1553 hours September 2, 2552 (Military calendar)
Junkyard
Outer Reach Star System
FFG-842 Razorback
2
It had been almost a two months since that cruiser had used its sniper like laser weapon to cut through the Razorbacks armor and hull like it was nothing. In that time a lot had happened every UNSC and Covenant wreck had been towed away from the planet from all over the system and placed into a stable orbit around Turul to join with the remains of the picket fleet that had been stationed here. The frigate was nearly completely repaired on the inside no attempts had been made to fix the outside out of fear that the Covies would notice. The fact that they were alive at all spoke to the Late Commander Blacks intelligence thought Commander Brian Robinson. After Commander Black died when a chunk of the destroyer UNSC Iroquois slammed into the ship causing a support beam to dislodge and rupture Blacks EVA suit. He wasn't the only one to die of the ships three hundred and forty crew and marines seventy died in combat over the last months repairs another thirty-five had died from various accidents most of them when a welding torch exploded they had come close to being discovered as a frigate jumped in nearly two minutes after within a hundred kilometers of the mass of wreaks.
Over the last week the covies never took a close look at the scrapyard beyond a squadron of space banshees doing a flyby every forty eight hours. In those forty hours in between Robinson had ordered salvage runs as well as SAR missions with stealth being primary. They needed weapons, ammo, fuel, and people. the two hundred and thirty five crew members were running themselves raged some of them preforming two or three jobs each. The weapons they had shot themselves dry on Archers they had only two MAC rounds. Only two of their four 11B2A6 250mm light railguns were operational and less than half of the Rampart turrets were operational. In a nutshell they had no weapons. One of the four pelicans the Razorback carried was destroyed. And kind of useless at the moment but the four massive Scorpion tanks and six hogs were intact. Honestly Robinson thought if I can find more pelicans or maybe longswords or even better some of the covies own fighters from their wreaks ill dump them to grab them.
Everyone on the bridge held their breath as the passive sensors detected the twelve banshees approaching. Nervously watching the clock it only takes two minutes to fly past the hundreds of wreaked ships it feels like hours but the minutes pass with no reaction from the banshees. As they leave marines and crew in their EVA suits tethered to their team leaders who had thrusters every thruster pack on the ship teams headed to several ships close by. The for section of the destroyer Minotaur and the blackened Herodotus and the frigate Savannah for missiles and MAC rounds and the UNSC Musashi aft sections hangers in the hopes of pelicans and hopefully longswords.
Over the next fourteen hours dozens of working EVA jetpacks are found and used to manually remove and reload the empty missile pods on the Razorback. Parts are scavenged to get the last two 11B's repaired as are another ten of the Ramparts bringing them back up to eighty percent operational the last were fused chunks of metal. They found eight MAC shells in the Savannah it took every man with jetpacks almost three hours to transfer them the four hundred meters. With the ships magazine now almost over loading they started looking for crews who didn't get woken from cryo. Each cryo section had their own redundant reactor to keep anyone frozen alive in the hopes of recovery, in addition to the tubes own battery witch had a three day battery.
As a result they had already found nearly a thousand people. They were shocked to find out they had been in cryo in what remained of the Reach system. After they were thawed out given a meal and told what had happened a furry overtook them that made them work even harder. Over seven hundred of those were out getting a Stalwart class light frigate that had the bridge destroyed but was otherwise intact. The Meriwether Lewis back into working order with a axillary bridge constructed in the ships brig. A Diligence class Destroyer that had been hit by the sniper ship that had knocked out Razorback was also being stocked with ordnance from dozens of ships to be repaired next.
They had found several pelican dropships and a pair of longswords fighters. After removing the heavy M247's and M512 90mm cannons from the tanks and the M41 AA, M39 rocket and M68 gauss turrets from the hogs they were shoved out of the vehicle dock and the dropships and fighters were floated in. Munitions for both craft were stored in several compartments as were barrels of fuel. As marines boarded several wrecked covenant ships they started stripping them of anything they could use mostly small arms thousands of plasma rifles and pistols, Needlers, carbines and every other weapon the covenant had. Also recovered from bodies of the dead covenant hundreds of jackals arm shield units and several dozen working personal shields of the Elites.
