Greenhorn V2

by acceptmyusernamealready

The old sailor's adage puts it this way: treat your ship well, and she'll take care of you. Of course, everyone knows they're just referring to basic reactor maintenance, equipment checks, and keeping the fuel injectors clear. Everyone knows that thinking the ship is actually alive is crazy. Right? Well, a certain Charon-class frigate and friends have something to say about that.

9. Chapter 8

The bundles of cables running through the heart of the UNSC Hammer Down surged with power, almost seeming to vibrate in their clamps with the billions of watts of electricity coursing through them. That energy flowed from the cruiser's reactor plant into the series of giant capacitors lining her twin Magnetic Accelerator Cannons, charging them as other hoists and magnets maneuvered shells through zero gravity into place in the breeches. The entire process took twenty seconds, Hammer Down's reactors straining to supply the necessary power. Within the CIC, the ship's AI processed all of this, ran a thousand safety checks in the span of a microsecond, made a minute adjustment to the firing solution and reported the main battery ready to fire. With the captain's order, loud and clear above the calm, professional chatter of the ship's command crew, all of that energy discharged at once, completely and eerily silent in the vacuum of space, producing a brief flash of light at the muzzles and sending two 800-tonne kinetic rounds downrange at two percent of light speed. Their target, an Abyssal light cruiser, was already moving to avoid a spread of missiles, point defenses lashing out at the fast-approaching, wildly-maneuvering swarm, and turned straight into the path of the shells. The first one didn't so much explode as annihilate in a blast of plasma and light which dropped the shields just in time for the second one to impact right on the cruiser's bow.

"Four hostile units confirmed neutralized."

"Update unit dispositions, display wide view." A large display, dominating the center of the flag CIC of Cairo Station, blurred as it zoomed out to show the entire battlespace. Names and numbers floated in the ethereal light of the holograph, corresponding to a list of status indicators and readouts. Battlegroups Yamato and Nemesis, Lexington and Minerva, Warspite, Vulcan, and Victory, arrayed around Luna like a shield with the moon as its center. Destroyer and light cruiser divisions spread even further, a nebulous cloud of titanium extending for a million kilometers in all directions. Clusters of orbital defense platforms scattered throughout Earth geosynchronous orbit. Luna itself, her defenders sheltered in bunkers buried under three and a half kilometers of rock, regolith, and reinforced concrete. A casualty list on the side slowly but steadily scrolled downwards as losses mounted, ship after ship caught out of position or swarmed by missiles and particle lances or just plain unlucky. "There, that portion of the enemy fleet is overextended. All designated mobile units, concentrate attack runs on the designated sector, maintain ten thousand kilometers separation from the larger enemy formation. Battlegroup Lexington, provide long-range fire support. All other battlegroups, pull back five hundred kilometers, maintain engagement and draw enemy forces away from the designated sector."

Point Defense Gun 7 blazed away, the twin quick-firing coilguns in its turret housing keeping up a steady rate of fire as the UNSC Szurdok Ridge pressed home an attack run against an Abyssal heavy cruiser straying just a little too far from its comrades. Lured away by the juicy target of a single, isolated UNSC destroyer, the overextended ship now found itself volleying shots over its shoulder, furiously backpedaling towards friendly lines away from the sudden appearance of four more destroyers. Its main battery energy projector flashed; in an instant, Szurdok Ridge's sister ship, Meridian, came apart, shields overloaded, bow disintegrated, amidships slagged into molten droplets, remaining hull shattered into fragments tumbling away on random vectors, four hundred men and women spilling into vacuum before her reactors detonated. The light quickly faded as Szurdok Ridge weathered the cruiser's secondary battery, point defenses shooting down missile after corkscrewing missile burning in from every conceivable angle, grimly closing the distance to effective torpedo range with her much superior acceleration.

She joined her surviving division mates Belkograd, Oslan Valley, and Galena Plains, on terminal approach from above and below, as all four Battle-class destroyers discharged their twin MACs at the enemy. Four of the six hundred-tonne shots missed outright, the time it took for them to cross the shrinking twenty-thousand-kilometer gap just enough for the Abyssal to inch out of the way. The coordinated fire control systems, however, had planned for this, and the next salvo of four rounds, right on the heels of the first, connected. Shields fizzled and fell under the titanic impacts and the cruiser seemed to recoil; an unintentional, but very welcome side effect was that the hits disrupted the alien's aim and its next energy projector shot only overloaded Belkograd's shields, destroyed her ventral hangar bay, and wiped out two main propulsion units and a torpedo silo instead of spearing through her CIC and reactor compartments. She disengaged, combat ineffective and lucky to be alive, but now the three remaining destroyers were within torpedo range. Magnetic rails hurled a torpedo from each of Szurdok Ridge's three launchers, along with a small salvo of two hundred missiles, and PDG 7 battered down a salvo of counter-missiles rising to meet them. Maneuvering thrusters angled her bow up and her main propulsion fired, carrying Szurdok Ridge on an orthogonal vector back into deep space, just out of the way of a particle lance volley that gouged away half a meter of armor as the torpedoes slammed home.

"Report, remote sensor net detects slipspace whispers one million kilometers above the solar plane, five degrees offset standard system reference axis. Mass estimate tentative at two carrier divisions."

"Highlight minefields within ten thousand kilometers of ninety five percent rupture probability region." A large portion of the display lit up with red dots, each representing a cluster of M441 Mk. III HORNET mines. "Battlegroup Victory, disengage strike craft and reorient to engage probable hostile flanking attempt. Moscow and Stockholm clusters, provide long-range fire support and suppression. Prowler command, conduct hostile formation analysis and provide a mine detonation pattern immediately upon hostile transition to realspace. Victory, deactivate local jump interdiction beacons at your discretion, all units be on alert for hostile tactical jumps."

Carrot Six's radiation alarms whined as the S-10/A Claymore strike fighter transitioned back into realspace, static electricity crackling all over its flight surfaces as it burst out of a micro-portal along with its five accompanying F-990 Sentinel drones. Three of those drones instantly exploded as the small formation ran headlong into a wall of point defense fire, residual radiation from the detonations of several HORNET mines combining with the shock of tactical slipspace transition to blind their systems for the brief milliseconds it took for enemy pulse lasers to detect, lock, and fire. The pilot immediately fired maneuvering thrusters and dumped fuel into the main propulsion, flinging the nimble craft into an erratic, off-axis corkscrew, peeling up and away as the tactical officer activated all electronic countermeasures and directed the two surviving drones to engage the incoming Abyssal combat aerospace patrol while also taking command of the rear guns. Silent explosions and streaks of tracer fire filled space as dozens of Claymores and Rapiers and hundreds of drones continued to arrive and were instantly engaged by both point defense and hostile fighters.

