They would be here soon.

Reinforcements would be arriving soon. There were still covenant lurking on the station, no doubt about that. The surviving Capital ships had no time to withdraw their troops from the stations before they jumped out of the system.

Michael didn't know when or if the covenant would make a counter attack on the bridge. It was unlikely; however it was still a possibility. A possibility that the marine didn't exactly feel prepared for. They were down to only ten men, less then a full squad.

Five men had been knocked out of the war during this assault. The body count for the covenant was fourteen grunts, five jackals, and four elites. They were down to using plasma weapons almost exclusively, as they had expended nearly every round of their own ammunition. The situation was not yet bleak however.

They were in direct contact with the rest of the fleet, but it would be a good forty five minutes before a full battalion could be rounded up and sent to secure the station. Once they arrived it would then take anywhere from two to six hours to search and clear anymore covenant resistance left. And there is sure to be some.

Michael looked down at the objects he had gathered in front of him; the lone shotgun, the hilt of the deactivated plasma sword, and an elite helmet.

He bent down and scooped up the oblong helmet. The thing was fairly heavy, about seven pounds, estimated the marine. He turned the helmet over in his hands a few times, careful not to pierce himself with the pointed tips. He stared inside the protective piece. It was lined with some sort of gray material, probably padding. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary until a small, raised stud, toward the rear of the helmet, caught the marine's attention.

Sitting down onto the cold steel floor and bringing the helmet closer to his face, Michael stared hard at the oddity. It appeared to conceal something in its center, some sort of needle. Or a syringe, thought the marine, fascinated. He shoved his face deeper into the piece, trying to identify the devices purpose.

"You trying to put that thing on," a smug voice said in front of Michael.

He quickly brought his face back up to reality and was met by the livid eyes of PFC Barker.

"I'll disregard that remark, private, if you tell me your opinion on what this may be," he quickly replied, snapping the helmet up to the woman's face. She promptly to a hold of the object and stared inside of it. "That stud in the rear," Michael said.

Kiesha caught sight of it and scrunched up her nose. She peered closer to the stud, much like Michael a moment ago. Curious, she brought up her left hand and extended her index finger to touch it.

"Maybe you shouldn't do that Barker," Michael said quickly, Kiesha's finger inches from the bump. "That thing looks like some sort of syringe, and I personally would not want to be injected with whatever it holds," he added.

The marine hesitated for a moment and then moved her hand away. She took the object in both palms and slumped down onto the floor next to Michael, continuing to stare at the helmet.

"Well if it is what you say it is, what do you think they would use it for?" She asked. "Medication, nutrients possibly; I don't recall ever hearing Intel on an injection system like this though," he replied.

Kiesha set the helmet down on her lap and reached for the hem of her right glove. Slipping her thumb under the thin piece of material, she pulled the glove off and ran the palm of her bare hand over the top of the white elite helmet. Michael turned his head, curious of the soldier's actions. The white armor was speckled with dried dots of purple, and had a dent on the temple where a bullet had struck. Michael looked up at the marines face. She appeared impassive; gazing at the helmet like it contained some sort of deeply sought after secret.

"Do you hate the covenant?" She asked abruptly.

A bit surprised by the question, Michael let his values guide his words. "Well, I believe it is a bad to 'hate' anything; I mean I dislike the covenant, but I can't say that I hate them."

"Why though, I mean, couldn't you make one exception in this case, you could hate the covenant. Nobody would ever question you," she said, not taking her eyes off the helmet.

"I suppose. I mean I have every reason to hate them, as most would say," Michael thought out loud. "But it's more of a spiritual thing," he said.

"How so?" the woman asked, breaking the gaze on the piece in front of her to look at Michael.

"Well hate is one of those emotions that result in another emotion: anger. Anger is something that I believe is a killer. I mean so many people have died pointlessly because anger overtakes them, and clouds their own thoughts."

"There's no need for anger. It just gets in the way. That's why I think it's so stupid that people end up getting shot because they get angry at another guy for something completely worthless, like his pride."

"You mean, you don't care if someone insults you?" Kiesha said, now very interested in what the young man next to her was saying.

"Well, I hate to burst your bubble now that you're interested, Barker, but I have already said too much," Michael stated bluntly, standing up.