Hundreds of engineers that specialized in the covenant technology had cut out three plasma beam emitter's and five of the smaller secondary reactors from four corvettes were cut out and pushed into the gaping holes where normal UNSC weapons emplaces had been melted a single emitter and generator was installed on the frigates and the destroyer also after some searching a few shield generators were found not knowing how to make them work they still grabbed over a dozen to experiment on if they could augment the covenant shields to fit UNSC ship…. Also a pair of Phantom dropships with no need of ground vehicles every hog and tank were discarded making room for the three dozen dropships and fighters they had recovered bringing the four ships compliment all together to four thousand eight hundred forty six personnel (sixteen hundred marines) seven fighters (three longswords three banshee and a Seraph and eighteen dropships (nine pelicans three phantoms and five spirits)
The forty five hours passed without anyone noticing until alarms went off around the small task force of three ships that had been fully repaired even the surface was camouflaged to look just as destroyed and augmented as they were. The over staffed ships: Diligence-class destroyer UNSC Broadside, Stalwart class light frigate UNSC Meriwether Lewis and Paris class Heavy frigate UNSC Razorback went to a silent alarm communicating via Morse code. Weapons were manned, the seven fighters and fourteen dropships were fueled and prepped and they waited.
With repair, salvage and SAR suspended the graveyard looked just as dead as it was supposed to be. A good thing too as the Banshees arrived almost an hour early and met their death as a covenant CPV-class heavy destroyer dropped out at that exact moment the small fighters disappeared. That caused laughter across the ships raising morale an hour later with no sign of a second recon being launched they continued work on the next ships the UNSC Hannibal a massive Marathon-class cruiser and a Halberd-class destroyer UNSC Paladin . The cruiser had taken several plasma torpedoes and laser strikes but its engines and its MAC was intact. Its magazine was found nearly full missing a handful of missiles and only a single MAC round had been fired.
0942 hours September 13, 2552 (Military calendar)
Junkyard
Outer Reach Star System
As the repair and rescue work continued their numbers were getting out of control they found the UNSC Gettysburg's helljumper pods and pelicans stuffed with almost a hundred survivors including the ships Captain in the process of pushing the unpowered pods and pelicans toward the Hannibal a ODST pod slammed into a piece of debris knocking the trooper inside against the comm equipment setting off a continuous distress signal. "FUCK that's going to bring every covenant ship in the system here" as everyone prepares systems Commander Robinson quickly called out for the five ships to load dead troopers into their pods launching them as well "hopefully the inspecting covenant would think a ships pods had fired from a malfunction it was far from the only malfunction they had found in their salvage the Traflagar still had their sensors on active the destroyer Iroquois had exploded when their reactor went critical a frigate that was cut in half had flushed its missiles when it hit a wreck of a cruiser each time a frigate or destroyer would investigate find nothing and leave.
Two minutes after the broadcast a sleek purple destroyer appeared the five human ships huddled close together watching as a squadron of banshees launched escorting a Spirit. The entire fleet went to a silent alert as gun crews readied there weapons and removed safeties. However the Spirit picked up six pods examining them. Finding the dead marines they cast them into space and returned to their ship to jump away.
They had just finished ensuring the Hannibal's slipspace drive was in working order when the word came down from Commander Robinson they were calling it. In the next four hours, "that was entirely too close so im calling it. Make this the last salvage run I want you to concentrate on nukes. The moment the graveyard is in the shadow of the moon and out of line of sight of Reach, and the covenant ships in orbit. We are getting the hell out of here. If no one notices the disappearance of five ships we could salvage and rescue more at a later time. After discussing it with the commanders of the other ships we have agreed to set course for the Psi Serpentis system. According to the last intel we received it should be quiet enough there since Coles fleet wiped that armada out nine years ago the covenant seem to stay away we will then plan our next step."
As the debris field disappeared behind the moon blocking the planet from view the signal lamp flashed JUMP with a double flash from the others acknowledging the five ships came to full power and four purple rings appeared and the ships disappeared leaving the covenant unaware.
1111 hours September 15, 2552 (Military calendar)
Slipspace
UNSC Broadside
Maintenance bays
"You know what these aliens as smart as they were missed on these Spirits overhead weapons. I've seen it done dozens of times with everything from longswords to falcons coming in up high where their underslung plasma cannon cant fire back." Chief Petty officer Tyrol Aragon said to his deck crew they looked at the pair of spirits in their hanger bay also stored there was the weapons removed from the Broadsides ground vehicles. "get your welding gear and get to work you apes we are going to make a few modifications"
Across the other ships similar work was being done on other ships weapons were added extra armor to covenant dropships turrets were added mounting the salvaged vehicle weapons. The Spirits were the most heavily armed having plenty of room mounted a pair of M512 90mm cannons from scorpions when they ran out of tank cannons they mounted a mix bag of Warthog turrets wired to remote filling up the spirits troop bay with spare autoloaders and ammunition