The Abyssal carrier group had obviously anticipated resistance upon arrival, as the carrier continued to disgorge fighters from launch tubes and its escorts moved in an efficient, coordinated defensive screen. A thicket of hypervelocity slugs, invisible pulse laser beams, and needle-thin lines of particle lances crisscrossed the vacuum, catching several unlucky pilots within their web. Two nearby roaming light cruiser divisions who tried to lend a hand were also forced to turn away when a volley of fire cut Bernard Montgomery and Caduceus in half and nearly did the same to Sima Yi. However, they were not the only support that the human aerospace craft brought. Abyssal fighters scattered like a school of fish before a shark as a salvo of long-range Super MAC rounds from the Moscow ODP cluster crashed through. The split-second distraction was compounded as a hundred Sentinels— a minuscule fraction of the thousands Victory alone carried, never mind her division mates Laffey and Bonhomme Richard — followed those MAC rounds and kamikazed into a pair of destroyers. The destroyers' point defenses downed seventy of the evasive drones but the last thirty made it through, first detonating EMP warheads to disrupt the particle matrix of energy shielding followed by crashing themselves and the fusion-pumped plasma spears they carried directly into critical external sensors and propulsion manifolds. Carrot Six and dozens of other Claymores streamed through the sudden gap in point defense coverage, burning hard for the sluggish, suddenly vulnerable carriers.

"Report. Luna Ground Command reports hostile landing craft spotted approaching Luna, landings projected in Mare Australe and Mare Ingenii. Anti-air weaponry cannot engage due to enemy naval presence, request naval support to prevent the enemy from capturing ground-space batteries."

"What's the closest battlegroup?"

"Battle—" A pause as Cairo Station fired in coordination with Malta and Athens and turned a destroyer into a smear of plasma to a slight buzz of approval. "Battlegroup Nemesis is currently engaged fifteen thousand kilometers away, sir."

"Thank you. Very well, Battlegroup Yamato, plot a course to slingshot three heavy cruiser divisions and four destroyer divisions around Luna to rendezvous with Battlegroup Nemesis, overflying Mares Australe and Ingenii where they will intercept enemy landing craft and deploy embarked ground forces to reinforce Luna Ground Command. Simultaneously, Battlegroup Nemesis will shift firing pattern from focus to suppression once current targets are neutralized and adopt a more aggressive formation, provide cover for Yamato's incoming forces, and allow heavily damaged units to disengage behind Luna and be replaced by incoming forces. Nemesis will reengage previous targets once enemy landing force has been neutralized. Istanbul, Damascus, and Sevastapol clusters shift fire to Nemesis' current engagement until such time. Active ground-space batteries on Luna will provide covering fire at a rate of at least one launch every three minutes. All units, acknowledge orders." Several affirmative lights blinked green. "Execute at mark plus three minutes… mark."

Tucked into the shadow of a steep crater wall, a regolith-covered reinforced concrete slab slid aside with a quiet puff of cold gas. It revealed a deep pit, smooth stone walls lined with a series of faint silver bands, completely dark except for a few dim red lights. A second passed, and a faint gleam was all the warning given before a missile, painted completely black with radiation-absorbing paint except for a gleaming silver tip, rocketed out of the silo, accelerated to eight percent of light speed by a five kilometer-long coilgun built into Luna herself. The rocket continued on its own momentum for a bare microsecond before a simple sensor detected it was clear of its silo and fired thrusters on a pre-programmed burn pattern. At its velocity there was not much maneuvering it could do, but it was just enough to change its heading by a thousandth of a degree as a series of solid-fuel rockets flung the radar-reflective tip ahead of the main warhead. The point defenses of an Abyssal assault ship locked onto the inert tip as its presence registered shockingly well on sensor scopes, quickly engaging and efficiently obliterating the decoy, creating a debris cloud that provided just enough cover for the main impactor to reach its target.

The Autumn-class heavy cruiser UNSC Lands Unknown rolled to the side as another missile streaked out from Luna's silos, almost too fast to track as staged gravitational repulsors boosted it to ten percent of light speed, putting her in just the right position to eject two hundred and twenty drop pods. Two companies of ODSTs fell towards the surface below followed by several Pelicans carrying a company of vacuum-suited marines, three Paladin main battle tanks and a Ballista anti-aircraft tank underslung, bringing much-appreciated armor and firepower to the ground forces already deploying across Luna's rocky face. She then accelerated along her pre-plotted course, hurrying with her division to an intercept with another Abyssal transport division and its escorts. A wing of Sentinel drones from Yamato pulled out of an attack run right as five energy projectors slagged an Abyssal destroyer, followed by ten heavy MAC shells making metal mincemeat out of another. The remaining escorts, another destroyer, and two light cruisers turned to bring weapons to bear, but it took precious seconds to heave their bulks through tight, high-g turns, and when they finished the heavy cruisers Starry Skies, Voidbound Wanderer, Seasons of Joy and To World's End were already upon them.

Guns blazed across two hundred kilometers, practically face-to-face, as the two formations hurtled past one another. At that range, rapid-fired twenty-five centimeter naval coilgun rounds hit their targets almost instantly after leaving their barrels and point defense cannons directly pounded their counterparts with streams of magnetically accelerated shells. It was far, far too close and fast for any human to coordinate the action. The human crews thus trusted their AIs and automated weapons systems to aim properly, concentrating instead on damage control and maneuvering to gain the most advantageous angles in the moments before engagement. A flash, an explosion; the encounter only lasted for a second, and everyone came out the worse for it. On the UNSC side, Starry Skies and Seasons of Joy took the brunt of the punishment with shields depleted, MACs and main propulsion units damaged, and glowing gashes dozens of meters long ripped deep into their flanks. The alien vessels, however, were left as inert wrecks on a ballistic collision course with Luna. The transports, escorts gone and spotting five very angry heavy cruisers barreling towards them at alarmingly high speed, panicked and attempted to flee, but Abyssal bodies soon spilled into vacuum as a few dozen Howler-mounted fusion-pumped plasma spears were shoved up their sterns. The Abyssal capital ships, thousands of kilometers distant, were rather busy duking it out with Battlegroup Nemesis and could not intervene in time, but did get in a consolation blow as energy projectors clipped the straggling Starry Skies and Seasons of Joy and put them out of their misery.

"Hostile transports and escorts neutralized. Two allied heavy cruisers lost. Battlegroup Nemesis moving into blocking position. Requesting additional reinforcements to maintain adequate engagement of enemy center force, over."

"BattDiv Seven requests support, multiple units falling back with heavy damage. One frigate lost."

"Minor enemy landings reported in Mare Australe. 106th, 113th Infantry, and 4th Mechanized are moving to protect the Helium-3 facilities. Luna Ground Command requests orbital bombardment support to suppress further landings."

