Author's note: Unfortunatly, due top computer problems, I haven't time to revise this chapter,. and since it was created well before the prolouge, I'm afraid they may not compare all that well. I'll get to revising soon as possible, but for now my main goal is to get thisstory back on line.
Chapter 1: Chosen: 2026 hours, December 15, 2552 (Human Time units)/Human Outpost on Raltor 8,
Raltor Centari system, Five kilometers west of outpost
Uiniu activated the communications device in his breathing apparatus, and the Grunt called "Check your weapons!" into it, calling to the seven thousand Grunts under his command.
The Grunts were arranged in a hundred rows of seventy, followed by the squadron of eight foot tall Elites that were supposed to control the Grunts, who had given Uiniu that responsibility for lack of interest in the squabbling little creatures. That proved to be their worst mistake.
And the last one they ever made.
"Troops, charge your weapons!" Uiniu called to his brigade, the cue for them to over-charge their plasma pistols.
Seven thousand super-heated balls of bright green-white light formed among the ranks of the diminutive creatures, each light a plasma pistol in over-charge. The Elites, alarmed, turned toward the Grunts and Lera 'Lilamee, a black armored Elite, yelled an order in a deep bellow, but was over-powered by Uiniu's next command as it roared over the local frequency:
"About-face!" Uiniu roared, as loud as his high-pitched voice could yell. "Everyone with a clear shot, fire! Blast them to Hell!"
With that, one hundred half-meter blots of super-heated plasma streaked toward the Elites, splashing over their shields and boiling away flesh and bone.
Looking at the aftermath, the burning hunks of flesh, carbonized bone and rapidly boiling purple-black blood, there was a loud cheer as thousands of Grunts screamed in victory. Uiniu called for silence and the order was followed by several thousand voices falling silent.
"Charge your weapons!" the miniscule creature called, and all Grunts with uncharged weapons quickly over-charged their weaponry. Seven thousand tiny suns flared, waiting to unleash their plasma-hell. "That is our target."
Onboard the Eternal Gospel, the Covenant Cruiser hovering just half a kilometer above the scene of the rebellion, Shipmaster Paru 'Pulamee was standing in a thirty meter tall room, the Control Room of the ship, looking at a display of the cruiser's inventory when an alarm blared. What Humans called a Jackal, which was a short vaguely birdlike reptilian creature, squawked a message to the Shipmaster: the Grunts on the surface had rebelled. 'Pulamee ordered the destruction of the Grunts. The order came just too late for the ship's plasma arrays to charge and fire.
Uiniu pointed up at the Eternal Gospel, and his troops all nodded in unison. They were about to do something most Grunts would never imagine of doing. They were about to form an effective assault on their enslavers, the Covenant. They were a bout to boil away one of the Covenant's greatest vessels, and a crew of Twenty thousand, minus the Grunts themselves and the group of Elites they have already vaporized.
"Take aim, Fire! Fire! Boil them alive!" screeched Uiniu as the cruiser's plasma turrets began to charge. The sky was then ablaze with seven thousand green-white suns burning toward the Eternal Gospel. In a second they smashed up against the cruisers shields, causing them to shine silver, then immediately boil away to nothing. They now had a straight shot for the ship.
"Charge and fire at will! Open fire!" yelped Uiniu, unable to contain the excitement in his voice.
Once again and twice more seven thousand suns flared into existence and flew to the unshielded ship. After the brigade's weapons dumped the access heat produced by the over-charged shots they recharged the pistols and fired relentlessly. The second salvo boiled the lower-aft armor of the ship, leaving the crew quarters, engineering and control room vulnerable to the small aliens' plasma fire. The third and fourth salvos, accompanied by many a Grunts swearing, served to vaporize these sections of the ship, leaving the ship to drop gracelessly to the ground, less than a kilometer away from the legion's position.
'Pulamee bellowed indecipherably as the last salvo impacted just under his hooves, boiling him alive. 'Pulamee's aides shrieked for only an instant as their blood, flesh and bones flash-vaporized. Every crewmember on board was panicking, if not for the certainty of their deaths, then because a pitiful group of Grunts would be killing them all.
"Burn! Burn! You deserve no less!" Uiniu yelled as the craft shuddered and collapsed on impact.
"How did you know small-arms fire could destroy a cruiser?" inquired Kikil, a nearby Grunt.
