Chapter Twenty-Five: Tuchanka Pt. III

This fight is not ours

Hunger said to Her, but with

The Ancient's Chosen

The Master Chief hopped off the ladder and fell about ten meters, hitting the ground with feet flat and knees bent. His boots sunk into the dirty tan and brown muck below, kept sinking, and kept sinking even further until his shins were almost entirely submerged in what felt like tar.

The Chief frowned. Though the Krogan had turned Tuchanka into a radioactive, desert wasteland, some areas did receive the occasional rainfall. Said rain was often filled with contaminates and highly toxic, but still counted as moisture.

Unfortunately for the Chief, this moisture accumulated down in thiswastewater system and wasn't moving, having become a thick muddy sludge. He guessed it was because the system was over a thousand years old. It was as close to pitch black as it could be, even Chief's low light level visor setting wasn't helpful, and in the name of stealth he couldn't use his helmet lamps. So, he was running mainly on thermal vision with infrared overlays while occasionally scanning with Promethean vision when the transmitter recharged.

He lifted his left leg out of the polluted mud, freeing his appendage with some difficulty and causing a loud, disagreeable squelching sound as he did so. His frown deepened. The suction of the mud combined with its thickness hindered his movement noticeably, even in armor. He was committed though, it was too late to turn back. The ladder of metal rungs embedded into stone he had used to get down had been so old and corroded that they had broke almost as soon as he had put any weight on it. The fact that his Mjolnir weighed half a ton hadn't helped either.

The concrete walls around him rumbled, little particles of dust and debris shaking loose and lazily floating downwards. He guessed the tumbles had been caused by explosions signaling the beginning of the main attack. He had to get moving. Chief took another step forwards, glad to find that in his Mjolnir his legs were strong enough to power through the muck despite taking a little more effort than he would have liked.

"Definitely one of the times when being the AI is the advantage," Cortana piped into his ear. "You know, cause we don't have noses."

"Yeah," Chief replied. Cortana was just making a joke about the smell, as she had completely sealed his suit when they had first started their descent. In her words the air had been filled with so many dangerous chemicals and contaminants it was comparably deadly to chlorine gas. A Krogan might be able to survive down here unmasked, but he wouldn't.

Chief blinked once on the small map in the bottom right of his hud, then blinked again on the middle of the sewerway in the center of his vision. Cortana took the hint and projected his path that would lead to the control room in thin strips of dim orange. He took another step before Cortana spoke into his ear, tone on of worry.

"Uh, Chief? We have a problem…"

"What?" Chief tightened the grip on his Adaptive Combat System, sweeping the sleek rifle down the wide corridor. He didn't see any immediate targets, but was surprised to find his active camouflage suddenly deactivate.

"Cortana?"

"Yep, there's the problem. Chief, the water in this sludge is so acidic that it's eating away at your shields and disrupting the camouflage emitter fields."

Chief frowned, again.

He continued on down the sewer, undeterred. Placing his ACS onto his back besides his Spartan Laser he grabbed his magnum off of his hip with his right hand and reached into a belt compartment with his left, withdrawing a silencer for the weapon. He attached the device to the barrel and returned it to its magnetic plate, bringing his ACS back to his hands.

"Cortana, can you clear up some of this clutter?" he asked, blinking on his motion scanner. The surface battle was raging above while he continued forwards, and his motion tracker was picking up the movement from Krogan and Reapers alike. While yes, the tracker differentiated elevations of objects picked up, there was just so much red he preferred to have the simpler view.

Cortana did as he asked and the activity on his motion tracker faded to nothing. The Spartan continued on cautiously, hoping that the Reapers had lacked the foresight to post units down here but not counting on it. He pulsed his Promethean vision, watching as the deep scan travelled along and through the sewer walls. Up about ten meters, around the sewers fist curve, the scan returned something bipedal.

"Husk," warned Cortana, "It's coming this way."

It was approaching the corner, but judging by its slow, meandering pace Chief guessed that it didn't know he was there. He took his right hand off of his ACS and drew his magnum, waiting for the creature's head to appear around the corner...