"Multiple enemy transport groups attempting to move around our lines with a heavy escort."

"Understood." Hands clasped behind his back, Fleet Admiral Lord Terrence Hood frowned at the battle sphere display in front of him, carefully assessing his available assets and target priorities. Nemesis was slightly out of position from countering the Lunar landings, so Minerva and Vulcan couldn't provide support without radically repositioning and neglecting their current battles. Yamato was already committed to support, the situation didn't warrant commitment of Victory's reserves… and Warspite was under-engaged. Yes, that would do. "Batteries Golf through Juliet, concentrate fire on enemy units engaged with Battlegroup Nemesis, priority target carrier Charlie-Five. Warspite, cover BattDiv Seven's withdrawal and direct additional strikes to support Nemesis, move BattDiv Ten up to compensate." With a gesture, he switched the focus from Luna to Earth and designated several ODPs. "All designated ODPs, switch focus to incoming transport groups. Battlegroup Lexington, detach seven destroyer divisions and two battleship divisions to serve as a reserve interception force and focus aerospace strikes on stopping those transports. As always, deactivate local jump interdiction at your own discretion." Back to Luna. "Battlegroup Yamato, prepare for bombardment operations and to deploy ground forces in support of Army elements. Ensure coordination with Ground Command."

A series of affirmatives came in from the various battlegroup commanders. Hood watched closely as the display reflected their movements, ships, and formations moving to execute orders. The lights and shadows in the Cairo Station Flag CIC rippled and warped as lean, predatory grey forms swept by the viewports; Storm-class frigates Tornado, Avalanche, Eruption, and Hellwind, moving out from reserve positions in geosynchronous orbit, using their enormous thrust-mass ratios to race towards the oncoming Abyssal transports currently caught up in a vicious exchange of fire with Battlegroup Lexington as well as several mobile divisions. They had tried to skirt wide and above the powerful formation, but a swarm of frigates and destroyers forced them into effective range of its guns. Another heavy Abyssal force attempted to push through the battleline and distract Lexington, but Minerva planted itself in their path and said 'no' in the universal language of three battleship divisions. As Hood watched, an alien cruiser fell out of formation and was instantly set upon by a swarm of bombers. Cherenkov readings spiked as it tried to charge its slipspace drive to jump away, but combined firepower of Lexington's bombers and two UNSC heavy cruisers overwhelmed it. The rest of the alien formation moved on, leaving their comrade a sputtering wreck, exchanging parting shots with the battleships Michael and Persephone as they did. The battlewagons were stuck in place, holding several Abyssal heavyweights back from taking a swing at Lexington and boxing them in away from the rest of their fleet, but Hood felt confident that Lexington's aerospace forces and the ODPs would prevent any from even touching Earth orbit.

Right on cue, the deck vibrated as Cairo's Super MAC hurled yet another shell into the fray. The station hadn't stopped firing since the Abyssal tidal wave slammed into the Alpha Defense Perimeter three and a half days ago, with UNSC forces steadily falling back in towards the Lunar Defense Perimeter the entire time, and her extensive stocks of ammunition were running thin. Factories across the planet worked around the clock to churn out the massive shells she tossed around like spare change, but 4000-ton chunks of metal took time to make and trickle up the space elevators and that trickle was slowing.

"Casualty report. Indefatigable reporting severe damage and losses to aerospace complement, attempting to disengage. Two frigates lost, one heavy cruiser badly damaged. Contact lost with DesDiv 67, working to reestablish."

"Luna Ground Command reports initial skirmishing around the Mare Australe mining facilities. Friendly forces are dug in, but local anti-air concentration prevents allied aerospace assets from attacking enemy beachheads. LGC requests naval support to suppress enemy triple-a batteries."

"Mars Ground Command reports the use of two additional one-megaton tactical warheads to suppress enemy forces in the Tharsis Montes beachhead. 7th Army has taken heavy casualties and is attempting to regroup. New enemy landings reported in Acidalia Planitia, 21st Army moving to contain. In lieu of naval support, MGC requests authorization for escalation to strategic nuclear weapons for region denial, keyword Oscar-Papa-Two-Zero-Niner-Bravo-Golf, voiceprint match confirmed."

"Authorization granted, standard ROEs regarding civilian population centers are in effect. Transmitting authorization codes now." Hood consulted the unit lists and tried not to let his dismay show. For all the local successes that friendly units were achieving, for all the blood, sweat, and tears they were pouring into holding the Abyssals back, UNSC losses simply kept mounting and the aliens kept pouring more ships into the fight. At this rate, the Home Fleet would be forced to pull back within two days, clearing the way for the Abyssals to land directly on Earth… or just bombard it, depending on what their plans were, whether Saturn was in alignment with Jupiter with Mars in transit, whether a coin toss landed heads or tails, and whether the groundhog saw its own shadow. Hood, ONI, and the UNSC in general had genuinely zero clue; there were a half-dozen half-baked hypotheses floating around at any time about what motivated Abyssal behavior, but the most accurate descriptor would be 'inconsistent'. Sometimes they landed an invasion force, other times they glassed the planet, and still others they were content to merely destroy the defense fleet and leave the planet relatively unharmed but cut off from the rest of humanity. It was even worse than the Covenant War, as at least that particular group of murderous aliens had the courtesy to provide a clear motive. Though, if Hood wanted to play the amateur sociologist, the Abyssal tendency to give pitched battle indicated some sort of honor system, or a warrior culture much like the Sangheili, or a grudge, though he couldn't fathom what the UN had done to offend them. That would certainly be magnified against a world as culturally significant as Earth, and thus they would be inclined to land troops. The large number of assault transports spotted in the alien fleet supported that conclusion. Whatever the case, it meant that they were content to simply slug it out the good old-fashioned way against the Home Fleet, which saved Hood from several major headaches and gave him several more.

"Admiral Hood." A person materialized on the corner of the main display table, standing at parade rest. They wore a thick lab coat, and their features were neither male nor female; in fact, if Hood looked closely, they seemed to flow between the two. "Multiple destroyer and frigate divisions report that they may be able to gain the rear of the enemy formation." The AI highlighted several units with a small flourish. "It's questionable how much damage they'll actually be able to do, but it could take more pressure off our battleline."

"Negative. That's too far from any sort of support. They're strung out as it is and I'd prefer to conserve our forces until a better opportunity presents itself. Continue to put pressure on their flanks and herd them towards our heavy hitters, don't let them concentrate their forces, and don't let them get the run-around on us."

"As you say. Additionally, there are reports of slipspace whispers about fifty thousand klicks past Lagrange 1. I believe the Abyssals may be trying to bypass the Lunar Perimeter and our jump interdiction beacons by approaching from behind. Prowler Command has dispatched two prowlers and a frigate division to investigate."

