Asteroid Belt, Ballast System

January 5th 2552

27:47 (Local Time)

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He wanted to pray, but he stopped himself.

Fire raged in the service tunnels above his head, a body, one of the brave lunatics who joined him on this mission, floated lifelessly. The power had given out some time ago, turning off artificial gravity so that what power remained could keep air flowing and allow access to the parts of the ship around the critical systems. Something snapped behind him and he jerked his head, just in time to see a chunk of metal shatter under the weight of the superstructure.

Later, he shook himself awake and blinking the blurriness out of his eyes, he gazed into the combat harness' HUD, Erun pulled himself free of his binding, a set of wiring he'd become wrapped in whilst passed out. The lights in the corridor flickered as Erun tried to reorient himself in the dark. There was an intersection down the hall, above it was the directions to the bridge, which Erun hoped was still intact. He wanted to pray, but he stopped himself. The Dogma's Authority was dead, functionally. As he turned the corner an explosion tore through the ship. Erun ran, the rumbling and groaning vibrated through the metal connected to his feet. It glowed hot behind him, the shockwave threw him forwards and he slammed into a wall, his suit clanging and crunching on the hull. Stars exploded in his eyes and he grunted, realising as he blacked out, that his suit was ruptured.

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His suit leaked atmosphere and time was running out. It was the first thing he remembered from the explosion when he woke up. It couldn't have been long; his air was still in the reserve tank. Two minutes of air. Three minutes under gravity to the bridge. Erun tried to reorient himself but found it difficult, the ship seemed to have shifted while he was out. He pushed off a wall and headed towards the bridge, pulling on doors and anchored debris, increasing his speed as he began to rifle through the ship. Erun spotted a bend and tried to slow himself. He checked his suit. He was going fast, too fast. He tried to stop himself. Managed only to break into a low gravity spin. He slammed into the bulkhead. Erun coughed blood, steadying himself. He engaged the reserve tank, his lungs filling with air and pushed off again, taking his time. He came to a doorway, half melted by plasma fire, and pulled the floating corpse to the door. He pushed, fusing it to the door, pushing the melted metal aside so that he could move on towards the bridge without melting his armour.

With a scream it yawned open and he slipped through as the plasma finished the armour and began to cook the flesh. Erun was thankful that he had his harness on, the smell of charred flesh was one a warrior knew well; only a brute would revel in it, though. War was an art not an indulgence. He came then to a working door with a flashing panel warning him that the atmosphere had vented from the ship in the next section. He checked his suit for leaks and damage then placed his hand on the control and tapped the override. The doors clunked and Erun froze, his suit would not compensate for the quick change in pressure, not with so much damage. The air would be sucked out and pop it right off. Erun looked around, frantically, searching until he found a store room, which he yanked open using a chunk of wall panelling floating down the corridor, covered in blood.

No atmosphere rushed out because a hole had been punched in the far wall, from which Erun could see straight into space. He glanced around, and grabbed a body that floated in the corner of the room. He wanted to pray; he stopped himself. Unable to changed, he spent a tense few moments trying to seal the suit with an empty canister of sealant. It had been pierced by shard of debris and was vented. There was however, a Plasma pistol. Erun grunted and swiped at it, gripping its handle and positioning it over the crack in his suit on his leg. He gritted the three sets of teeth he still had and charged it. He roared with pain as the suit sealed, melting together and burning his flesh. Using up the last reserves of his oxygen as he tried to gasp in pain. Zero-G saved him from needing to put pressure on the wound and he soon found the oxygen tubes attached to the corpse and hooked it up to his crippled suit. Erun gulped down air, coughing as his lungs filled. He dragged the corpse through space back to the door and hit the release, opening it up into what was once the middle of the Corvette.

His eyes widened. The ship wasn't just breached, it had been gutted like Kalpin, a fish he enjoyed that was native to his homeland. Metal twisted in long streaking arcs and debris floated idly about the place. Above him had once been the landing pad of their Corvette but now, only the sinews of the superstructure remained, thin beams of metal that seemed to remain in place against all the odds.

We've lost propulsion, then. Those would have sheared if we were still powered by anything.

Erun grabbed a loose cable and pushed off, using it as a guide rope towards the far side of the wreck.

Only his own breaths accompanied him as he slipped through space, pulling the corpse with him. His eyes caught a battle, far in the distance. On one side, his pursuers, on the other, his mortal enemies. Bolts streamed through the sky, masses of them. They might have been primitive, but those lancers, the human MAC guns, were deadly. Erun had seen them destroy entire ships in a single round. Only their gulf in naval technology saved his people from embarrassment; he was beginning to worry that if the humans somehow survived this war, they would eclipse them without the assistance of the engineers.

