Chapter Five: Defensive Maneuvers
Planet Therisalli, Sword Carrier The Servant of Recompense, December 15th, 2552…
I trailed behind the Imperial Admiral in silence, watching the nine-foot-tall warrior as he brought me down the kilometer-long corridor. The hallway was pretty much empty, excluding piles of crates containing food and ammo strewn about. The corridor we were in, if my studying of Covenant ship architecture was correct, was a simple storage deck, with hundreds of storage rooms lining the long hall. I decided to break the silence.
"So, how many soldiers are we talking about?"
"Six. They're the best of the best, and were trained personally by some of the greatest Sangheili leaders. Xytan 'Jar Wattinr, Thel 'Vadam, and I have spent years training these men." He paused. I took this moment to ask what I thought was a simple question.
"In all of our research about the Covenant in the past decades, we've noticed that Elite names always ended with the '-ee' suffix. We knew The Arbiter as Thel 'Vadamee, and The High Imperial Admiral as Xytan 'Jar Wattinree. What happened to that?" I asked. The Imperial Admiral jumped back with a surprised hiss.
"That suffix signifies our alliance with the Covenant Empire. We never use that after our names unless we are allied with them, which we are strictly not! It is an insult to call a Sangheili with an '-ee' at the end of his name, human." He stated, sounding very annoyed. I nodded.
"I'm sorry, please continue."
"Yes… well. These soldiers were originally going to be trained for the Zealot Class, and would be used to go on stealth missions into enemy territory, much like your later SPARTAN soldiers."
"The SPARTAN-III Headhunter squads, I remember those guys."
"Indeed. Well, as we were just about to send out the first patrol to a remote Sangheili colony to snuff out a rebellion, the Great Schism occurred, and the Covenant went to hell after that."
"So you want me to finish their training?"
"Yes. They were not yet ready for stealth combat against humans, and are definitely not ready to fight against the Brutes. We need… a human touch to it."
"I understand. So where do we begin?" I wondered, looking down the seemingly abandoned hallway all the way into the distance.
"At the very end of this hall is a small room that we've converted into a training area for the-" He was cut off as the Supercarrier shook violently.
"Imperial Admiral! Zealot Major! Get to somewhere safer, we're under attack from a small Jiralhanae fleet!" The Fleetmaster yelled through the comms. The ship shook once again, harder, and I ran to the nearest window. Outside, a CCS-class Battlecruiser - dwarfed by over seventy times by the Supercarrier - was trying to broadside the ship. It didn't even get the shields to ninety-nine percent with its weapons before the Supercarrier eviscerated it with its point defense plasma cannons. In the distance, ten more battlecruisers jumped in, all opening fire immediately.
"Quick, human, we must get the men!" The Imperial Admiral ordered. I nodded and sprinted ahead to the last door, which was cleaner and had no crates surrounding it. Noticing movement, the sensors opened the door, revealing a well-used training room. Six eight-foot-tall Sangheili stood in the room talking to each other. They looked up at me when the door opened, not saying anything as I walked in, followed closely by the Imperial Admiral. One of them edged his hand towards his Energy Sword, and I moved my hand towards mine in preparation for if they decided to strike. The Elite, noticing my movements, moved his mandibles into what looked like a smile.
"Well trained, unlike the other humans I have had the chance to see." The Elite remarked, examining me closely. "Why have we not killed him yet?" I didn't take offense to that. It was a valid question from the Elite's point of view.
"He has joined the Swords of Sanghelios, and has pledged to aid in our war effort."
"A human?" The Elite replied. This one Elite seemed to be the leader of the group, because the others were looking at him not as a friend, but as a superior. The glint in the other's eyes held great respect for their leader.
"Yes, a human. But not just any human. What he is, well, you may have heard of his kind. The SPARTANs."
"A Demon?! Here?!" Even with his self control, his honor got the best of him, and the Elite lunged forwards with his Energy Sword drawn. I activated mine and raised it, parrying his first strike against my neck. Unlike the other duel on the bridge, this one had two meanings. One was the plain one, that he hated me and wanted to kill me, but the other was more hidden. This was a test. A test for the Elite for the Imperial Admiral to see if he had trained them to standard, and to me to see if I was good enough to lead the Imperial Admiral's men. The Elite jumped back and held his Energy Sword in a stance.