"I didn't," Uiniu excitedly yelped, his voice cracking "But these babies can boil away half a meter of most common rocks, so why couldn't several thousand boil a ship."
"But the distance was..."
"Shut up, we need to find ourselves a ship to get us off this rock!"
"We're stealing a warship?" Janujan, a near by Grunt yelled after hearing Uiniu's plan.
"All but a skeleton crew have left that ship, we use the gravity lift to enter the vessel and fry anyone and anything that makes itself an obstacle," replied Uiniu.
"How many officers left on the ship?" a high-pitched voice from the crowd inquired over the local channel.
"Ship manifest shows only ten Elites and twenty Jackals left aboard." Uiniu replied after consulting with the ship, which was still oblivious of the treasonous act that had just occurred. "The ship is currently under command by Ruk, a high-ranking Jackal, while the Elites are taking a break from duty. They'll be off duty for another three hours. Let's move!"
The Grunts ran as fast as their stubby legs could take them, quickly tiring the miniscule creatures. Upon reaching the war vessel they ran for the grav-lift. The ship's grav-lift was still powered up and was set to bring any troops under it slowly into the belly of the ship. Uiniu gave an order for the Grunts to head for the gravity lift.
The tiny soldiers one by one walked under it and were plucked up by the purple light around them. As the first group of Grunts hovered up to the cargo bay doors they were apprehensive, wondering if the door would open in time. It often always a worry to Covenant soldiers, a closed bay door could mean being crushed to death on the door.
As the last of his brigade floated in to the cargo bay Uiniu finally hobbled under the gravity beam and let himself be carried into the ship. He was disturbed by the thought of his organs leaping up at his throat. Also present in his mind was the awful feeling of two forces tearing at his body, if one stopped he would drop straight down or up and smashing his frail body, and that if the forces were equal he may be torn in two.
He checked the ranks of his allies and found everyone intact. He began to order them to fight their way to the Control Room, but then realized that they would not know the path-each Covenant cruiser was unique in design. He the ordered them to follow him, although he himself did not know the way.
He lead them while wandering randomly down the ten-meter tall violet- lavender halls, organizing them in a long ten row line, ignoring the obvious tactical flaw of the formation. They killed ten of the ship's decimated complement of Jackals as they went.
After wandering down one particularly long hallway he unknowingly walked into the quarters of the ship's Elite complement. He then saw the ten remaining Elites onboard in close formation. They were obviously not aware of their visitor, as none of them seemed. He immediately activated a plasma grenade, an adhesive device that bursts in a fury of blue-white super- heated plasma after five seconds, and then waited three seconds. He then threw the device at the nearest Elite. The grenade then exploded on the creatures back on impact, killing all ten Elites in one hellish super- heated sphere.
"First nine Grunts in here get plasma rifles!" Uiniu yelled at his men, grabbing a plasma rifle for himself.
There was an uproar of hoots and exited barks as nine Grunts quickly ran into the long, violet-lavender room, and then a series of disappointed howls filled the ship. The nine grunts all immediately grabbed the prize for their labor, and with out saying a word, ran back into the corridor to join the front line of the makeshift army.
Dark purple corridor after corridor they eventually located the Control Room. The looming seven-meter door was the second to last obstacle to the control of the Unstoppable Specter. Out of the warship's twenty Jackal crew they had slain fifteen, leaving a presumed five Jackals within the Control Room. Yet that wasn't then strongest impediment to them. There was a meter- thick door with major shielding they would have to destroy to reach the Control Room.
"Front row: Fire!" was heard by all seven thousand Grunts after Uiniu yelped the statement into his local transmitter.
Fifty Grunts in the front row fired, and were rewarded with only fifty thousand sparks spraying forth from their plasma pistols. Screams and yelps filled the hall as fifty Grunts cried out in surprise. That could mean only one thing: the small weapons' batteries had been depleted. Several loud clacks where heard as every Grunt that participated in the futile attack dropped its claw-like plasma pistol in unison. Uiniu prayed the Jackals had not heard them, but it was certain they had for all the noise, if not for the massive heat signature the sparks undoubtedly created.
"Weapons check!" Uiniu called, as if it were a run of the mill check. There were thousands of dull clicks as every Grunt checked his or her weapon in unison. The charge gage of every plasma pistol flickered from empty to half full, definitely not a good sign. The plasma rifle wielding Grunts found the rifles in only slightly better condition: the charge meter read one seventh full, just below the critical point were the weapon would not be able to fire effectively.
