire a single large orb of plasma before Betty gave it the same treatment.
"Evasive action, scatter!" O'Bannon ordered through the TAC-COM, prompting the Marines on foot to scatter back up the slope and the two tanks to separate and back-pedal. The orb smashed harmlessly into the ground eight metres in front of Betty, hurling a cloud of steam into the air and not doing much else.
"Man," O'Bannon's counterpart in the other tank, Captain Sikura, spoke over the TAC-COM. "Those are their tanks? Pretty pathetic."
"Yeah," O'Bannon replied with a chuckle. "Lucky for us, not so much for them."
The tanks rolled forward again, rumbling down the slope at a sedate pace. Covenant ground forces appeared at the mouth, taking cover behind their ruined tanks, firing plasma and pink needles at the Marines, using their own tanks as moving cover. The mini-guns came to life again, smashing the enemy infantry with ease and forcing them to keep their heads down.
Large green projectiles surged up to meet the tanks and radiation alarms blared within their hulls. The automated Active Defence Laser System engaged the projectiles, zapping the radioactive fuel rods mid-flight and detonating them early. More and more began soaring up to the tanks, before one finally made it through the ADLS and impacted the hull-down armour of Betty.
The fuel rod detonated against the armour in a burst of intense heat and radiation, boiling away a couple of centimetres of the thick, angled plating and temporarily blinding the driver.
"That's enough of that," O'Bannon muttered, before turning to her gunner. "Reduce muzzle velocity 65% and load HEBB."
"Loading HEBB," the gunner acknowledged as he scaled back the power supplied to the magnetic coils in the tanks main guns, effectively reducing the velocity of the rounds it would be firing and allowing the High Explosive Ball Bearing rounds to be used without cooking off mid-flight due to atmospheric friction.
HEBB shells were packed with high explosive and hundreds of tiny ball bearings each, making them ideal for dealing with infantry. The rounds themselves were designed with variable detonation ranges, allowing gunners to change the amount of time it takes between firing the round and the round releasing it's deadly cargo based on the range to the intended target.
"Fire when ready," O'Bannon ordered as the ADLS shot down another fuel rod and the driver deftly evaded another of the slow moving projectiles.
"Firing," the gunner reported, followed a split second later by two loud thumps in quick succession as the HEBB rounds exploded from Betty's twin barrels, hurtling down range in the blink of an eye before detonating mid-flight and showering the ruined tanks and dozen or so infantry huddled around them with hundreds of ball bearings, shredding the lightly armoured Grunts and two shielded Elites with equal, brutal efficiency.
The chatter of small-arms fire and returning whine of plasma weapons ceased, creating an almost eerie silence in the corridor, broken only by the quiet rumble of the tank engines and the ominous whir of the still spinning mini-gun barrels.
"Captain O'Bannon to EF-1, entry side secure," O'Bannon radioed back to the Marines further up the corridor. "Request you move to hold entry side and provide support as we move through the doorway, how copy?"
"Solid copy, Captain," a masculine voice replied in her earpiece. "We're picking up the pace, ETA ninety seconds. Light elements of the 22nd Armour Division will be approximately one minute behind us, advise you remain where you are until they arrive."
"Understood EF-1, holding here," O'Bannon acknowledged, sighing as the connection was severed. To her crew, she said, "Nice to be getting a little payback, huh?"
Her comment was replied to with grins and nods from the other tankers.
"Return main guns to max velocity and reload penetrators," she said to her gunner, all business now. "I'm willing to bet there are a lot more vehicles on the other side of that entry way."
Further back up the slope, the rear-view cameras tracked the Marines of EF-1 as they broke out into a jog over a kilometre away, moving to catch up with the twin tanks and their own supporting fire teams. Even further behind them, the hi-res cameras could make out the sleek, predatory shapes of M779 Hammer Infantry Fighting Vehicles and the mansion-sized bulk of the Elephant mobile base they were escorting.
