Scene Fourteen; Wrap-Up

The furball was as confusing as ever; but to Flyer it all just looked normal. This was how one flew when one was surrounded by screaming turrets and swarming enemy. There was no rank, no style, no formation. He had a wingman, but he wasn't sure who it was. It was interesting to watch them, though; no matter how he swerved, dove, dodged or spun, they stayed resolutely on his flank, slightly to the rear.

After blasting his way through the fiftieth – or what could easily have been the thousandth – Brute fighercraft, Longsword Flyer discovered he had a tail. When he twisted in his seat to see out through the domed shielding over the cockpit, he realized his wingman was gone, too. Had they been shot out of the sky?

A pang of guilt twinged at the edges of his mind as he pulled on the controls, turning in a loop as he spun on an axis. Streaks of bright plasma seared past his wings, but as he skimmed the belly of an enemy Cruiser, his instruments began to tell him things he didn't like to hear; Firstly, and worst, there ahead of him slid the remains of the Sovereign of Stars, flashes of lightning beneath the gaping holes in her ragged hull signaling the dying fires of her remarkable enginery. Behind him, though, that was an altogether other malady.

The craft chasing him down had just blown through three others all while keeping his tail; and it had some serious shielding, as it had yet to flicker them under any recognized strain. Flyer didn't know if his bird had enough firepower to take that thing down… his mind raced over a few ideas, then came upon a genius theory.

Now just to keep said idea from killing him, as well… or worse, just.

He angled back and down, then curled around the belly of the beast he was flying over the skin of, blasting past several open bays without seeing sign that he'd caused any collateral damage to the interior by scaring an outgoing pilot.

Darn.

Far to his left, he spotted his wayward wingman; still there, on his other side, yet far enough out that they wouldn't be shot down easily by his antagonist. He toggled the radio. "This is Flyer One to Wingman, do you copy, over?"

"Flyer One, this is Wingman, I read you, over." The white noise was intense; and it guised the identity of the other pilot.

"What can you tell me about this damned burr in my tail?" Flyer asked.

"She's an augment." Something more was lost under a belch of static, but that passed quickly. "Going higher, she'll catch you if you turn."

"Say again, you're breaking up." Flyer said.

"Hard to port! Hard to port! Turn! Turn! TURN!!" The other pilot screamed.

Flyer yanked the sticks over hard as far as they would go, just in time to miss being smeared across the throat of a cross-flying Cruiser as it bolted 'upwards' through the formation. He laughed when his antagonist hit the Cruiser's shield wall, bounced, dragged its nose, then proceeded to flip end for end at the same speed it had been going before. Only now, it had absolutely zero chance of hitting anything at all with any kind of arsenal it might have onboard. "Thanks for that, owe you one." Flyer called.

"You owe me so much I've lost hope of ever being repayed, so don't mention it."

Flyer's face screwed up, wondering who that would make this other pilot. "Copy… copy that."

Ahead, he saw another of that same kind of fighter he'd just lost a moment ago. Only this one was flying straight, and it was aiming all it's turret fire at him. He dodged it effectively, shooting back until the enemy craft scoured a layer of paint off Flyer's belly with its shield dome.

"FUCK!" he screamed, alarmed. He did a quick systems-check to ensure nothing had been scraped off or opened, then turned about to come back again at the so far retreating enemy plane. "You still with me, Wingman?" he asked.

"Affirmative, Flyer One. You take care of your business, I'll keep them off your ass."

Satisfied with that, Flyer smashed the throttle down and pulled it into a hotter burn as he chased down his offending prey. The augmented craft spun wildly once it realized he was there, catching and keeping its tail regardless of trick or motion. Once he had a shot, Flyer began pelting the thing's engine manifolds with plasma rounds. He and his wingman traded taking shots at it until a new alarm bleated at him, at which point he realized his wingman was gone again. According to sensors, he was behind the guy behind Flyer. He grinned a feral grin behind his SPI armored visor, finally snapping his targets shields long enough to get a good solid lock on it with a bigger missile.