"Pistol bearers: point your weapon at the ceiling and fire twice." Uiniu ordered, hopping the battery gage was the only problem with the handguns.
With that, thousands of Grunts fired into the air twice. The first salvo was a catastrophe; half of the weapons fired, half of the shots sizzled inside the weapon from which they were fired and sprayed sparks everywhere. The second salvo was Armageddon: every energy pistol belched thousands of sparks and immediately overheated, multiplying the ambient temperature in the corridor and creating a blinding green-white light. As if the light and heat were not enough payment for the gesture, nearly every Grunt among the ranks dropped its energy weapon with a click and began hooting, yelping, and screaming. They all either covered their heads or fell to the ground for protection from the hellish show of sparks, many screaming: "It burns!"
Grunts natural methane-filled atmosphere was ice-cold, and they therefor required a special environment suit with methane tanks and frozen atmosphere. The suits' temperature systems could not compensate well enough for the flash-heat wave, so every Grunt was in a temporary hell.
Soon the heat and sparks had passed the Grunts slowly stopped squealing.
Uiniu, confused, asked the group, "Everybody okay?" He received a loud
bark from each Grunt, meaning they were confused as hell, but not
injured.
"All right, without our pistols, we're going to have to approach this a little differently. First, we blow the door with plasma grenades-" just as he spoke he became aware of the closing blast door behind him, the Jackals, no doubt alerted by the gargantuan heat signature and excessive barking from the Grunts had activated the blast door. The blast doors made by the Covenant had the most powerful shields by proportion known, but plasma grenades had a nasty trick in them aside the adhesive properties: they corrupt and disable any electrical shielding system, at least temporarily.
"Fine," puffed Uiniu, noticeably irritated with the new delay, "we blow the doors with grenades and then everyone with a plasma rifle will rush in. Once the rifles' batteries have been depleted we will bash in their skulls with them. If anything goes wrong, I want wave after wave of Grunts in here, killing any remaining Jackals. Ready?"
"Yes, Excellency!" they replied, using the honorific normally given to Elites.
"Why do I deserve that title? I'm about to lead you into the most ignorantly dangerous mission of your life!" he answered, jokingly.
"Second row: prep and throw grenades on my mark...mark!" with Uiniu's order fifty bright-blue flaming grenades streaked through the dull air of the cruiser and landed in a staggered formation on the purple blast door. Four seconds later the door came alive with brilliant blue light as the plasma explosives burst with a poof! After the gases cleared the door appeared to have vanished, leaving a confused Jackal just beyond the door undefended.
Uiniu, seeing the opportunity, raised and fired his weapon straight at his foe, boiling away the poor creature's head in a second. With that every plasma rifle wielding Grunt ran in the room and fired, killing three more Jackals, leaving just one Jackal left-the last one on board. The last jackal live was Ruk, the temporary captain of the vessel.
Uiniu knocked her to the ground and held his rifle against her head. "Don't. Move." he commanded.
"Uiniu," called a Grunt that was attempting to take control of the vessel, "this ship's got an AI!"
Bad news. While Human Artificial Intelligences, or AIs, help run ships and perform various tasks, Covenant AIs were created solely to prevent capture of a vessel. If someone or something attempted to commandeer a ship, the AI would do everything it could to prevent capture. Because of worries that AIs may have errors and lock out ship commands without just cause each was given a failsafe code to disable them.
"What's the failsafe, Ruk? Tell me or I'll kill you where you lay!" Uiniu ordered.
"I would never tell it to a gas sucker like you!" Ruk angrily squawked.
"So, if I didn't suck methane you would tell me?"
"Yeah, if you can take off that mask and not die I will." Ruk joked.
"Fine." Uiniu simply replied, as unscrewed his breather, an action that could quickly kill him, and stated: "I'm not breathing methane now!"
Ruk, astonished, blurted out "Computer, activate failsafe code: 'High Charity'." without even thinking.
Uiniu screwed on the breathing apparatus as Rulirul, a fellow Grunt took control of the ship.
"What do you call this, gas sucker?" Ruk asked.
"I call this treason!" hooted Uiniu, "and I call this overkill!" he joyfully added, as he stuck two active plasma grenades to Ruk's neck and coolly walked away.
"Keep the ship out of danger," Uiniu said just after Ruk was vaporized inside two mini-suns, "I'm going to take a nap."