Four of the Hammer's surged forward, picking up speed as they raced down-slope towards O'Bannon's rapidly growing little army as they made their preparations to breach the entryway into the presumably much larger chamber beyond.
OOOOO
Harvest, Forerunner Facility
Temporary Covenant F.O.B, Central Command Building (Pre-Fab)
Great Chamber
Field Master Solus 'Salasee bit back a snarl of frustration as the Ghosts retreated back into the chamber, chased by human projectiles. He didn't bother holding in his rage as the two Wraiths he sent to cover their retreat were annihilated, followed shortly thereafter by the infantry units sent to support the tanks.
"Field Master, the shield generator is assembled and awaiting activation," an Unggoy underling reported nervously as the much larger alien fiddled with the hilt of his plasma blade.
"Then have it activated," 'Salasee snapped at the little creature, turning and delivering a glare that could melt starship armour. Startled, the Unngoy squeaked in fear, uttered an "at once" and beat a hasty retreat from the command building.
'Salasee had orders to hold this position long enough for the Recovery Team to retrieve a number of sacred artefacts believed to be kept in smaller armoured chambers linked to the Great Chamber by hundred metre long tunnels.
The Great Chamber itself was enormous, the ceiling stretching one kilometre overhead, the distance from the main entry way to the end of the chamber was one point eight kilometres, bisected in the centre by a chasm that stretched to infinity below, crossable only by aircraft or one of eight hard light bridges that crossed its one point two kilometre length.
The F.O.B was situated on the opposite side of the chasm to the entryway, all the light bridges had been deactivated with the controls on the far side guarded by a pair of Locust walkers and no less than forty infantry, with snipers set up in towers on the F.O.B's side watching the controls with orders to eliminate anyone, friendly or hostile, that attempted to activate the bridges.
The F.O.B itself was standard for pre-fabricated bases; a Command Building, a Communications Centre, a small Vehicle Bay and Aircraft Landing Pad servicing the bases vehicles and Banshees and, in the very centre, a pair of powerful He-3 fusion reactors linked to a shield generator, all surrounded by anti-aircraft, anti-vehicle and anti-infantry weapons emplacements.
The shield generator gave off a high-pitched whine as it began powering up, the smell of ozone permeated the air and 'Salasee's skin pricked as, with a flash and a hiss-pop, the shield came into life and extended out in a hundred and fifty metre radius, concealing everything beneath the dome in a protective barrier.
They needed only hold for a short while more, he knew, the secrecy with which they had carried out their mission until the human civilians had come here seeking shelter helping them more than an army of their finest warriors could have. The carcasses of those humans had been disposed of by tossing them into the chasm.
Their recovery fleet would arrive to retrieve them, or rather the artefacts, with 'Solasee and his troops to be collected as little more than an afterthought.
Until then, he'd give these humans hell. And he had just the tool with which to do it.
OOOOO
Harvest, High Orbit
Marathon-class Cruiser Mark II Fascination Street
Flagship of Seventh Fleet, Task Force 66
Captain Thaddeus Davian stood in the massive hangar bay of the top-of-the-line cruiser, facing Fleet Admiral Preston Cole, his back ramrod straight. Standing on either side of him were hundreds of Marines and crewmen in their Dress Whites, observing the ceremony as an honour guard.
"Congratulations, Commodore Davian," Cole said, grinning ever-so-slightly as he handed Davian a case containing his new command stars, shaking the younger man's hand with his free one. "Your actions here went above and beyond the call of duty, resulting in the preservation of thousands of lives that would otherwise have been lost to us. Your commitment and devotion are an inspiration to us all."
"Thank you, sir," Davian managed to utter as the legendary man standing before him released the powerful grip on his hand and saluted him, Davian returning the salute crisply.
"You've been given command of Squadron 8, consisting of four destroyers and a Mark II Marathon," Cole continued. "Your new home awaits, Commodore. I'll have Sickle Flight escort you over. Dismissed."
Davian saluted the Admiral again, the hundreds of other men and women in the bay copying the move before departing at the behest of the their officers and NCO's. The Admiral strode away, his aides rushing to his side and offering reports of the engagement on the ground, ship and fleet status reports and countless other minutiae that they felt her needed to know.