Once he had it, he let fly with a pair of winders, so even though the target began dodging and weaving all the more, the missiles followed it until they were scraped off by a second fighter that had cut unexpectedly between the missiles and their target.

Flyer screamed in frustration as he flew through the fiery explosion after his target, blinded both instrumentally and visually by the explosion for half a heartbeat. Behind him, he could feel stray bullets pattering across his own aft shielding, possibly from his wingman trying to nail down the one chasing Flyer.

"Come on!" He yelled, catching sight of his quarry again and gunning it to catch them. "You can't get away that easily!" he disengaged the primary turrets and rotated out the mini rocket sleeves. The next time he got a clear shot at his target, what streaked after it was not plasma rounds, but charged ion fusion warheads, and they were moving just as fast. The ones that hit totally ruined the shield and parts of the hull, but the stubborn thing kept flying. The ones that missed blasted the lesser grade fighters they hit into smithereens.

"Flyer One, you got a bogey I can't shake!" His wingman informed him. "You got to scrape him off or I can't take him out."

"Why is nothing ever simple anymore." Flyer grumped, splattering a second burst of the CIF missiles at the stubborn survivor ahead of him. Finally, it spun on an axis he hadn't known it had, and still flying backwards, suddenly opened up in return fire. A hail of torturous plasma and missile impacts rattled his cockpit, and when the guns hesitated between bursts, Flyer realized both wings were torn and trailing smoke.

"Flyer One! Flyer One! Get out of there! You've lost fuselage integrity!"

"Hold my flank, Wingman! Just keep him busy!" Flyer screamed back, smashing the triggers on his joysticks hard so he rained all hell in CIF rounds upon his stubborn antagonist. The thing peeled away in broiling vapor until it finally disintegrated enough to erupt in fire and shrapnel, and as Flyer blasted through its remains, he tried a new trick he'd learned;

Gunning his yaw as hard as he could, he saw his perspective spin suddenly about, and the middle ship found itself sandwiched between two rather peeved fighters.

Flyer smashed the triggers again, forgetting for a moment that both he and his wingman were downrange of one another. He heard the other pilot screaming sudden obscenities at him, and a moment later, a return hail of CIF rounds slammed past him. Between them, though, the enemy fighter didn't have a chance, and when Flyer let go of the trigger, there was nothing left of it. He whooped.

"See if I ever let you in my Forge again, you nit-witted upstart!!"

Oh, that was Steel.

Flyer laughed anyway.


The last enemy Cruiser bulged at the seams, then pulled apart in a spectacular display of plasma fireworks. In time, the tonnage of debris in the area would fall into orbit like the Alliance was holding, but without compensation thrusters, the bits and pieces would eventually fall into the atmosphere of the planet below, and be consumed.

Onboard the dock, though, a few boarders had persisted, and there remained a small fight to finish even though there was really no chance of any of the Brutes getting either away or into anything important.

Tru7th pegged at the Brute's armored head with his Carbine until it was empty, but he'd been forced to hold it around the corner without the rest of him behind it while he shot, because the return fire was phenomenal; and as a result, the emptied charge bolt fired out of the chute and brained the young Mirratord right between the eyes.

"Aagh!" he complained, sparing a moment to rub the spot before reloading. He hated shooting like this, but it was that or be mowed down… at least for the moment. Finally, behind him, Acetylcholine appeared with a better gun, and he leaned out from the corner to pop off both rockets before ducking away again.

Tru7th cast him a look when he realized he was being studied, and he felt the blood rush to his face when he realized the firing charge must have left a mark on his helmet…

"What are you looking at me like that for?" Ace asked, eventually.

"Um… nothing." Tru7th offered, turning away again and hoping to be missed. He clicked his mandibles together as he refocused his tension elsewhere, but it didn't really work quite the way he'd imagined.