"Oh come on, what's that supposed to mean, when you start a conversation with someone, you don't just stop when you have the persons attention," the woman said, standing up defiantly. She was nearly a head shorter then Michael.

Michael looked down at the marine, amused at her reaction.

"Hmm, I'll tell you what," Michael said, taking a few steps forward. "If you make it out of this station alive, we can continue our conversation."

Kiesha flinched slightly at his words.

"So morbid, jeez, it's not good for moral," Kiesha said. "I'm getting out of here alive, whether you do or not; not like I even care about your views," she said, turning the other way. "Whatever you say, private," Michael said, walking towards a group of resting marines.

"Fine," she huffed. And with that she walked off, to another group of soldiers, dropping the white armored elite helmet to the floor with a loud clang.


The Pelican drop ship sailed as smooth as satin as it made its way across the sea of debris that floated through this dark empty void of space. Reilly McNeil enjoyed and distained space flight at the same time. It was a very relaxing experience that riding in a turbulent less vacuum provided, however the lack of feeling and sound would drive her nuts over long missions without cryo.

The drop ship was crowded with soldiers, two full squads, and kit all crammed in together. "Were going in blind, aren't we Joe," she said in the direction of her squad leader. She couldn't see his face in the crowd but she knew that he would hear her regardless. "That's right, thermal can't penetrate the station walls," she heard him call back, sure enough.

The marines around her were thrown together from all kinds of units in the 128th Infantry Regiment. Her entire platoon had been reduced to three individuals; her platoon sergeant, Sergeant First Class Joe Machado, Corporal Henry Williams, and herself. They had been thrown in with members from some completely different battalion, soldiers she had never met before.

She felt strange.

Strange because she was among soldiers whom she had never been with. She couldn't trust anyone since she had never fought back to back with them. War brings out the strangest sides of people, and those calm enough to make intelligent observations can easily see this. Despite what some may say, there are several distinct "types" of personalities.

It's not as simple as just saying someone has a "competitive personality" or an "outgoing personality". A person can be perceptive enough to be able to predict every aspect of a person's character simply by watching them perform specific activities such as combat. Reilly had perfected this art about a year ago by her own estimates.

She had yet to observe the soldiers around her in a fight, but was looking forward to it…The observing, not the fight.

The wing of pelicans steadily approached the Moscow. The pelican Reilly happened to be riding on was to infiltrate the stations Northern airlock. The station itself was comprised of two main sections, the MAC cannon and the residential block. The dormant cannon extended high above the residential section and dipped slightly below it as well. In rudimentary terms, Reilly would describe the floating structure to look like a metal tomahawk.

When they were about ten kilometers from the station, the group of pelicans suddenly broke away from each other, each ship heading for its assigned airlock. Reilly's pelican was the first in a group of three to enter the Northern airlock. Flying in a straight line, the airships decreased speed.

"Equipment prep, five minutes till drop," Machado called out.

Reilly raised her weapon up in front of her and looked it over. She was her squad's marksmen, well in her old squad anyway. Therefore she preferred long range combat. The standard S2 AM snipers rifle was wholly unsuitable for the close quarters that the orbital defense platform was comprised of. Instead, the sniper had opted for her customized battle rifle for this particular mission. She had upped the cartridge to a more powerful, 9.6mm round. Using extended magazines she was able to fit twenty five round clips. She had also switched out the rifles standard two times scope for a four times model. To complete her alterations, the marine had replaced the weapons barrel with a heavier, more durable titanium piece, so that the recoil from the heavier cartridge would be more controllable.

The BR55 wasn't meant to be a modular system like the S2 but the marine had learned to adapt it to her needs anyway.

Off in the distance, a pair of blue lights was barely noticeable among the darkness of space between the pelicans and the outer airlock. Upon closer inspection the motes of brilliance seemed to sprout limbs and began pulsating. The lights were that of the exhaust on a covenant thruster pack. The two elites, clad in their airtight spacesuits, and facemasks, sped toward the pelicans.

It would be considered suicidal by rational thinkers, but rational thinking was the last way these particular elites would think. They new that they had been left to die. The Armada had left them among billions of these filthy humans. It would be impossible to escape this system and attempt to return home. The dishonor of running from the humans was so great that the pair knew that should they even make it back, they would be killed on sight. That left them one last choice: To suicide and take as many humans with them as possible.