Davian turned around and entered the open troop bay of a waiting dropship.
"Evening, sir," the pilot, a terribly young-looking man with coffee coloured skin, said in a rich British accent; the man had to be Earth-born to have an accent like that. "We'll be departing for your new flagship momentarily, escorting by Sickle Flight. Make yourself comfortable while we finish off the pre-launch checklist."
"Thanks, son," Davian said as he found a seat in the troop bay and the bay doors slid silently shut behind him. He fiddled quietly with his new stars as the pilot and co-pilot quietly went through their checklist. The loss of the most well-known cruiser in the fleet had been a blow for the morale of the UNSC soldiers and sailors, and to him in particular.
He'd loved the venerable ship and it had served him well, becoming his home away from home. He was getting a new command now, by all accounts a more powerful warship, one of only a handful in service, plus four state-of-the-art Demetrius-class destroyers, but he felt that it would never be the same as commanding the Defiant Warrior.
The Pelican lifted off from the deck as it was cleared to leave, exiting the hangar bay of the cruiser quickly and banking around the ships hull, coming up over the top of it as five Rapier interceptors fell into escort formation around it.
The flight carried on in silence as Davian tried to relax on the uncomfortable bench, designed for utility and not much else, the only sound the quiet hum of the engines reverberating through the hull.
"We're going to do a flyby of your new ship, sir," the pilot called back. "You might want to take a gander."
Davian nodded as he stood up and made his way into the unsealed cockpit.
"Right."
"There she is," the pilot said, grinning as his co-pilot whistled in appreciation. "Brand spanking new, still shiny and complete with that new car smell."
The ship was a little longer than the Mark I Marathons, but the basic design was the same. The Pelican and her escorts slowly looped around the ship as Davian busied himself ticking off the technical specs in his head as they matched up with what he was seeing.
Seventy-two dual barrelled twenty-one inch rail-guns dotted the hull of the ship, a testament to the designers attempt to give the ship a deadly broadside capability alongside it's twin Magnetic Accelerator Cannons. The heavy rail-guns were arranged in such away that most of them could fire forward, massively increasing the firepower the ship could bring to bare on frontal targets as well.
Spread across the hull were fifty-six of the latest rapid fire three inch rail-guns that were rapidly gaining popularity among the fleet. Three large dual-barrelled Particle Accelerator Cannons rested in turret mounts along the dorsal side, flanked by four point defence pulse lasers each, while two more were located ventrally with a similar defensive arrangement.
Three hundred Archer missile pods and sixteen Halberdier fusion torpedo tubes rounded out the Mark II's anti-ship armament. The offensive upgrades were augmented by defensive ones, too. Davian looked on appreciatively as his gaze drank in some of the ninety 30mm Helix CIWS cannons and point defence laser clusters that protected the cruiser from fighter and missile threats, and he smiled a little as they passed over one of the ships thirty-six counter-missile pods, racks filled with hundreds Disruptor counter-missiles to defend against Covenant plasma torpedoes.
The armour had been increased too, now six inches thicker on average, and the cruisers He-3 fusion reactors were more powerful and efficient than the DT fusion reactors common on older ships, allowing for faster charge times for the MACs, greater acceleration rates and more power for the state-of-the-art Mark IV Electromagnetic Field Generators, nearly thirty percent more efficient than the Mark III generators found on Mark I cruisers.
Everything he saw paled in comparison to what caught his eye next. Standing out against the clean, unmarked surface of the great cruiser was a scorched, blackened plate of armour that had been welded over the ship's original nameplate. In thirty foot high, damaged lettering , difficult to read thanks to the plasma scoring but still readily distinguishable, were the words "Defiant Warrior".
A grin spread across the recently promoted man's face as he took in the sight. The nameplate of his old command had survived and someone, probably Cole himself, had ensured that the Warrior could live on and continue to take the fight to the enemy.