"One of those guys brain you with something at some point?"

"Um… no." Maybe he should have said yes.

"You have paint missing from your helmet, Tru7th." Ace said. "How'd you do that if you didn't get hit?"

"I was… caught by surprise." He answered. It was the truth, after all. After the smoke and other up-flung debris had settled, he peered around the corner again, to survey the mess. "I don't see…" he began, before something erupted from the boiling smoke and seized him by his throat.

He choked on the sudden constriction, as the Carbine clattered to the floor and he clawed fervently at the arm attached to the hand holding him. His eyes bugged when he realized the Brute's very skin had turned a very familiar, and ominous, shade of sickly green.

"Forerunners!" He heard Ace exclaim. The next sound was that of an energy sword snapping to life, and right before Tru7th felt his head would have come off his neck, the Brute convulsed weirdly, and dropped him.

Lightheaded, dizzy, and stunned, Tru7th heaped where he'd fallen, and stayed there. Acetylcholine, who had his single-blades out as he faced the strangely still alive Brute, wondered briefly if the youth had perished, but hadn't the time to check.

The Brute snarled and clawed at Ace's head. He responded with a calculated slice that cut the arm cleanly from its owner, but even as that stump withdrew, the other came out, and smacked Ace in the side of the head so hard he crumpled instantly, his swords lost from his grasp as he tumbled and then slid down the corridor. Blinking the stars from his eyes, the scientist looked up and back in time to see more of the same kind of Brute walking up the hall, as the one he'd cut shy of its former length stalked after him.

As it approached, the severed arm began to drip. But the blood was a filthy brown color, as if a yellowish, or greenish hue had been added to the normally otherwise red Brute blood. As the lengths of blood drooled from the injury, though, they didn't part and slap onto the floor, but rather hung there a moment before stretching outward, reshaping, and then combined with several others of similar design, forming a new limb.

Awed and horrified, Ace scrambled back. The Brute caught him by a hoof, then by his up-flung arms when it tried to grab him by his head, and hauled him from the floor. Where it was going to send him after that was entirely left to theory, as Ace was not inclined to find out at all. He walked up the beast's chest, and kicked it in the head, loosening its grasp on his arms so he could flip back and land on his hooves. There, he balanced left and sent the thing reeling with a hard kick from his right hoof straight to the head.

While it was staggering backwards from sheer inertia, Ace slipped past it, bullying several of the other, similarly deposed Brutes aside as he dug through their number for first his swords, and once those were recovered and he'd carved deeper still, for Tru7th.

He still couldn't stop to check and see if the kid was alive, nor had he time to bend and grab him to drag him away, as the poisonous presence of the green-skinned Brutes pressed in. They all had guns, but at the moment were too close to really use them as much beyond clubs. "Tru7th!" Ace called. "Hey! Can you hear me?"

"Ace, you fool!" Someone else called, from up the hall he'd just left to come back for Tru7th. He couldn't glance that way and see much beyond more pressing Brutes, though.

"Lend me a hand! Tru7th has gone down, and there are a whole lot of these… things!… here!" Ace responded.

There was an explosion on top of a roar, then another, and gore splattered past the shoulders of the one in the way of Ace's seeing what was going on. He plunged his blades into its chest and then separated them, slicing it free of the rest of the body. The legs collapsed, but the top half, once it had hit the floor, attempted to snarl without lungs and grabbed his ankle. Alarmed at the thing for not dying, Ace battered it away with his other hoof, unwilling to duck to slice at it again with another so close, occupying his attention.

"I need assistance now!" He cried, distressed. "What are these things??"

"I smell Flood! Do you see anything that looks like Flood??" It sounded like EvilKitty.

"No!" Ace called back, before hesitating as he looked into the glowing eyes of the next Brute up. He changed his mind. "Yes!"