Chief's silenced magnum coughed once and the Husk's head opened up like a cantaloupe, the abomination impacting the putrid sludge with a thud-splash that was louder than he had liked. He paused, noting how he saw no movement on his motion tracker. He trudged forwards through the muck, magnum still raised.

Chief was about to turn the corner when his motion tracker flared again. Two contacts this time, further down the sewer past the curve. Promethean vision showed that they were two Husks, both moving towards his position at a pace a little slower than a run. Damn, they must have heard his movement, or him dispatching the first Husk.

He moved quickly but steadily around the corner and assumed a firing position, magnum raised. He sighted the two Husks, twenty meters and closing, and fired twice. Both targets dropped, large holes in their heads.

The motion tracker registered another contact. Then another, then another, then five more, then twelve more…

"Uh, Chief?" Cortana warned, a note of worry in her voice.

He activated his Promethean vision again and was greeted with an approaching mass of blue-orange hued bipedal targets. Cortana projected a number count in his HUD and he watched as it ticked up. Four, eleven, twenty-three, thirty-seven, and still rising.

It was just plain unlucky that after expending so many hundreds of Husks on the failed attack at The Hollows the Reapers would have kept a reserve force in these sewers waiting for an infiltration like the one Chief was attempting. The once-Human Reapers were running full tilt at him, no doubt having detected his prescence. Some were even clambering along the sides of the sewer on all fours.

"I see them," Chief responded. He returned his magnum to its magnetic plate. Stealth wouldn't mean anything now.

He brought his ACS up the his shoulder, using the side of his thumb to flick his rate of fire selector to fully automatic. He pulled the trigger, bright electric-blue bolts of hard light illuminating the pitch-black sewerway, the cracking reports of the shots thundering off of the walls. The three Husks in the first row fell with Chief's first burst, and he switched effortlessly to the ones scrambling over the dead bodies of their fallen comrades.

"Mission update," Chief started, knowing Cortana would send the report right to Shepard and Grunt. "Engaging significant Husk force in sewerway. Element of stealth lost."

He kept firing, watching as the hard light bolts ripped into reaperfied flesh with deadly intensity, the piercing rounds knifing through their primary targets and shredding into ones behind them.

Still, he was losing ground. Even as the enemy counter rapidly ticked downwards Chief was steadily retreating back into the sewer. He didn't want to fall back around the corner because then he would lose his long sighting and firing arcs.

He took his left hand off of his ACS, still pulling the trigger with his right hand and feeling the kick of the weapon against his shoulder. He snapped one of his four grenades off of his belt and threw it, the fragmentation device shattering a Husk's skull before falling to the ground and detonating 0.5 seconds later.

The sewer was lit by a flash of fire and explosive force, and seven Husks fell dead with shrapnel embedded all throughout their bodies. The Husk counter in his HUD dropped. Nineteen. He threw another grenade, this time aiming just ahead of four screaming Husks running at him with reckless abandon.

The explosion turned the four into so many prices of dismembered flesh and bone, as well as three more right behind them. Twelve left. Another long stream of deadly accurate rounds from his ACS tore large holes in five more Husks, and Chief realized how grateful he was that the rifle was so difficult to overheat.

"Brute!"

Chief's already widened eyes shot fully open at Cortana's warning yell. Brute? Where? His questions were answered quickly when a massive black armored claw smashed the remaining Husks against the side walls of the sewer.

He had a brief flash of annoyance that neither him nor Cortana detected this Brute before it was not even fifteen meters away from him, but it wasn't hard to figure out why. The Brute was nearly invisible on both thermal sensors and his Promethean vision; it was a testament to Cortana's ability that she was able to warn him when she did in the first place. Cortana had traced the entirety of the Brute in highly visible red.

Chief immediately shifted his fire to the Brute's center mass, but it raised its massive claw to protect itself and roared so loud that the walls shook.

This was not good. He knew the hard light rounds were penetrating, but the Brute was nearly the size of a Warthog and weighed twice as much with the armor that was protecting it. It took up the whole sewerway, hunched back scraping along the top ceiling with a sound comparable to nails on a chalkboard.

He didn't doubt that given time and space he would have been able to bring down the beast with his ACS, but time and space were luxuries that he simply didn't have. There was only one weapon that he knew for sure could end this fight now: the Spartan Laser on his back.