"That would seem rather important. Do tell, Leo." Hood spun the display, taking his attention away from the battle for just a moment to consider the space between Venus and Earth's orbits. The jump interdiction beacons which shielded Earth and the Home Fleet from sudden tactical jumps into the middle of their tight formations normally only extended as far as a million kilometers past Lunar orbit. Systematic Abyssal attacks had brought that coverage down to one hundred and fifty thousand kilometers. "Hand over untasked ODPs to Prowler Command and put Victory on notice that it might be needed for quick reaction. It'll have to make a tactical jump to get there quickly, but that's just a risk we'll have to run."

"Already done, sir." Leo slid on a pair of digital glasses and consulted a holographic clipboard. "Let's see. Enemy flanking carrier divisions have been neutralized. They were only assault carriers, so Victory managed them rather well. Enemy efforts to sneak transport divisions around our lines have also been blunted, courtesy of Lexington."

"Welcome news. Send both my compliments, they will continue their assigned tasks at a reduced tempo." Cairo Station fired again, and Hood's eyes flicked briefly to the CIC ceiling as if he could see the 3500-tonne slug on its way to deal cold kinetic death. "I don't know what the alien bastards are trying to accomplish with these piecemeal advances, but if they want to drip feed themselves into our defenses I'm delighted to oblige. I'll be damned if it isn't aggravating, though," he grumbled. "How is the endurance of our battleline?"

"Steady but declining. We are maintaining a roughly even kill ratio thanks. At this rate, I predict we will be forced to concede the Lunar Perimeter within two days or risk irrecoverable damage to our fighting capacity. The ground forces and surface batteries may occupy their attention for another two after that, after which I must recommend implementation of Protocol 4-Theia."

"I would prefer to avoid that for as long as possible. I rather like the moon in its present shape."

"As do I. However, seeing as our calls for reinforcements have not been answered, the criteria for the protocol will inevitably be met." Leo tossed the clipboard over their shoulder where it dissolved into a spray of voxels. "As all our commanders are competent and nothing major has changed in the past two hours, you might be interested in knowing our progress on the electronic warfare front."

"Don't hold back for my sake."

"It took some doing. I had to work with fifty other fleet AIs to jank together a virtual machine that could properly interface with the kludge they call a battlenet. I can recognize elements of Covie, Forerunner, even UNSC software architecture, of all things, but about fifty percent of it is a blend of something else entirely. The entire thing is a one-of-a-kind melting pot of disparate and mutually incompatible coding philosophies that shouldn't work but somehow does, and it has been the biggest pain trying to break it." The AI made a show of running a hand through their hair, then cracked a small, smug smile. "But we broke it. Took us two days but we did, and it seems the segment we initially focused on breaking was a secure command line. We're still working on refining the machine to consistently talk with the rest of it, but we have some juicy tidbits. And — oh, hold up, enemy right force is trying to coalesce with the center. Multiple frigate and cruiser divisions moving to hit Nemesis and Vulcan from above and below, with three battleship divisions trying to punch through to Yamato. Projected course takes them below the solar plane, with sacrificial frigate divisions as a shield. Yamato is currently recovering a strike and will not be able to get out of range in time."

"Where the hell do they keep coming from? Show me." Leo snapped his fingers and disappeared, replaced by a close up of the relevant sector of battlespace. Twelve battleships, three whole divisions — what godforsaken hole did the damned Abyssals keep pulling these accursed things from? —forming a metal fist around which wrapped an equally hard glove of frigates hurling themselves against the forward battleline with wild abandon. Individually the frigates were a little threat, with even their UNSC counterparts capable of going mano-a-mano with them and having a fighting chance. The problem was that if they weren't respected a swarm of them could easily turn even a battleship into a shredded hulk, which meant that Nemesis and Vulcan were forced to partially devote their attentions to them. Combined with both already being committed to several other engagements, it meant that those twelve new battleships — they must have been fresh arrived from Mars or the gas giants, certainly they hadn't just been sitting around until now — passed under the line relatively unhindered, though shots were still traded and a salvo of missiles rising from Luna split one in half. "Victory, we'll be needing that quick reaction right about now. Advance to support Yamato from sector reference India-Mike-Tango-Zero-Four-Seven. Do not let the enemy break through. ODPs, concentrate fire on designated enemy battleship divisions. Vulcan, Nemesis, do not allow any other enemy units to advance."

The cold voice of Vice Admiral Lee replied. "Your orders received and acknowledged, sir. All units Battlegroup Victory, immediate execute set course minus zero-one-two by minus-zero-two five, come to flank velocity, assume formation Hotel-One reference Victory-Actual, over." As he spoke, the battleships fired a salvo which split two heavy cruisers in half and nearly did the same to the carrier Incomparable, who survived only due to the split-second reaction of her captain and AI rolling her over so that the rounds which broke her shields only blew away a main propulsion unit instead of her engineering spaces. The fires sputtering from the ragged hole in her hull as her crew fought to get her under control only underlined the urgency of the task.

On the display, Battlegroup Victory immediately began moving out from its holding position at Lagrange One, burning hard to reinforce Yamato eighty thousand kilometers distant. It would take them a few minutes to get up to full speed, and several minutes after that to actually rendezvous with their sister carrier group. However, their MACs and energy projectors would be in effective range beforehand, and as the ponderous fleet carriers picked up velocity a fresh wave of strike craft were pouring from their launch tubes, rallying at a point some two hundred kilometers behind their respective carriers. Several alerts sounded as a group of jump interdiction beacons shut down, followed by a Cherenkov radiation spike as a mass of micro-slipspace portals engulfed the strike wing. A moment passed and another Cherenkov alert blared, three hundred aerospace craft and two thousand drones spilling out of slipspace in the midst of a charging Abyssal battlegroup.

Local battlespace became a chaotic mess as the aliens began exchanging fire with Yamato's big guns, as Yamato's outer frigate and destroyer screens fell upon them from all angles and their own frigates rose to meet them in a brutal trade that saw five UNSC ships and three Abyssals annihilated in seconds, and as human single-ships suddenly appeared in the middle of their formation. One battleship detonated as five Sentinel drones and a Claymore bomber accidentally rematerialized within its reactor core in a one-in-a-billion chance, obliterating both the aerospace craft and the heavier warship. As MAC rounds began to strike home, the other bombers launched EMP warheads and torpedoes and fled for open space, sacrificing drones to shield themselves from return fire. Even so, ugly flashes of light pockmarked the darkness where Abyssal point defenses downed another fifteen wildly maneuvering Claymore bombers and a hundred and sixty Sentinel drones in the span of a couple of seconds, even as the tight alien formation dissolved into confusion. Barely a scratch on the immense stocks of aerospace craft of an Enterprise-class fleet carrier, and a favorable trade for the two battleships who had large sections of hull suddenly disappear, shunted into unstable slip space portals, perhaps to be ejected somewhere in interstellar space, more likely to be shredded into component atoms and forever lost. Cherenkov radiation spiked one last time, more micro-portals engulfing the fleeing bombers and spitting them out safely in front of their home carriers, the missiles chasing after them losing lock and wandering aimlessly off into space.