The pelican had just picked up the two small contacts on radar. The elites charged, headlong at the bulky, grey craft. The alien warriors had a gleam in their eyes so sinister, one would never imagine their true intentions. The left elite clutched a small, fist sized, sphere. The explosive charge was already primed and ready to detonate should the activation stud be pressed.

To the pilots of the lead pelican, the elites were simply blue specks in the distance. A camera mounted on top of the cockpit windshield picked up the contacts and zoomed in, transmitting the image to a small screen on the cockpits dashboard. In an instant, the co-pilots hands danced across his keyboard, activating the pelican's weapon systems.

Three feet below the man, the pelicans chin mounted, 20mm, computer automated, rotary cannon sprung to life. The large, four-barreled weapon was capable of firing at a rate of nearly 1200 rounds a minute. The computer FCS automatically locked onto the lead target. In a mechanical whirr of gears and metal, the oblong weapon crisply tilted up and an inch to the left; the fast, precise movements, capable only by computer.

A split second later, the cannons electric motor buzzed loudly, rapidly rotating the cluster of barrels and spitting out rounds. Strobes of light zipped down range and the elites boosted in opposite directions, determined to take down the ship.

The trail of orange slashes arced toward the bomb carrying elite. Pushing his thruster to the limit, he executed a wide curve to the left, the rounds hot on his heels. As the stream closed in, the elite randomly boosted in the opposite direction, the guns computer making a split second adjustment for the new trajectory. While the computer translated the firing solution, the elite took advantage of the slight lapse in gunfire to boost, full speed, toward the ship.

The weapon corrected however, and the warrior was forced to make another hairpin turn to the right. The razor lines of light flashed into the emptiness of the black abyss as they missed their target. Still, there was plenty of ammunition to fire, and the elites were still four hundred meters from the ship.

The second elite, on which the rotary cannon was not firing, boosted by the incoming gunfire, in an attempt to draw some of the heat off the bomber. To no avail however as once the automated system had engaged a target; it was designed not to switch to another until the current threat was neutralized, unless manually told to do so.

The pilots did not have to budge a muscle in fact, as the system did its work. Strobes of bright yellow flashed from beneath the men and at the targets as the men focused on flying the craft; even if they were only two elites, any threat worried the two pilots. Their weapons weren't perfect, and there was always the chance that an attack, no matter how small or weak, could succeed.

Two hundred and fifty meters from the ship now, the elites appeared to be winning their battle against the human's computer controlled weaponry. However, the closer they got to their target, the more difficult it was to avoid the rapidly moving projectiles.

Inevitably as the bomber elite attempted yet, another, sweeping dodge, his movements were simply too slow. The computers split second corrections finally became faster then the elite's movements, and as the suicidal elite threw forth his soul, his leg exploded as he caught a spattering of the vicious, metallic knives. Howling in pain within his facemask, the elite's momentum slowed. Pieces of metal and flesh trailed from the shattered limb.

Purple blood and flesh died and froze instantly in the vacuum of space, as the warrior tumbled head over heels, helpless to the physics of space. Unable to control his spinning motion, the pelican's cannon closed in. A burning, tingling sensation bit at the elite, creeping its way up his leg and to the rest of his body. His breached suit vented atmosphere and decompression began instantly sucking the life from the doomed warrior. The elite was only half conscious when the rotary cannon struck the rest of his body with full force.

The rounds slammed into the mass of metal and flesh, causing the elite to vibrate sporadically. The 20mm bullets punched into the elites center mass, ripping off pieces of matter and shooting them in every which direction. A bullet slammed into the creatures head, shattering the face plate in a glittering shower of glass and metal, and imbedding itself firmly in the elite's brain. Though the creature was already dead, bullets continued to riddle the corpse for a few seconds until the cannons computer registered that the target had been "neutralized".

The dead elite floated lifeless in space, shreds of broken armor and flesh radiating from the corpse. Thousands of globules of blood floated, flash frozen, in a large purple haze; among the carnage, drifted the, still armed, bomb.

The brief moment of respite was shattered however as the remaining elite boosted toward his dead comrade, eye on the explosive device. Acquiring the new target, the relentless rotary weapon opened fire once more.