Knowing that the weapon wouldn't have the time it needed to charge if he stayed put, he dashed back around the corner and back into the sewer towards the now defunct ladder which he had used to ingress. Quickly replacing his ACS with the rectangular bulk of the Spartan Laser, he started charging even though the Brute hadn't yet turned the corner.

His red-hued target came into view a second into the Laser's charging cycle, and as if the Brute knew what he was up to it picked up its pace towards Chief, using the slightly higher ceiling to its advantage to gain speed it couldn't before. Despite its best efforts, it was too late for the Brute. Chief knew for a fact that it wouldn't reach him before the heavy weapon's beam of ruby energy melted right through its armored chest.

The Spartan Laser reached the zenith of its charge cycle, flashing targeting laser pointed by Chief directly center mass of the hulking monster.

Nothing happened.

Misfire! Chief cursed. He knew there wasn't enough time for a second try, and within a second the Brute had closed the distance, heavy claw bearing down on him in a powerful downwards blow. The Spartan jumped back out of range of the strike, sewer muck sucking at his legs and trying to hold him in place as he did so. The Brute's attack fell short, sending a wave of disgusting mud in every direction, but it didn't relent.

The Krogan-Turian hybrid darted forwards with its claw quicker than Chief anticipated, and in a desperate attempt to block the blow held out the malfunctioning Spartan Laser in front of him like a shield.

The sharpened tip of the Brute's heavy claw pierced through the thin metal and delicate components of the weapon in a shower of sparks, but like Chief expected the Laser didn't shatter in half, a testament to UNSC engineering. Instead the tip of the Brute claw had penetrated a couple of inches through the weapon and had gotten promptly stuck.

The Master Chief knew that if he didn't take the initiative, he would lose this engagement. Using all of his strength he violently shoved his Spartan Laser to the side, taking the Brute's claw with it and slamming it against the wall.

He let go of the Spartan laser and rushed forwards into the Brute, slamming into it with all the force he could muster. His shields flared with the impact and the Brute reeled backwards, not expecting such a forceful counterattack.

Chief pivoted towards the Brute's claw arm, balling his hands into fists and depressing his thumbs onto a small button located on the middle knuckles of his pointer fingers. A ten-inch blade of electromagnetically contained superheated plasma shot forth out of each gauntlet with a crackling snap-hiss. Reverse-engineered from captured special operations Sangheili armor sets, the plasma blades cut through the Brute's armor like hot plasma through butter as Chief plunged them into the beast's attack claw.

The Reaper creature roared in pain as Chief twisted his wrists to slash deep gouges in the Brute's claw. He was aiming to do further damage but the Brute's other hand gripped him from behind on the shoulder and yanked him backwards. Chief was flung into the opposite wall of the sewer, shields dropping to ten percent.

The Brute tried to swing its large claw at him but to Chief's satisfaction the arm went limp at the Reaper's side. Angered at the inability to attack with its primary weapon the Brute instead decided to charge at the Spartan, hoping to crush him with its massive body weight.

Chief was ready for this however and jumped back down the sewer, jump jets assisting in getting him out of the way. The Brute adapted its direction quickly, red eyes flaring in rage. In his head he cycled through his remaining options. He was quickly running out of space, and getting past the Brute would be extremely difficult given how it's body took up the entirety of the sewerways' height and width.

His Spartan Laser was disabled. He could try another grenade, but he doubted its effectiveness. He could rush the beast with gauntlet-mounted energy daggers out, but that course of action was bound to be extremely risky. His Adaptive Combat System wouldn't help him here, he already knew that its rounds wouldn't be able to stop the Brute in time. So, in one swift motion Chief reached to his lower back, drew the Krogan shotgun 'Helmsbreaker' from its magnetic plate, pointed it center mass at the approaching Brute, and pulled the trigger.

In his decades-long service to the United Nations Space Command Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 had operated and fired many different weapons systems. Dozens of variations of assault rifles, shotguns, submachine guns, battle rifles, designated marksman's rifles, light and heavy machine guns, and pistols. He had fired all kinds of explosive ordnance weapons like grenades and rocket launchers, as well as high-end experimental weaponry like the Spartan Laser, rail guns, and some handheld gauss weaponry.