"Strike complete, will proceed as planned until further orders. Laffey aerospace strike complement reduced point zero five percent. Victory aerospace strike complement reduced one percent. Bonhomme Richard aerospace strike complement reduced point zero five percent. Twenty minutes to next strike. All units Battlegroup Victory, come to course minus zero-one-one by minus zero two two, come to engagement velocity, engage the enemy with main battery fire, assume formation Echo-Two reference Victory Actual, over." Victory's own big guns went into action as another Abyssal battlegroup attempted to follow the first, but repeated attacks from UNSC frigate and destroyer divisions forced its course upwards until it intersected with a battleship division from Battlegroup Vulcan. Supported by strikes launched from Warspite, the Pantheon-class battlewagons roared salvo after accurate salvo, overcoming powerful Abyssal sensor blurring by the sheer force of several hundred ships, dozens of long-range sensor stations, thousands of battlespace observation drones, and the Prowler Corps combining, cross-correlating, and correcting sensor readings. With a sample size that large, errors faded into pinpoint targeting data.

Leo nodded in a satisfied sort of way. "That seems handled. I will monitor the situation." Hood rotated the display back to an overall view as they spoke, taking in any changes which had transpired in the last twenty minutes or so. Another few frigates lost, another Abyssal ship destroyed, Battlegroup Minerva forced to move six thousand kilometers up-orbit as its opponents tried to move around it. Isolated from support, it was taking a beating, with three cruisers lost in the last ten minutes. As he gave orders for Lexington to help Minerva move back towards Luna, Leo continued. "But back to matters of intelligence. The command circuit we broke — it's an isolated one, with a single node on what we assume is the flagship." They held up a hand at Hood's frown. "I know what you're thinking, but it's not actionable. That thing's surrounded by its own personal battleship division and a carrier besides. It's also smack in the middle of the highest concentration of cruisers, point defenses, and combat aerospace patrols this side of the asteroid belt. To the point, we — fifty other Fleet AIs and I — managed to follow the thread for about a millisecond before it terminated somewhere in the fifth pseudodimension of slipspace. We could find no other nodes, not even after thirty seconds of probing, and that is a long time."

"A secure superluminal command circuit that only has one node…" Hood rubbed at his chin, mind working on the implications of this. "And what did you overhear?"

"Not much. We got just one thing before the encryption cycled and we had to rethink our entire cypher formula." Leo actually looked perturbed at this, their brow wrinkling in consternation. "'P en route.' Damned cryptic, eh?"

"'P' en route?" Hood thought back to earlier. "Those slipspace whispers, near L1 — we need a minefield there, and any interdiction beacons we can spare."

"The beacons, I'm afraid, we're fresh out of. Mines, though, Prowler Command is lousy with."

"That'll have to do. Have them lay down a field ten thousand kilometers across with density factor two centered on the ninety-five percent whisper peak. Nothing much, just enough to slow down anything coming through. And give me constant imaging on that sector, as well as heightened alert for all sensor stations in the system."

"At once, sir— what the?"

Metal groaned as Cairo Station suddenly shook. Hood braced himself on the display table as Leo's hologram fizzled out. He could hear commands going out over the PA system and feel the faint vibration of point defense guns and plasma lance batteries going into action, as well as the subtle thuds of launch tubes ejecting additional fighters to reinforce the ODP's combat aerospace patrol. "Report."

"A hundred Abyssal fighters came out of stealth two thousand klicks away and immediately attacked Malta Station. Malta reports their gun is disabled and they've sustained severe damage from plasma and nuclear warheads. Athens and Cairo have sustained minor damage, Cairo's lost two docking bays and a short-range communications array." The AI reappeared with a bit of static marring their glowing form. They almost looked embarrassed. "They took the opportunity of our lowered interdiction beacons and Victory's micro-portals to tactical jump a wing of fighters, then drifted with zero emissions until now. I wasn't looking closely enough at the Cherenkov spectrums and failed to differentiate them. I'm helping with the point defenses on Cairo and vectoring the CAP for interception, but just in case, I would advise you to be ready to transfer your flag, sir."

"Battlegroup Warspite, immediate execute, detach two wings of fighters and vector for additional CAP duties in Earth orbit. " Hood shook his head and grimaced, blocking out the shrill ring of a fire alarm from somewhere nearby. "Maybe if you can find a corvette to spare. Otherwise, the CIC is safer for the time being than an evacuation craft." He watched as fighter icons quickly winked off the display, caught in a crossfire between three orbital defense platforms and multiple wings of Rapier fighters. Malta was listing, fires belching out of several large holes in her habitation rings, the delicate mechanisms of her primary gun slagged. Not good. The fighters themselves hadn't been too bad to deal with, and it seemed they had mistaken Malta Station for the command center. Not the first time Cairo has been spared by chance, Hood thought with a snort. Round and round we go, where we stop, nobody knows… The more important thing to consider was that the defenses were beginning to slip. He was starting to slip. Security against such tactical jumps was normally airtight, but with the risks they were taking something was going to slip through. Now it was a fighter, but when would the Abyssals catch them at a particularly bad moment and jump an entire battleship division into low Earth orbit? The Home Fleet was already stretched, and with more alien forces arriving from Mars and the outer Solar System… hmph.

"'Hmph' indeed, sir." He must have said that last part out loud. "It's not an ideal situation, to be sure, but we can only get weaker while they get stronger. I would remind you again of Protocol 4-Theia."

"Thank you, but that will not be necessary," Hood replied firmly. Nine NOVA bombs, carefully buried beneath Luna's crust, capable of fracturing the moon and blasting trillions of tons of rock into space as jets of relativistic plasma, keyed directly to his neural and genetic signature as well as Leo's neural matrix. A page straight out of the Insurrectionist manual, capable of vaporizing entire fleets, and a last resort if he'd ever heard of one. He'd not use it until the last soldier on Luna died. "Blasted things might do more harm than good if the plasma front hits the atmosphere, and call me selfish but I don't fancy being remembered as the man who turned the moon into a bomb."

"As you say. It's not something I relish doing either, but we may have no choice."