"Your move, human." The Elite said, looking me in the eye. We began to circle around each other, keeping our eyes locked, waiting for the other to move first. We circled each other for over thirty seconds before I noticed a slight movement from the Elite. He was edging himself closer to me with each step, and lowering his Energy Sword ever so slightly in preparation for his next attack. And, within the next ten seconds, he leapt forwards once again. I ducked under the first attack and blocked the second as he came around again. He swung at me with surgical precision, and it was getting hard to see his movements anymore. So, trying to confuse him, I deactivated my sword and ran back and jumped against the wall, boosting myself off of it. I jumped over him and to the other side of the room, reactivating my Energy Sword.
"You're good, I will admit." I said, trying to get him to attack again, but he didn't budge. He stood watching me once again with his Energy Sword hilt braced against his hand. So I crept forwards, my sword held up vertically against my chest. My turn. I jumped forward with my Energy Sword pointed in front of me. He blocked my sword from hitting his chest, and it instead plunged into his shoulder. The Elite cried out and dropped his sword, clutching his wound as it dripped purple blood onto the floor. I deactivated my sword and placed it on my belt, looking at the Imperial Admiral.
"You got him to drop his sword. You won." The Imperial Admiral said, clearly surprised. I nodded and walked over to the Elite, helping him over to where he was sitting at first. He growled at my touch, but allowed me to move him back to his comrades. The Servant of Recompense shook again as plasma torpedoes smashed into the shielding surrounding the Supercarrier.
"We must go to a safer location, this room is too exposed to the battle." I announced.
"Indeed." The Imperial Admiral said, looking at me. The other Elites, helping their leader up, walked to the door and down the hall, follow by us. We ignored the violent shaking of the ship as we speed-walked down the kilometer-long corridor, and kept our pace even as injured soldiers from the gun emplacements ran past us to the storage rooms for medical supplies,
"The dining hall is in the safest place." The lead Elite said, glaring at me.
"That's three floors up." Another one of the Elites said. I nodded and ran to the nearest elevator at the end of the hallway. The door was already open, and I helped all of the Elites in. The Imperial Admiral punched something in, and the elevator rose up. In a few seconds, it stopped and the door opened to a bustling and loud dining hall-turned armory. A young Elite Minor ran up the Imperial Admiral and kneeled.
"Imperial Admiral, the Brutes are boarding the ship, we are preparing the dining hall as a defensive point." The Elite uttered, not looking up at the Admiral. The Imperial Admiral looked down on the Minor with what seemed to be annoyance, and breathed in deeply.
"The heretics have boarded us? Then we will deliver them our wrath. Bring me to the main battleground."
"Yessir." The small Elite scampered up and gestured us to follow him. He led us down the main hall and to what looked like an auditorium. In the room, Brutes charged in through the entrance with their Gravity Hammers aided by shielded Jackals. On the side we were led into, Elites and Skirmishers fired relentlessly in the crowd with plasma rifles and plasma repeaters. Stealth soldiers crept along the rafters of the room completely invisible to the Covenant. They jumped down with their swords drawn behind enemy lines and charged in, pushing the Brute lines back into the doorway. After doing this, they dashed back as an Elite with a Fuel Rod Cannon fired into the hall.
"They're breaking through the wall there!" An Elite yelled, pointing to one of the walls. The Brutes, continuously hammering the wall away, broke through the resilient metal in mere minutes, and stormed through with a piercing battle cry. At the front was a tall Brute Chieftain who I recognized. Izakus was a very dangerous Chieftain who had been sought after by the UNSC for years.