"What?" Kitty asked, chopping the last one between them down and looking strangely at him, as others pressed past her into the thinning Brute crush. "Make up your mind." She said, before giving a sudden shriek of surprise as she crashed to the floor. The halved Brute had grabbed her, and pulled her from her hooves down to its level.

She howled at it, and bashed it in the head with her blades until it was little more than a gorey mess between its shoulders. She pried its dead grasp from her ankle, and stood back up. "Argh, as Aardvark would say."

"Aardvark says woof." Ace corrected. "I haven't really heard her say argh that much."

"Whatever!" She looked up the hall, as the last one was diced into enough pieces by a Station personnel member so it couldn't get back up again. "Why are they all so green, and puffy looking?"

"Puffy? You mean strapped? I've never seen so many muscle-bound Brutes in my life." Ace said, looking down at the brown ichor oozing from the dead at his feet. "Nor, though, have I seen Brutes that were green in pallor."

"I've never seen a Brute that ugly." EvilKitty said.

"Actually I don't think these are really Brutes, per se…"

"Well, I've never seen a Flood that pretty, either." She corrected, leaving no room for negotiation. "Come on… get him up, let's go. This place smells awful, now."


When Lai Tasha and Aozora arrived on the Alliance, they found the place abuzz. Some were doing minor repairs to erase the sign of bullet-scarring in the walls, others were clearing away the last of the blood and gore, still others were between destinations, carrying tools or buckets.

"Did we miss something?" Aozora wondered aloud.

"Admiral, there you are." A voice from the far side of the room called.

Turning to see, Aozora met Aardvark as she limped determinedly forward. Looking past him, she added, "Hello, High Councilor."

"Very formal of you." He greeted, in reply.

"Well, I'm here to do something kind of formal, so yeah." She dug an item from her belt, and extended it to Lai Tasha. "I hereby exchange the role of Keeper of this item to you."

"What is it?" he asked, taking it and pulling the small brown swatch of cloth away. His expression turned of interest when he found himself holding a glowing T. "The Index."

"Speaking of which." Aozora said, looking up from it to Aardvark. "I ought to strip you to your skivvies and have you flogged. I gave you direct and clear instruction that you were not to leave the base."

"I was bored, Admiral!" She begged. "You have no idea how unbelievably stir crazy I was getting!"

"That's not an excuse, Aardvark, and you well know it." He answered. "You disobeyed a direct order, and then you endangered better than the full compliment of the Mirratord and all Sangheili life – you endangered all life."

"Now see here, Admiral, if I recall correctly, it was me who prevented said life from being endangered." She pointed at the Index in Lai Tasha's hand for emphasis. "If I hadn't gotten that away from the Brutes, then the galaxy might have been in danger – not regardless."

He sighed, and crossed his arms. "Aardvark, you still disobeyed a direct order, and you got a lot of people killed who were trying to chase you down and get you out of the line of fire."

"I wasn't exactly given much of a choice in the matter, Admiral. I never intended for this to get so out of hand…" She looked at the Index, then blew a sigh and shook her head. "At least I'll sit in my cell knowing that thing is in the hands of someone smart enough to not use it on anything."

Lai Tasha gave a tickled grin.

"I should have you stripped of rank and confined to quarters for a year." Aozora grumped.

Aardvark cocked her head at him.

He sighed. "However, as unbelievably messy as this operation was… it was still a success, and what little peace we thought to have we can now again reassert. You did well… considering… well enough leastwise."

"Do I at least get a thank you, Admiral?" She asked, tentative.

He shook his head. "No, I'll not give your over inflated ego another pump."

She donned a shocked, insulted look. "Over inflated!"

Lai Tasha stifled a laugh.

"I have just the punishment for you." He said, running a finger over his armored mandibles. "No amount of begging or screaming will get you out of it, either."

Her insulted look turned into trepidation. That he hadn't mentioned what that punishment was was beginning to wear on her. Lai Tasha just laughed out loud.