The last fighter disappeared, run down by a pair of Rapiers. Sailors and robots swarmed over Malta, trying to bring the damage under control as the station attempted to bring targeting back online and reengage with its long-range missile batteries. With the immediate danger dealt with, Hood turned his attentions once more to the wider battle. Battlegroup Minerva had successfully regained its prior position, allowing its more damaged ships to withdraw to the safety of the rear while reinforcements from Lexington replaced them. The time spent outside the range of support had been costly; two battleships were among the ships limping for the rear, the UNSC Pele and the Nergal. Additionally, and more dismaying, the UNSC Freyja no longer registered on the display. The Abyssals had managed to single out the battleship from her escorts while she moved up to cover several retreating frigate and destroyers and subjected her to a withering crossfire. Though the cruiser division acting as her escort attempted to draw some fire away, the battleship was simply too far away from the line and even a Pantheon-class had her limits. Also lost was the assault carrier Debonair, and her strike capacity would be sorely missed, but the loss of Freyja's armor and guns was far more concerning.

Despite three days of constant battle, the seven battlegroups defending Earth had only lost four other battleships between them. Indeed, of the 1100 ships they initially possessed between them, only three hundred and sixty had been destroyed or disabled, most in the opening hours, for the price of around three hundred and fifteen Abyssal ships. An even trade, all things considered, but an even trade was an unfavorable one in this case. The Abyssals seemed content to let the battle for Earth stagnate, pinning the bulk of the Home Fleet in place while they mopped up the smaller Martian and Jovian defense groups. So while the fleet was able to keep the Abyssals away from Earth, it in turn was trapped, unable to break out and reinforce the rest of the Solar System lest the Abyssals have a free shot at Earth. Additionally, every loss the UNSC sustained would stick, while there seemed to be no end to the Abyssal reinforcements. With a sigh, Hood pinched his nose and let his eyes close for a brief moment. He could be a stubborn old bastard, he'd admit that much, but he was not delusional. The numbers were immutable. He could plainly see, barring divine intervention from gods he didn't believe in, what the only outcome could be.

Which made it all the more confusing when a sensor officer suddenly called out, confusion coloring his voice, "Sir! Reports from multiple units, enemy units breaking contact and disengaging."

"What?" Hood's eyes snapped back open, all fatigue instantly vanished. "Repeat your last."

"Confirmed, sir," another officer said, voice tight with restrained excitement. "Mobile divisions report rapidly decreasing enemy contact."

A glance at Leo yielded the only a puzzled look, the AI's simulated brow furrowed and eyes closed as they processed a tsunami of incoming information. "That can't be right. All battlegroups, report engagement status."

"This is Battlegroup Nemesis, I say again, enemy center force is breaking contact. We are maintaining engagement but not pursuing, over."

"Battlegroup Vulcan, we do not see— belay that, enemy heavy units are disengaging, repeat, enemy heavy units are disengaging. They're moving out of the influence of our jump interdiction beacons — they're jumping away, over."

"This is Minerva, we confirm the last. Their frigate screen is pulling off, moving out of jump interdiction range. Slipspace ruptures, six hundred thousand klicks distant. Standing by for further orders, over."

The rest of the battlegroups chimed in as well, adding to Hood's growing sense of disbelief. He looked for himself — it was slow, hard to see at first, but the capital ships pulled away first, followed by the lighter units giving them cover, and finally the aerospace craft. It was like a giant blanket of red fog lifting away as the space between the opposing battlelines increased like a sandy beach being revealed by a receding tide. Ships still hurled salvoes at each other, of course, but the fire was dying down on both sides, from the Abyssals as they turned away as one and from UNSC vessels as confusion and paranoia stayed their trigger fingers and caused them to redouble sensor scans in an attempt to detect the trap that must be closing around them. Frigate screens and destroyer divisions, suddenly without targets to intercept or harass, took the time to lick their own wounds. Some of the more damaged ones began the long retreat to the safety of the rear, but most of them fanned out cautiously, in pairs or trios, probing for flanking forces trying to dark-drift behind UNSC lines. That they found none only increased Hood's incredulity.

"Leo, analysis. Is the same thing happening around Mars?"

"Negative, sir." Leo looked just as confused as anyone else, bits of code swirling like a snowstorm around them as their already hyper-accelerated thought processes went into overdrive. "Probes show Abyssal forces still in place around Mars and Jupiter. It's just us. They are holding position at — they have withdrawn to around halfway to Lagrange 2. Distance six hundred fifty thousand klicks past Lunar orbit. They're back at their starting point? This makes no strategic sense."

"A moment." Hood hit the fleet wide transmission. "All units, repeat, all units, cease fire and do not pursue the enemy. Maintain current separation from the enemy, but be prepared to coalesce to defend against a concentrated thrust. Assume formations for maximum point-defense coverage and remain vigilant at all times for tactical jumps, our interdiction beacon coverage is severely degraded past seventy thousand kilometers. Confirm receipt and understanding immediately." Acknowledgements came swiftly, but he paid them no mind, staring instead at the positional display. "That far? Why? There's no reason for them to stop now."

"I'd tell you if I knew, and I'd love to know why. I'm almost 100 percent certain this is a trick, but until it's sprung I suggest we use this chance to repair. At this range, we'll see any shots coming long before they arrive. Of course, same applies to them. This is out of effective range for even our energy projectors…"

Forcing himself to reign in the speculation, Hood refocused on the here and now. The battle had changed, drastically; he needed intelligence data, fast. "Can we get any Prowlers or probes out there? Some closer eyes on them would be greatly appreciated."

"The Prowlers just finished seeding the new minefield, they'll be a hot minute or so. No slipspace unless you want the poor sneaky bastards to get blown up on arrival, so it'd be at least an hour and a half of drifting before they got on station. RSO Bohr does have eyes on, but without more cross-referencing any data will be subject to sensor blurring."

"It's still something, and we have nothing. Bohr will focus all efforts on monitoring the enemy forces. This must be a ploy of some sort. Keep looking! All units, execute whatever repairs you can without reducing combat effectiveness." Despite all his instincts screaming that this was a trap, Hood could see no sign of any attempts at attack. No Cherenkov radiation, no long-range salvoes, and reconnaissance still hadn't found anything out to four hundred thousand kilometers. Drifting stealth mines exploding amidst formations tightly packed for overlapping point-defense coverage? No, broad spectrum scans designed specifically to defeat stealth coatings, background radiation pattern aberration detectors, even good old-fashioned telescopes revealed nothing. Enemy ships suddenly popping up on the other side of the planet? No, no ODP clusters reported being directly engaged, nor did the light picket forces scattered throughout Earth orbit to provide just such a warning. What was this? Some kind of new tech? A new cloaking device? What were the alien bastards waiting for? They certainly looked like they were waiting for something, just sitting there, watching, watching—

"Priority comm!" He got his answer soon enough "RSO Newton reports incoming unscheduled slipspace wavefront, multiple high-mass objects in transit."

"RSO Curie confirms, working to triangulate."

"And so the other shoe drops."