It wasn't the same as having the old girl still in action, but with the improved survivability and heavier armament of this deadly new Warrior, it might just be better. He found himself approving of his new command much more, and looked forward to seeing what she could do.
OOOOO
Harvest, Surface
Mount Hieronymus
Marine Assembly Area, Suspected Forerunner Facility
Weeks gave a low whistle of appreciation as a pair of Cyclops battle suits exited the rear of each of the four IFVs, thumping down the lowered ramp and coming to stand beside the two tanks.
Based on a civilian-designed power-assist suit built for loading and unloading heavy crates in relatively confined spaces that a forklift couldn't fit into, the Cyclops battle suit had been redesigned with armour rated to withstand light anti-vehicle weapons.
The operators were fully enclosed in the suits, seeing the world through a holographic projection on the inside of the armoured helmet, eliminating the weak spot that the civilian models faceplate created. Modular in design, the Cyclops' could be fitted with a variety of weapons, from the standard .30 calibre machine gun typically mounted on the right forearm and the 40mm HEAT grenade launcher typically mounted on the left forearm, right up to flamethrowers, shoulder mounted anti-aircraft missile launchers and artillery rocket pods, rail-guns, gauss cannons and even laser cannons.
The suits before Weeks were a combination of all these mutations, with no two suits being armed the same. Most had kept the machine guns, but had opted for more powerful weapons
Each suit had it's own dumb AI assisting the operators and, should the need arise, they could take over operation of the suits entirely. The rumour mill had it that sometime in the next few years, the human component of the suits would be phased out completely, leaving them to be run entirely by AIs.
"Captain O'Bannon?" one of the suited soldiers asked the woman half sticking out of one of the tanks. "Lieutenant Marco Fuentes, 71st Mechanized Infantry, we'll be escorting your tanks."
"A pleasure, Lieutenant," O'Bannon replied. "We're going to have a couple of UAV's here soon to run a quick recce of the area on the other side of that entry, until then we've been ordered to sit tight as more forces are funnelled down to us."
"There's still some fighting going on top-side, aliens using guerrilla warfare to slow down our reinforcements," Fuentes acknowledged. "Battle-Net indicates we'll be getting another six hundred plus Marines, half a dozen MBTs, a dozen IFVs and the rest of our suit platoon sometime in the next quarter of an hour. Where do you want my boys until then, ma'am?"
"Spread out, dig in and sit tight," O'Bannon answered. "Betty and Jasmine bloodied their noses pretty good and we haven't seen hide nor hair of them since, probably cowering in fear."
Weeks was little confused about who Betty and Jasmine were until he saw the names stencilled onto the armour of the behemoth tanks.
"Tankers," he muttered in bemusement to one of his fellow ground pounders. The other man just grinned and shook his head.
"Heads up, scout drones inbound," a disembodied voice crackled over the radio and sure enough, a few seconds later a trio of disc-shaped aerial reconnaissance drones came flying down the tunnel at speed before coming to a hover over the heads of the Marines.
"Link up with those drones, Marines!" Captain Bakersfield, de facto leader of the gathering of infantry, shouted out, and Weeks used his neural lace to synch his HUD to the cameras mounted on the drones over-head, opening a picture-in-picture screen that allowed him to see what the machines saw.
"All synched?" Bakersfield yelled again, receiving a series of affirmatives from the NCOs' as they checked with their charges.
"Alright, let's send those drones through," O'Bannon said into her radio, and up at the mouth of the long tunnel, the operators acknowledged and sent the tiny machines through the opening into the massive underground chamber beyond.
As the craft broke through into the chamber at high speed, they were met with pulses of plasma fire which were deftly dodged. Weeks watched as blue and green fire tracked across the sky, trying to bring down the tiny drones as they flew over fortified positions.
He saw strange machines that moved along on four ungainly looking legs guarding some kind of panel alongside groups of infantry hunkered down behind purple alloy crates and portable energy shields, he saw the beetle-like hover tanks and bikes patrolling in groups of three on this side of the chasm that bisected the chamber, and an equal number of patrolling vehicles on the far side.