"I'll take care of this." The Imperial Admiral said, clutching his Energy Swords, activating them. His mandibles flared, he ran into the battle at a blinding speed, raising his Energy Swords in front of him. He quickly cut down eight Brutes as they tried to react, swinging their Gravity Hammers blindly at the blur cutting through their ranks. Izakus, taking notice to the Imperial Admiral, braced himself and raised his Gravity Hammer to block the inevitable blow. The Imperial Admiral lunged forward and swung his energy swords in an X and cut through the Gravity Hammer, the pieces falling to the ground with a thunk. Izakus roared out and activated arm shields, which resembled Jackal shields. He used these as weapons, thrusting the heated plasma at the Imperial Admiral relentlessly, who countered with quick thrusts with his swords.
"Riflemen! Cover the Imperial Admiral!" An Elite Minor yelled, pointing at a large group of Brutes running to aid their leader. A line of Elites holding Carbines ran up, firing in unison at the Brute pack. They fell one by one, their bodies coating the floor in purple-blue blood.
"I need to help him!" I yelled, pointing to Izakus. He, because of his immense size and strength, was steadily overpowering the Imperial Admiral with his arm shields. I sprinted to the Admiral with my sword drawn, blocking a sudden blow from Izakus as he saw me coming. The Imperial Admiral ducked behind me for a second to catch his breath before jumping back, pulling me with him.
"Do you have a plan, human?"
"He's heavily defended from the front, as you know, but from what I already know, his peripheral vision was blinded in a battle long ago. Go in from the side, I'll distract him!" I said, running us in circles around the enraged Brute. The Imperial Admiral nodded and broke off, jumping behind a crate. I ran towards Izakus and captured his attention, swinging my sword at his energy shields. The Imperial Admiral crept around the crates, dodging plasma fire, and watched me. I got it so that Izakus was facing me and was unaware of the Admiral behind him.
Brutes were smart, but not too smart, when something else captured its attention, it forgot what had just happened. Izakus completely forgot about the Imperial Admiral, and focused purely on me. This gave the Imperial Admiral the chance to clasp onto Izakus's back armor, swinging himself up onto the humongous Brute's back. Izakus swung wildly, trying to get the Imperial Admiral off of him. The Admiral yelled and plunged his two swords into Izakus's back. The Brute fell to the ground silently, the energy shields deactivating. I dashed into the battle to fight the other Brutes, but looked back at what happened next. The Imperial Admiral walked over to Izakus's head and kneeled, looking at his face. Izakus snarled, but was not able to move because he was paralysed.
"And so ends the reign of a false king." The Imperial Admiral muttered, raising his Energy Swords, bringing them down on Izakus's head. "May you burn in a thousand hells."
"Imperial Admiral, Zealot Major, the Fleetmaster is calling you back to the bridge. Your men are already there." An Elite Major yelled from across the hall.
"They had left us?" The Imperial Admiral questioned, surprised.
"Your injured soldier had collapsed." The Admiral nodded and ran back to the entrance to the dining hall, ducking under hails of plasma, and into the doorway, followed by me closely behind.
"How can the Fleetmaster summon you? Aren't you superior?"
"I cannot order anyone on a ship that is not my own. I am only here because my flagship was destroyed at High Charity. I am at the Fleetmaster's disposal." The Imperial Admiral said, continuing his brisk pace along the purple corridor. We headed straight, through four sets of doors, and to an elevator, up a floor, and back to the doors that led to the bridge. The Imperial Admiral knocked on the sealed bridge door.
"It is I, Tsutar 'Te Misakan, and the Zealot Major." The Imperial said loudly, knocking again. His name? I thought. The door hissed and opened, revealing a readied Honor Guard, who moved to the side with the sight of us.
"Good, you have come, Imperial Admiral." Mizume said, stepping towards him from the holographic table. The Fleetmaster followed closely behind, clutching an Energy Sword hilt.
"I must congratulate you on the win against Izakus, but the Brutes have also brought something aboard that has slaughtered a whole battalion near the secondary hangar." 'Zehirae said, standing at attention next to the Imperial Admiral. Tsutar stood regally and looked down on the Field Marshal.
"I will bet my honor that they brought Mgalekgolo." The Imperial Admiral said, his face scrunched up in frustration and thought.
"Yes, only a Hunter could take down an Elite battalion." I said, my arms crossed.