Hood split the display in two, one focusing on the primary battlespace, the other a whole system display, and highlighted RSOs Newton and Curie. Newton occupied a point about halfway between Venus and Earth, while Curie maintained a solar orbit at about the same distance and about fifty million kilometers up-orbit of Earth, transmitting via a secure superluminal datalink. Seconds passed, the entire CIC waiting with bated breath for triangulation data to come in. The duty officers remained focused on managing the data streams coming into their own consoles, but even the most dedicated of the bunch couldn't help but flick one eye over to the central display.

"Triangulation acquired, sending to main display!"

"Rupture position determined with eighty percent confidence, and what a twist!" Leo covered their mouth in faux shock. "Just Lagrange 1, right where we picked up those slip space whispers. How utterly predictable. I know those alien bastards are cocky — I'd be, if I were them, which I'm not — but telegraphing a move so far in advance, that's just disrespectful, don't you think?"

"Focus. I have a hunch that the mysterious 'P' is about to show itself. Battlegroup Victory, disengage from the line and prepare to jump to sector Romeo Foxtrot Golf Eight. Battlegroup Yamato, make ready to reinforce Victory from sector Romeo Foxtrot Hotel Eight, but stand by at your current position." Taking a breath, Hood continued to speak, eyes never leaving the display. "Leo, is the minefield in place?"

Leo had disappeared, dematerializing their avatar to focus on intelligence analysis, but their voice still sounded, casual as always. "As best as it can be."

"Good. Inform Prowler Command to detonate on my command. Untasked ODP clusters, coordinate with RSOs and Prowler Command for targeting data and priorities. All Earth-orbital warships, maintain position five hundred kilometers from your assigned ODP cluster and stand by for further orders. All other units, maintain observation on main enemy fleet and alert for tactical jumps. Give me a countdown until rupture."

"Done." A disembodied finger snap, and a countdown appeared next to the highlighted rupture position. "ETA ten minutes. Whatever this thing is, it's big. It's got to be absolutely titanic if we're picking it up this early."

"We'll see for ourselves soon enough." The ten minutes trickled away like molasses. Hood kept one eye on the main Abyssal fleet at all times, but besides some formation shuffling the aliens kept their distance, suddenly reluctant to engage the Home Fleet. Battlegroup Victory got into position for a tactical jump, several jump interdiction beacons ready to deactivate at Vice Admiral Lee's command. More RSOs and a few Prowlers chimed in, Leo correlating all the data until the rupture position was increased to a 99.9 percent confidence level. A single bead of sweat made its way down Hood's face. Another glance back at the Abyssal fleet; still no change, no maneuvers besides station-keeping, bastards hadn't even responded to a few missiles tossed their way. This was damn unnerving, this sudden change, it couldn't be anything good. He almost wished those sons of bitches would just attack and stop playing whatever this waiting game was—

"Report! RSO Newton has new contacts, multiple contacts, sector Romeo Foxtrot Alpha Two."

"RSO Curie confirms, several contacts, identifying cruisers, destroyers, and one — one unclassified contact."

"Unclassified, high mass contact, estimated at sixty—" The officer swallowed, professional calm cracking into disbelief for a split second. "Sixty billion tonnes. Lord in heaven, it's huge…"

"Classifying unknown contact as Abyssal X-class, possible supercarrier." Leo's voice took on a new note of urgency as Abyssal ships continued to drop out of slip space in the predicted position. "Admiral, I recommend prompt detonation of the minefield, followed by an attack by Victory and Yamato with the support of all available orbital assets. The thing's as big as a Glory-class and RSO Newton's reading some highly esoteric radiation emissions."

"Agreed. Prowler Command, detonate minefield with detonation pattern Golf Two, maximum EMP yield on my command. Battlegroups Victory, Yamato, drop interdiction beacons and jump to predetermined sectors and immediately engage the enemy on my command. Newton, Curie, conduct a threat assessment on the X-class immediately. I want a rundown on all visible weapons, estimated shield strength, propulsion capability, anything." Ideally he'd have that before he ordered two carrier battlegroups into battle, but every fiber in his body was screaming to kill that massive thing before it advanced on Earth. Not only because of the obvious threat that twenty billions of metal represented — that thing's shields could probably soak up a barrage of Super MAC rounds before going down — but because everything about the ship, from its flowing, organic, yet harsh and jagged lines, how it seemed to drink in all light, almost dimming the stellar backdrop surrounding it, to the way he had to consciously force his eyes to remain on it, lest he give into a subconscious compulsion, tingling at the back of his brain, to look away, look away, you are not meant to see this—

"No new ruptures detected. Acceleration detected, new enemy forces are accelerating on an intercept course with Earth."

Hood almost did a double take when he read the acceleration figures for the X-class. From L1, it would reach geostationary orbit within an hour; he didn't even want to imagine how much thrust it must be putting out, or what would happen when it arrived. "Show me the main enemy fleet… no changes, good. Leo, continue monitoring them and alert me if they so much as twitch. Prowler Command, battlegroups, immediate execute previous orders. ODPs, begin firing as soon as those bastards come in range. Let's blow them out of the sky."

"Prowler Command acknowledges all. Detonation in three, two, one, detonation." The footage from a Clarion drone transmitting from twenty thousand kilometers beneath the solar plane showed a brief flash of light, a pinprick really, fading immediately as dozens of Hornet mines broke stealth and ran themselves into the nearest Abyssal warship, detonating against shields in nuclear infernos tailored to maximize EMP effects to disrupt shields and sensors at the expense of direct energy transfer. The flux was such that even at its range, static filled the Clarion's camera feed and its shielded transmitters struggled to send data. The light had barely faded when the Clarion's Cherenkov detectors began screaming as thousands of slip space portals opened up; a full strike, every single bomber and drone from the combined complements of six fleet and four assault carriers, plus whatever their escorts could contribute, followed closely by the ships themselves, missiles already in flight as they tore back into realspace on the other side of the planet they protected. As Claymores and Sentinels dumped their payloads and fled, as MAC rounds and energy projectors streaked through space, as ODPs fired the first of many volleys, the EMP weakened shields of the Abyssal force barely had the time to start rebuilding before the enormous alpha strike crashed into them with a brilliant radiance that forced the Clarion to shut off its optics to prevent damage.

"Switch to feed from RSO Newton. All units, stand by for further orders." It took an agonizing moment for the connection to establish. Unconsciously, Hood tapped a finger against the edge of the display table. He wanted to ask Leo for an analysis, but, no. Better to see for himself first.

"Feed is live, sir. Patching through… now…" The officer trailed off, staring at the data coming in through his screen. "No way…"

"Leo, tell me I'm not seeing this right."