One of the feeds died suddenly, and one of the remaining drones caught images of Covenant fliers spraying plasma at them with abandon. The other drone took video feed of what looked like a small forward operating base, protected by a faintly glimmering energy field and a network of stationary turrets. Then came the pictures of sniper nests kept aloft by some kind of anti-gravity platform, each one with three of the bird-like aliens the Corps had come to know as Jackals, sporting long barrelled rifles of some kind.
The drone that was in the middle of aerial acrobatics with the Covenant fliers was destroyed by the dual plasma cannons on one of them, leaving just the one drone to continue with the reconnaissance. AA fire flew up from the F.O.B in the form of fuel rods, plasma pulses and large pink needles that attempted to track the wildly manoeuvring drone, it's cameras staying on target despite the evasive actions it was taking.
Behind the F.O.B was another four legged walker vehicle, much larger than the others and obviously armed as a large cannon mounted near the rear of the beetle-like vehicle tracked the drone before a blue flash filled the screen, followed by static.
"Holy shit," Weeks heard somebody say, and he couldn't help but agree. What the hell was that huge thing?
"Why doesn't the navy just blast them from orbit via Son Of a Bitch?" someone else said, referring to the colloquial name used for Strategic Orbital Bombardment, so used because the first words out of someone's mouth following one were usually 'son of a bitch.'
"They want this place intact for the alien tech, numb-nuts," Sergeant Benson replied. "Stow that shit, all of you. We've got a job to do and we're damn well gonna do it, got that?"
"Yes ma'am," Weeks replied with an enthusiasm that he didn't really feel.
OOOOO
Epsilon Indi system, three-point-two AU from Harvest
Squadron 8
UNSCDFS Defiant Warrior, originally christened Two Lane Blacktop
"How are you liking your new command so far, sir?" Lieutenant Callahan asked Davian with a small smile.
"She's not the same as the old girl," Davian said wistfully. "But she'll do, Callahan, she'll do."
"Yes sir," Callahan said, smiling a little wider. "The rest of the squadron is operating at peak capacity, sir, and so are we. We'll be ready to jump out and link up with Third Fleet Reserve at Aurelia to reinforce Third in just a few moments."
"Excellent, no problems with the new systems then?" Davian asked as he sipped the horrid concoction that apparently passed for coffee with a grimace.
Callahan shook his head. "No sir, all systems appear nominal."
"Excellent," the captain repeated. "Let's send our goodbyes to the fleet and-"
An alarm blared suddenly, cutting off the rest of his sentence, and Ensign Makeshi called out to him. "Slip-space rupture detected, single new contact, Covenant frigate ten thousand clicks out!"
Practically right on top of us, Davian thought.
"Let's see what this thing can do," he said aloud. "Get me targeting solution for the heavy rail-guns, full broadside, ram it down their throats. Bring us around to heading 0-2-0, order our escorts to go to hot standby, we'll handle this one ourselves. Inform the fleet that we have hostile contacts and tell them to be ready for more."
The crew, some surviving members of the original Warrior, some new faces, carried out their tasks with a quiet professionalism and the cruiser oriented itself to bring as much firepower as possible to bare on the hostile ship.
Tungsten rods launched out from the dual-barrelled rail-guns, battering the little ships shields with just three volleys before they collapsed and the frigate had dozens of holes punched through it's relatively fragile hull. The frigate didn't even manage to fire a single shot in retaliation as it lost power and was set adrift by the firepower brought down upon it.
The 'battle' had been over in less than twenty seconds, and Davian had a newfound respect for his new ship and it's apparently devastating broadside capability.
"Sir, word from Admiral Schweiger, we're to return to the defensive line with all due haste," the communications officer reported.
"Make it so," Davian ordered and as one, the cruiser and four destroyers turned around and made for the gathered fleet nearer to Harvest's orbit. Behind them, dozens of slip-space ruptures opened, spilling out more Covenant ships.
Time for round three.