The same applied to alien weaponry too. He'd picked up and used Covenant plasma rifles, plasma pistols, plasma repeaters, plasma launchers, plasma turrets, needlers, needler rifles, storm rifles, and fuel rod cannons. Then there were the various Promethean weapons he'd stumbled across on Requiem, such as lightrifles, boltshots, scattershots, surpressors, and the hefty incineration cannon.

But not one weapon he had ever, ever fired in his entire life had as much recoil as 'Helmsbreaker' did.

The Krogan shotgun went off like an artillery cannon. If Chief had been a normal Human he had no doubt that his wrists and hands would have shattered. The shotgun kicked almost seventy degrees up and very hard to the right, the butt of the gun slamming into Chief's shoulder plate. Mercifully, Cortana had the reaction speed necessary to completely cut his audio receptors out, saving him from certain inner ear damage as a result of the blast of the weapon in such a tightly enclosed space.

As for the Brute, well, the Brute simply… stopped. All of that weight, all of that momentum was halted dead in its tracks courtesy of Newton's third law of motion: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

When the smoke and fire cleared Chief was able to see that in addition to stonewalling the Brute, there was also a significant chunk of its chest armor that was missing. He reached to the armored compartment in his belt that contained his spare thermal clips, drew one out, and slammed it home in Helmsbreaker's waiting empty receiver. Readying himself for the ensuing recoil, he sighted the same spot on the Brute's chest where the first blast had hid and fired again.

Helmsbreaker roared, a storm of superheated, supersonic pellets slamming into the Brute. The beast staggered backwards, letting out a pained grunt. The hole in its chest was gaping now, Chief could see in a couple of places where the pellets had penetrated all the way through. Black viscous blood had spurted all the way to the surrounding walls and ceiling, the liquid dripping throughout the Reaper's wounds like a dark ichor.

The Master Chief reloaded and fired again. Hitting the same spot as the previous two rounds, this salvo ripped away any remaining armor and vulnerably interior bits and blew them out of the Brute's back. The monster collapsed backwards, three foot wide hole in it's chest obviously taking the place of some of its vital organs.

The multi-ton Brute sunk into the muddy wastewater with a sucking thud and a breathy sigh as the last of its 'life' escaped it. The Spartan reloaded Helmsbreaker, strode over to the fallen Brute and without hesitation blew its head clean off.

He reloaded, returned the Krogan shotgun to his lower back, and drew his ACS again. An icon Cortana was displaying in his HUD signaled that Shepard and his squad were currently engaged in heavy combat. Judging by the continuation of the muffled explosions and shaking rumbles he guessed that Grunt and his company were as well.

"Send out a sitrep," Chief told Cortana, intending for her to relay the message to Shepard and Grunt when circumstances permitted. "Engaged and destroyed reserve force of forty-nine Husks as well as the fourth Brute. Proceeding to objective."

"LZ is contested. Two groups of assorted infantry in cover."

"Hooah Sarge. Viper-Heavy is in hot!" Senior Airman Roran Cehack depressed the firing stud on his stick and the Pelican gunship around him shook as a stream of 30mm high explosive rounds leapt from the tri-barreled chin cannon. The first group of infantry disappeared in a cloud of smoke and fire as the rounds exploded amongst their midst. With his crosshairs linked up to the center of his helmet-mounted-sight, Cehack deftly flicked his head to switch targets to the second group. The chin gun roared again and this group suffered the same fate as the first.

Instead if waiting for the clouds of smoke and dust to dissipate, he switched his vision to thermals. One thing he had learned while fighting the Reapers is that they didn't give off heat signatures like regular living beings. Instead, almost all Reapers thermal signatures consisted of small, random clusters of high-heat areas that marked where their bodies were. These readings weren't always uniform, but they were easy to spot to the trained eye and certainly unique to the Reapers only.

Since he saw none of these he lifted his left arm above his head to where his friend and pilot Flight Sergeant Dolton could see it. He gave Dolton a thumbs up, and over the squad comm channel heard him say, "Viper, LZ is clear. You are green for touchdown."

"Roger, beginning approach," was the reply from the Kodiak pilots Cortez.