"Indeed. Even a Brute chieftain would be overpowered by Stealth Sangheili, but a Hunter has enough armor to destroy buildings with a single blow." Mizume remarked, bringing up an old video file on the holographic table of a Hunter knocking down an apartment complex.
"Do you have weapons capable of destroying its armor?" I asked, looking at a weapons rack on the far end of the bridge. The Fleetmaster shrugged.
"A Focus Rifle could melt through the strongest of metals, but would require stealth and a long firing range. It's pretty much useless up close." He said, walking over to the rack and pulling one down. The rifle was long and looked like a version of the beam rifle with a stubby stock. The Fleetmaster handed it to me and flipped a small switch on the top, lights on the charge counter and along the barrel turning on. I shouldered it and pointed it at the wall. It felt surprisingly light in my hands, considering it was built for use by Elites and not humans.
"You can fire it, that wall is really not needed." Mizume said, gesturing at the wall. I shrugged and aimed, the purple holographic scope rising up from a projector above the charge counter. The magenta reticle was pointed directly at a small beam in the center of the wall, and I held down the trigger. Unlike a beam rifle, it was a continuous fire weapon. If you held down the trigger, the beam kept going.
The beam melted through the wall in seconds, and slightly into the next. My finger jumped from the trigger and I dropped the weapon, as it was so hot it was starting to burn through my dark purple gloves. The Imperial Admiral laughed and walked over to me, examining my hands.
"You overheated it." 'Misakan said, picking up the steaming weapon. "Don't fire it so long."
"Yeah… you could have told me that."
"And I thought humans were studying our technology!" The Fleetmaster said, laughing. The Imperial Admiral threw me the weapon once again, and I took aim at the wall, firing for half a second. The wall still melted slightly, but it didn't overheat, just warmed slightly in my hands. I smiled and turned to Tsutar, who grabbed another battery from a small satchel and walked over to me.
"To reload this, pop out that circular part that spins when you fire." He pointed to the piece just in front of the trigger. "Hit the button, let it pop out, and slide a new one in. To lock it in without it falling out accidentally, push that part up." He gestured to the part under the battery, which unhinged when the used battery slid out. I pushed up the unhinged section until it snapped into place.
"Good?"
"Yes, you reloaded it." He pointed to a circle on the topside behind the scope. "When that turns red, reload it."
"Right."
"So, now that you've learned how to use it, let's head down to the Mgalekgolo." Mizume said, grabbing three more Focus Rifles off of the wall, tossing two to Tsutar, who handed one to the Fleetmaster. 'Zehirae flipped the switch so his was active, and walked out of the door, followed by the Fleetmaster, the Imperial Admiral, and me.
The ventral side of The Servant of Recompense was covered mostly in hangars and weapons systems. The bombardment cannons, large plasma cannons used to fire on planets, sat unmoving on the bottom of the ship, the Elites who would usually man them preoccupied fighting Brutes and the incoming Hunters. We made our way down a collapsed elevator shaft to the very bottom floor of the ship and down a long corridor leading to the ventral hangar bay, where over two thousand Banshee flyers were housed for atmospheric invasion. I ran up to the Fleetmaster with my Focus Rifle in hand.
"So, how did they board us?"
"They got on board through the shields as we fired our cannons on their cruisers, when the shield goes down to let the plasma out. Their boarding craft are small enough that they could get through the small gap before it closed once more." The Imperial Admiral answered, walking up to me. I nodded and pointed to something lodged into the hull on the floor above us.
"Is that a boarding ship?" I asked. The Fleetmaster nodded. Suddenly, the floor shook, and we all stopped in our tracks.
"That wasn't the Jiralhanae ships firing on us, that was isolated." He paused. "Hunters."
The floor shook again, and from between the thin spaces between the purple metal floorboards, worms began to slowly come through.