These weren't regular human ships; they were the old colonial ones. They were being torn to shreds but they had the numbers, as well as a handful of capital ships. Erun couldn't tell what was going on from his position, floating aimlessly in the wreckage of his old Corvette. The humans had unwittingly saved his life when they foolishly engaged the fleet that followed him but Erun wasn't about to thank them for that. One day he knew he would return to destroy them both.

His attention returned to the airlock on the fair side of the fuselage, it was close now, he slipped back beneath the shadow of the wrecked outer hull and landed with a thump onto the remains of a hallway. The bridge wasn't far, just beyond a tattered and plasma melted hallway. At the end, an officer stood behind a shield, craning his neck as Erun came into view.

"Surprised to see me, Dehl?" Erun asked, patching himself into local comms. "What's the situation on the bridge?"

"Uh, good?" He squeaked. Finding a crew had been hard, most were Kig-Yar, or young idiots who didn't understand their religion well enough to know that it was heresy. Regardless, there were a surprising number of young, dumb, and reckless Sangheili looking for work in the Empire.

"Foolish boy. Open the door." Erun huffed.

He nodded, quickly and nervously and penned a command into the computer. Erun felt gravity return as the corpse slammed to the floor. With oxygen in the room, Erun disconnected the corpse and left it for Dehl to clear up.

The bridge was a mess, part of it was a med bay, a Canteen, and someone had piled some corpses in a corner by the door. Miraculously, little damage had been done to the bridge itself. Several figures stood around the war table. They were mostly Elites, all of them young, some of them were even female. Ketarus nodded respectfully as he approached.

"Redemption, did he survive?" Erun asked. Ketarus jerked his head towards the corpse pile. Redemption was stood over a cane, trying to bless the believers who had passed. Erun wondered why he bothered. "What's the situation," He groaned, the cauterised wound on his thigh whined with a sharp pain that made the warrior grimace.

"Everything is gone. Only power remains to the censor relays surrounding the bridge and the connection to a comms drone hidden near an outer planet. We have localised life support which might last a few months if more die of their wounds, but were going to have to find some way to fix the tank. It's leaking. We have no weapons, no transport survived-"

"Our drop ship is gone?"

A female spoke up, "it was ejected from the hanger when the atmosphere vented from the ship. We're struggling to get a precise location with all the debris bit we know that the transponder is still active, at least."

"But it might not be attached to something." Ketarus noted, "we vented atmosphere during a high gravity manoeuvre, it shot out of the ship at Gods know what speed. In the belt, its likely smashed into something."

"So, not enough air, damaged tanks, no propulsion, no transport, and no guns."

Ketarus grunted in affirmation.

"Is there anything we can fix? Did any engineers survive?"

He looked towards an area of the deck, where several Minors nursed an engineer, trying to remove a spindle of metal from one of its sacs. Erun knew if they messed that job up, it would explode, its vest was grafted to its body to prevent the humans from taking one captive.

"We have one engineer that is severely wounded" an officer said, grimly. "We can patch up the tanks, we have a team ready to go, but unless we can prevent this spin, they'll likely die on the return trip."

"If they're willing, send them in, every moment wasted is a moment closer to death."

The officer nodded, "I will accompany them, Shipmaster."

Erun nodded and watched him go. His gaze turned to the window and he saw the battle taking place far in the distance. The humans' numbers kept their pursuers back and Erun noted the ship profiles on the holotable. Embedded in the fleet of colony ships were five UNSC vessels, the true dangers of their Fleet, a Carrier and a Destroyer, fired hyper-accurate shots at the Covenant's capital ships. It was a ruthless tactic: swarm them with numbers to give the heavy hitters a clear shot on the most important targets. The comms channel pinged; it had identified the ships. Erun sighed with relief. It was the ship named the Invictus. It meant invincible in a language once spoken on earth. A part of Erun envied the humans and their connection to their ancestors. Sangheili history was heresy if one went back far enough. Perhaps it would be again, someday, when Erun and his doomed mission exposed the truth.

Erun glanced sunward and watched the human colony on the outer edge of its burning mass. Down there was the child he needed answers from. Down on that planet was the source of his shame and his heresy. Down there was his only hope for the future of his family and order.

He wanted to pray.

He stopped himself.