Roran cancelled the magnification on his targeting scopes, allowing him to see the 'flying brick' as he and Dolton jokingly called it make for the LZ from their holding position half a kilometer above the ground-to-orbit gun facility.

"Commander, make sure everyone has their IR strobes on," reminded Dolton.

Shepard voice came back clear and crisp over their channel. "Copy. We'll be assaulting the building immediately to our Northwest following touchdown."

"Roger," Dolton replied, "We'll float around engaging targets of opportunity and supporting the Krogan's main assault unless you need us otherwise."

Shepard didn't respond verbally, only clicking the comm once in an affirmative, likely because the Kodiak touched down and his squad was rushing out and setting up to assault said building.

Dolton switched over to their Pelican's private channel. "I'm going to move us to support Aralakh Company. Cortana's in their comms, she said she'd pipe requests for air support directly to you Roran. Brutes are priority targets, if you see any of those fuckers blast them to hell."

"Got it Sam."

The frame of the stealth gunship vibrated as Dolton maneuvered the invisible craft towards the Krogan assault. Aiming to take draw out the brunt of the Reapers defending the gun complex Aralakh Company was advancing right up the central road leading into the complex, aiming to fight through and clear the road, its branching alleyways, and the surrounding buildings on their way to the reactor room. As Dolton flew the gunship closer to the action Cehack kept his targeting sight zoomed out, trying to take take in the entirety of the battle.

Aralakh Company's four Tomkahs were rolling down the main road slowly in a single file line, heavy mass accelerators mounted on their roofs blasting away at entrenched Reaper positions. The majority of the Aralakh Krogan were advancing right alongside the heavy APCs providing infantry support, split into a dozen or so groups where half would provide covering fire while the other half advanced. Every so often a squad of two or four would split off and rush down an alleyway or breach through an adjacent building, no doubt to root out the defending Reaper forces.

It as slow going though. The Reapers were dug in deep, squads of Cannibals centered around one or two Marauders posted in defensive positions on the ground amongst the debris and within the inner floors or roofs of surrounding building. Though they didn't seem to possess anything other than small arms, the Reaper infantry were laying heavy fire down onto the Krogan, useing their advantage in numbers to drown the attackers in mass accelerator fire. It was a testament to Krogan resilience and stubbornness that they were even advancing at all.

Time to break the lid open, thought Cehack . He sighted a group of twenty Reaper troops near the back of the defensive line taking cover behind a large collapsed pillar, ducking up and down to take shots at Aralakh. His targeting scope automatically adjusted the gun sights for range, elevation, and windage, so he aligned his HUD crosshairs on the far left of the group.

He fired, moving his eyes across the Reaper line. Not a second later the gunship's cannon rounds impacted with deadly force, the stream of high explosive shells following Cehack's eye movement and raking across the pillar. The Senior Airman was already searching for a new targets before the smoke had even cleared from his first burst, as he knew from experience that they couldn't have survived.

His gaze shot towards a glaring red 'X' on his visor, the symbol projected right above the hulking armored mass of a Brute that had charged out of a half-demolished building a hundred yards from the frontmost Krogan troops. Bingo. His thumb shot down his stick to the button that controlled the firing of the M68 Gauss Cannon mounted alongside the 30mm chingun. He made sure his crosshairs were deadcenter on the now-charging Brute, then pressed the button under his thumb.

The 25x130mm slug travelling at just under Mach 40 as it left the barrel reached its target near-instantaneously. The exceptional armor penetration caused by the projectile's great velocity meant that the Brute's armor plating might as well had been tissue paper. The Reaper hulk fell, smoking hole replacing most of center mass. Cehack shifted his aim slightly upwards and fired again, taking off the beast's upper torso and head, ensuring it was dead.

"Good kill," acknowledged Dolton.

Cechak kept searching for targets. He found a group of five Marauders running through open aired building with no ceiling, and instead of walls had several large, thick pillars composing the outer edges. He could see how the Marauders were advancing from pillar to pillar, and based on their direction of travel Cehack assumed that they were trying to make it to a position to flank a lead squad of Krogan on the left side of their advance. With the pillars offering too much cover Cehack said to Dolton, "Get me a top-down shot on this group."