Aware of the projectiles stalking him, the elite extended his arm, feet from the bomb. The machine gun reverberated, keeping a steady pace. The elite snatched the bomb in his hand, as he dashed past the dead alien warrior. Tracers blew past him and slammed into the corpse, sending it thrusting backwards toward the station.

The elite shifted the nozzles of his thruster pack upward, propelling him in a steep back flip. Bullets flashed past his head as he completed the maneuver, jetting straight for the pelican, a mere one hundred meters now. He rolled to the left, and then to the right as he got closer and closer to the flashing origin of the projectiles.

Gouts of light raced past him, from the left, right, top and bottom, inches from his face as the warrior struggled to keep pace. Up, left, down, and back up, no wait to the right, no left; there were too many, they just kept coming until finally… The elite exhaled rapidly as one of the searing projectiles sliced through his shoulder, quickly followed by a second to his arm.

Losing focus, just for an instant, three more rounds slammed into his abdomen then a fourth and fifth, then… There were too many to count; bullets filled his body. The elite extended his arm with the bomb, his thumb pressing on the activation button. A round ricocheted against his thruster pack and the elite gasped. He shoved the bomb off at his target with the last bit of strength he could muster. The image of the rapidly approaching pelican filled the elites view, and his slowly blurring vision was suddenly cut off entirely as his thruster pack erupted, engulfing the dying alien in a brilliant vice of crushing blue flames.

The pelican's pilot jerked his joystick hard to the left to avoid the sudden explosion of fire, pieces of debris already pinging against the windshield.

The bomb, fuse rapidly decreasing, was suddenly propelled forward by the wave of pressure that the explosion had released. The device rocketed forward in a spinning, weightless environment. The fuse hit its termination and the bomb, a mere fifteen meters from the Pelican's starboard side, exploded.

The blue sphere expanded rapidly and slammed into the drop ships side.

Reilly sat a bit nervously in the ship, curious at why they had opened fire. She had felt the heavy vibration of the ships nose cannon, and then an explosion. The ship had listed to the side and now…

The marine gasped as she was suddenly pinned against her seat by an incredible force that she could not fight. The pelican shuddered as the marine simply closed her eyes and let her mind race.

She felt that she could die at any moment, that she was about to be sucked into the vacuum of space, or be pierced by something. Closing her eyes and not knowing what was coming would ease the anxiety as she would have no idea what was coming. In space there was no up and down, or left and right because there was no reference points. Any way could be "up". Because of this, the woman had no idea what the ship was going through or how bad the damage was.

She heard a few voices yelling, and the creaking of stressed metal. Here fears returned about being sucked into space. She had never liked flying, ever since she was a child. The constant thought of falling from an incredible height was definitely her greatest fear.

The pressure against her seat began to quickly relax, until finally, she felt herself cushioned once more by the gentle sensation of zero-G, her body held in place only by her seat straps. Reilly realized just how hard she had been squeezing her battle rifles grips and quickly eased her fingers open. The marine took a deep breath and exhaled.

The very last thing she did was open her eyes. She proceeded to do it slowly, as voices began filling the cabin. As she cracked her eyelids open, an unexpected sight caught her attention, a sight of red. Feeling bold, the woman forced her eyes all the way open, the sight becoming apparent.

A single, small globe of red drifted a few inches from Reilly's nose. She followed the sphere with her eyes, unable to think. A second globe appeared, floating near the first, the surface of both phenomenon gently dipping in and out. A third appeared, then a fourth, then a dozen and… Reilly gasped and threw her head back as she realized what was drifting in front of her.

She cocked her head to the right and took in the sight. The blood streamed from the dead marines face; globules floating in the weightless environment within the drop ship. Another second went by before a pair soldiers pulled the corpse from the air and quickly wrapped a cloth around its face, stopping the blood. Reilly looked around at the marines nearby, many of them spattered with blood. There was a particularly dark spot on the side of the Pelicans cabin wall where the soldier had slammed his face against.

No one spoke a sound as the voice of the pilots came over the intercom. "Is everyone ok?" The voice asked. "We lost one," Sergeant Machado chimed back.

Reilly laid her head back against her padded seat and just closed her eyes again.