"Lekgolo! Shoot the floor!" The Fleetmaster yelled, firing his rifle at the floor. The metal platform melted… into space. The atmosphere inside the hall was quickly sucked out, along with us. The other three pushed a button on the side of their helmet to activate a mask that enclosed their face. I reached up quickly with the hand that wasn't holding my Focus Rifle and found the button. I pressed it, and a transparent shield enclosed over my face, and air filled the small space. I took a deep breath and tried to orientate myself. I looked 'up' at the underside of the Supercarrier, at the mass of Hunter worms swarming around the armor. I fired with my Focus Rifle, blasting off a good portion of the worms into space. But, in doing that, I blasted myself further away from The Servant of Recompense. About twelve kilometers behind me, a flaming and mostly destroyed CCS-class Battlecruiser was on a crash course with the Supercarrier. I flipped myself around, firing with the rifle, boosting myself back towards the Supercarrier, which was beginning a lateral roll. Near The Servant of Recompense, Elite Cruisers were coming forwards to fire on the Brute Fleet, firing wave after wave of superheated plasma into the Brute lines.
I got myself into a flight position with my arms against my sides as I flew towards the hull of the humongous starship. Bracing myself, I smashed into the magenta metal, creating a dent. Because the Supercarrier was rolling, I had actually crashed into the topside of the ship, just above the starboard primary hangar. I tried desperately to grab onto something, but Covenant surfaces were built very smooth, and there were no handholds within a seventy foot radius barring the shield projector, which, if touched the wrong way, could down the whole shield system for the carrier - which was something that I would not do. Wait! I reached down to my belt to check if my Energy Sword was still there, which it was. I grabbed it and activated it, plunging it into the hull. It hissed as it slowly melted through the metal, but stayed. I was jarred from my constant freefall to a sudden stop, and I had to get my feet onto the hull to steady myself.
"Zealot Major? Zealot Major, is that you?" I heard a voice call to me over the comms. To be such a clear transmission they had to be very close to me. I looked around me and saw the Imperial Admiral walking towards me, his boots magnetized to the surface of the ship. His crimson cloak flowed behind him, creating a crest of sorts.
"Yes, Admiral 'Te Misakan, it's me. Where are the others?" I asked. The Imperial Admiral, who had come up to me and held me in place, looked down.
"Sadly, the Fleetmaster was hit with a piece of shrapnel, and we lost his signal in the battlefield." He said, pointing to the fierce melee around the Supercarrier. "We must go, there is an airlock near here that leads to an armory." I nodded and looked around.
"Where is it?"
"You're standing on it." He said. I looked down to see what he was talking about. I hadn't noticed it because I was trying to find an obvious airlock, but there was a small incision was embedded in the armor plating of the Supercarrier. I removed my Energy Sword from it, and it hissed and slid open, revealing a shielded door. The sword passed through the shield, so I assumed it would allow me to pass through. It did. Suddenly, it went from zero gravity to Earth-like gravity. My torso still floated in space, but my legs dangled 'downwards' inside the ship as I reached out to help Tsutar in. I let myself fall to the ground inside the ship's corridor, and got out of the way as the Imperial Admiral climbed down the ladder.
"Where's Mizume?" I asked.
"He hijacked a Seraph and flew to the secondary hangar." 'Te Misakan answered quickly. He raised his Focus Rifle and fired at something behind me. I whirled around to see a Brute standing there… without a head. It fell to the ground with a wet thunk, and I slowly walked away from it.
"We should regroup at the second hangar and then get to the bridge. We can't lose the bridge." I said. The Imperial Admiral nodded and walked over to a panel on the wall.
"I can get a comm link up to the hangar from here and we might get a reply from the Fleetmaster." He tapped a few buttons, and suddenly static rang out. "This is Imperial Admiral 'Te Misakan to Field Marshal 'Zehirae and Fleetmaster 'Churoiya, hailing on all frequencies. Do you copy?"
"-oes anyone copy?! I repeat, this is the UNSC Saint Peter Port to any ships! Does anyone copy?! We have wounded aboard!" Came a sudden and frantic reply. I ran over to the console to see the identification code for the comm message. It was, as the speaker stated, the UNSC Destroyer Saint Peter Port - UEGS-09837. I knew that name. Was it from my past? Before I was SPARTAN Zachary-158? I had only found my last name from a vague record of myself many years ago, but I never remembered my past before I was a SPARTAN.
The name Saint Peter Port meant something to me, and I was going to find out what.