Cechak blinked three times on the group, highlighting the targets in Dolton's HUD for him to see. "Copy."

The gunship roared as Dolton maneuvered them forwards, Cehack looking down on the group of sneaky Marauders in just a couple of seconds. They never stood a chance, the burst of high-explosive shells Cehack rained down on them insured that.

Cehack's comm crackled, and the smooth, calm voice of Cortana filled his ears. "Fire Mission: Grid reference 6JHG1746382746. Top floor of four-story building filled with Reapers, too high for Tomkah heavy guns to target."

"Roger, we're on it," said Dolton, hearing the same thing Cehack had heard and spinning the Pelican around to face the target. "See it?"

"Affirmative," Cehack replied. The building was hard to miss, given that it was the tallest thing in the complex other than the massive surface-to-space guns. If he remembered from the short briefing before the mission this building served as the observation center for the complex, and was not necessary to their objective. "Arming Anvils."

With his left hand Cehack reached to a side panel and flipped one of four particular red switches that disengaged the safety locks of Anvil missile pod one. His sighting apparatus changed slightly to signify that his missiles were armed, and he made sure that the ceiling of the fourth floor was center in his crosshairs. He depressed the firing stud on his stick and a missile shot foward, breaking the gunship's stealth field just in front of the pod for the briefest of moments.

In a testament to Krogan engineering, the ceiling didn't collapse after the first missile expended its explosive payload over the rough concrete, but it did after the second. The Reaper firing halted abruptly as those inside were crushed by falling pieces of ceiling or killed by the explosive force and overpressure from the second Anvil missile. As a finishing touch Cechak raked the area with cannonfire just to be sure.

The Krogan advance had halted. Not because of the efforts of the enemy, but rather they had reached their objective of the reactor room and were shifting their forces to secure and activate it. Hopefully Shepard's squad and the Master Chief finished their objectives soon as well, then they could blow that goddamned Reaper Destroyer out of the sky.

The Master Chief took a final look around the control room, wisps of smoke and heat drifting from his ACS, bodies of Cannibals and Marauders littering the floor from their brief and decidedly one-sided firefight.

"Where?" he asked.

"There." Cortina highlighted a lit up console near the center of the room. Chief strode over to it and simply reached out his hand, the advancements made in his Mjolnir Mk. VIII no longer requiring him to remove Cortana's chip and physically insert it in order to have her gain access to systems. Instead, she extended an electrical current between Chief's suit and the console and transferred the necessary processing subroutines.

They were the last step. Aralakh company had secured and activated the complex's reactor, providing power for the facility, while Shepard had secured and turned on the electrical substation which controlled the power surges to the surface-to-orbit gun capacitors. All Cortana had to do was aim, fire, and exterminate the Reaper with extreme prejudice.

"I'm in. Damn! This could be a bit of an issue." She cursed not out of anger or stress, but rather what Chief thought was annoyance.

"What?"

"The Reaper's moving, it knows we have control of the guns. It's attempting to evade."

"Understood. What's Plan B?"

"No need. Plan A is still a go," she clarified. "It's moving, but it's not going to escape. I just won't be able to get more than one salvo on it."

"Will that be enough?"

"I hope so. Should soften them up for our friends in space. We'll see."

The end of Cortana's sentence coincided with the floor beneath Chief's feet shaking as the six jutting gun turrets moved for the first time in over a thousand years. Cortana's subroutines directed the guns to their aiming points, the rumbling of the complex halting once they arrived there. Their absurdly large mass accelerator coils beginning to spin up as the guns made final adjustments before locking into position.

"Firing."

Wrex wasn't wrong, the Krogan built to last. None of the guns failed, and six cracks of lightning shot out from the barrels of the surface-to-orbit guns. Chief watched them arc through the sky towards their target, knowing that their ultimate objective for the operation was now out of his hands.

From his elevated command platform at the rear of the Aethonox's bridge Captain Praetus watched as six heavy mass accelerator slugs slammed into their target Reaper Destroyer. The first four disintegrated off the Reaper's kinetic barrier. The fifth shattered the protective layer completely, fragments of the main projectile embedding deep within the death-black armor plating.

The sixth projectile struck just below the Destroyer's central section, the kinetic force of the round coring all the way through the Reaper and bringing a myriad of internal electrical components, armor plating, and mechanical fluid with it bursting out the other side.

Captain Praetus nodded slightly. Considering that they were only getting one salvo it could have been better, but it certainly could have been worse. "It's wounded, but not dead. It's up to us to finish it off. Gunnery, fire at will upon designated weak points. Dachtrus, Hellifax, Normandy, begin your attack runs."

Praetus let the chorus of "Aye Aye"s and "Affirmative"s wash over him, feeling the vibrations travel through his legs as his Assault Carrier's main gun started to fire and watching on the holomap in front of him as the three Frigates started in their attack vectors. His two Turian Frigates would attack from the front in diverging directions, while the Normandy would be attacking from the 'left' flank unseen because of her stealth capabilities. Meanwhile, the Aethonox would attempt to stay at range and pound the Reaper into oblivion with its mass accelerator.

"Hit. On target. Minor surface damage."

"Keep target area. Fire."

"Hit. Thirty-odd meters off target."

"Adjust aim. Fire."

"Hit. On target. Major surface damage."

"Keep on target. Fire."

Captain Praetus regarded the conversation coming from the gunnery station absentmindedly. Not to say that it wasn't important, but his mind was focused elsewhere, particularly on the movements of his two Frigates. They had far more dangerous jobs, engaging the Destroyer at close range with Thanix Cannons and Disruptor Torpedoes, but without the stealth advantage held by the Normandy.

Even though the surface-to-orbital gun salvo heavily damaged the Reaper, the mission was extremely risky. Praetus would have much preferred to be more cautious with the fates of his smaller ships, but they needed all the firepower they could get. So he had given the order anyway, and his eyes were now glued on the holomap.

The Reaper Destroyer had expended its Oculus complement in fighter skirmishes which the Turians had won beforehand, so they weren't harassed as they approached attack range. However, from prior experience Praetus knew that the Reaper Destroyer's main weapon and their own Thanix Cannons had similar ranges, yet the Reaper could only target one Frigate at a time. The other would be able to get closer, release their torpedoes, and perhaps even get off another Thanix salvo, adding to the accumulative damage being dealt.

Praetus watched as the Dachtrus and the Hellifax fired their Thanix cannons, then frowned as the Dachtrus shuddered upon impact from the Reaper's magnetohydrodynamic beam, putting the frigate into a death spiral. A second later the crackling blue Thanix projectiles impacted just above the Reaper's main eye complex, where military intelligence had determined that the main core of Reaper Destroyers' vital functions were housed. Coincidentally, this was the same spot that the Aethonox's mass accelerator slugs had been pounding on, so when the Thanix rounds impacted they did so in a spot with already weakened armor.

The liquid alloys of iron, uranium, and tungsten suspended in an electromagnetic field and accelerated to deadly velocities slammed into the Reaper with devastating effect. The remaining armor was blown apart, exposing the vulnerable inner components of the Reaper for the Thanix rounds to wreak havoc upon. Multiple small explosions started rippling amongst the Destroyer's main body, but the Reaper wasn't finished yet. It fired again, a glancing blow that still took the back third off of the Hellifax and rendered it disabled before it managed to get off its torpedo salvo. The Aethonox fired again, and the Reaper seemed to stagger as the kinetic energy bled into it, the last hit having damaged it's maneuvering drives.

The killing blow would come from the Normandy. Waiting for the right chance to strike, the large Frigate rushed in with its own Thanix blast, near severing the Reaper into two halves. Before it boosted away the Normandy released its complement of Javelin torpedoes, the fast travelling guided projectiles seeking out opened holes throughout the Reaper and detonating within the armored shell. The Aethonox fired again, but whether or not the round did anything was lost in the large explosion as the Reaper's internal systems failed in a catastrophic display.

His bridge crew erupted in brief cheers, and even Praetus allowed himself a smile, now that he could see that escape pods were jettison at quick rates from the Hellifax. "Good work everyone. Get rescue teams out to those pods, and get me a line to the Commandant. Our work's not over yet."

Special thanks to my betas JonHarper and Bearmauls