"No aberrations detected in your visual cortex, sir." A slight tremor entered the AI's voice as their avatar rematerialized, shock written in its posture. The first strike had released enough energy to scour the heavens, and indeed dozens of smaller Abyssal ships had vanished from the threat board. However… "That thing is… untouched."

"We have an estimate for shield strength, sir. Based on observed impacts, we are rating its absorption capacity at at least several petatons of TNT."

"Goddammit. Do not relent, it has to have a limit somewhere. Press the attack! Leo, do we have a weapons analysis yet?"

"Highly speculative, sir. It has not fired yet, but we've spotted the usual suspects: particle lances, mass drivers, et cetera. We've dealt with those before, we'll do it again, but what concerns me is this." A 3D model of the X-class appeared, hovering above the display table. Hood leaned in to inspect the highlighted portion. "I could comfortably fit three energy projectors into this area, but instead there's just this big, I don't know, thing? I've never seen its like."

"It seems to have a limited firing arc," Hood muttered, already thinking about the maneuvers the thing would have to pull to get what he assumed was its main cannon into line. "No guesses as to function? Could it just be a massive energy projector?"

"I don't know. We could be dealing with anything from that to some one-off prototype Forerunner weapon which collapses the entire timeline of a single point in space into a temporal singularity, wiping the very concept of anything and everything that has, does, and will exist there from reality. We won't know until it—" Leo stopped suddenly, then resumed, speaking faster and even more urgently. "Nevermind, we'll find out now. Reading increased emissions from the X-class, across the spectrum, increasing rapidly—"

"Victory, Yamato, immediate execute disengage, repeat, diseng—"

Were it not for decades of experience hardening him, Hood would have collapsed then and there. As it was, his knees buckled and his vision went dark from the immense pressure which suddenly fell over him, as if someone had just dropped a Scorpion on top of his head. It felt like something was trying to rip his soul out through his throat, and it was with an oddly out-of-body sensation that he realized his tongue was bleeding where he'd bit it hard enough to cut. Around him, he could hear officers and sailors screaming, groaning, vomiting, but it was all so far away, and he was struggling just to breathe.

"Admiral? Admiral Hood! Lord Hood, what's the matter?! Please, answer me—" Leo's voice trailed off into silence, before the normally collected AI let fly a torrent of expletives. "What the fuck—"

With a groan of willpower, Hood wrenched himself back. The out-of-body sensation vanished with the force of a whipcrack, physically staggering him as he spat blood onto the floor. "Focus, Leo! Status report!" he shouted, voice hoarse.

"Admiral—!" Leo sighed with relief. "Good, you're still functional."

"Likewise, now, report!"

"Sir." Levity fled, leaving only deadly seriousness. "I don't know what just came over everyone, but there was a massive, unpatterned spike in alpha neural activity in multiple regions of your brain. More importantly, the X-class just fired, and whatever it hit us with, well…" The AI waved helplessly, indicating a segment of the display. "We've lost Victory."

"We what?!" Battlegroup Victory was gone. Before his eyes, three Enterprise-class fleet carriers, two assault carriers, seven battleships, dozens of cruisers, destroyers and frigates, vaporized. No heat, no radiation except that which spilled from breached reactors and slipspace drives, no build-up of energy, no gravitational or magnetic anomalies or warnings of any kind, just floating one moment, Vice Admiral Lee was reporting his successful transition, the next, his flagship had been reduced to a few confused Rapier fighters futilely trying to contact FLIGHTCON. A premier formation of the Home Fleet, lead by a twenty-year veteran flag officer, wiped from existence. The idea nearly made Hood stagger again.

Battlegroup Yamato was untouched, but its formation was in shambles. Whatever hit Cairo Station had evidently hit them as well, possibly worse, as even though AIs had automatically assumed navigational control when bridge crews were incapacitated, they too struggled to maintain position. As the CIC began to come back to its senses, reports and questions from the rest of the fleet began streaming in, each a variation of 'what the hell just happened?' Hood wished he could give them an answer, but the residual pounding in his head made it hard just to think. "Battle—" He swallowed, shaking his head to clear it. "Battlegroup Yamato, immediate execute, disengage and retreat. Fall back to geostationary orbit and do not, I repeat, do not engage. Confirm receipt and understanding."

"Y-Yamato copies all, sir. God… all units, fall back!" The transmission cut off, Vice Admiral Rodriguez obviously shaken. One by one, UNSC ships began jumping away, but several were destroyed as Abyssal warships, taking advantage of the disruption, swept in to attack. Yamato herself was hit multiple times with particle lances, though her shields absorbed the damage without issue. The X-class seemed content to let them go, or perhaps it needed time to recharge; either way, as an entire UNSC fleet carrier battlegroup turned tail and fled before the Abyssal behemoth and its twenty-odd escorts, it was hard to see the situation as anything but unfavorable. In the midst of trying to puzzle out a way to beat the thing, Hood nearly forgot about the thousand-strong Abyssal fleet waiting six hundred thousand klicks beyond Lunar orbit. He nearly did, until a nervous shout reminded him of that unpleasant reality.

"Report! Main enemy force is advancing again! Estimate time to engagement at thirty minutes! Cherenkov radiation — they're tactical jumping!"

And so it ends, Hood thought, as Abyssal ships began to reemerge from slipspace two hundred thousand kilometers away from the Lunar battleline. The Home Fleet had never left combat status and engaged immediately, destroying a dozen enemy ships in the opening salvo, but more kept coming and he could see that the Abyssals had reinforcements, most likely from their Jovian and Martian forces. The two fleets met at their previous engagement line, space lighting back up with clusters of nuclear explosions and beams of plasma, the unrelenting numbers and weaponry of the Abyssals forcing the Home Fleet back step by step as the X-class advanced from the other side, shields withstanding multiple ODP rounds as it closed in on Battlegroup Yamato. The two forces were like a vice slowly squeezing down on Earth, and even as Hood issued maneuvering orders and directed his forces where they would be most effective the writing on the wall was clear. This was what the Abyssals were waiting for. This was their endgame. The Home Fleet had put up a good show, but there was no foreseeable way to win against these odds. They needed time and space, and though Hood hated it, he could only see one way to buy them.

"All units, disengage and fall back to Rally Point Oscar. Repeat, disengage and retreat. Do not throw your ships away, we need to get out of this trap and regroup." There were protests, especially from the ships in Earth orbit covering the ongoing evacuations, but Hood overrode them. "All we can accomplish here is dying. We will be back, with a better plan, but for now we must retreat. Fall back immediate—"

"Report! Slipspace ruptures detected!"

"What now?" Leo groaned, having just started preparing for data transfer. "It's not as if they don't already outnumber us three to one. I swear, if they bring another X-class in, I'm going to seriously lose it!"

"Time and place, Leo. Report, what's coming through?"

"Trying to resolve the signatures, sir. Reading… wait… reading UNSC transponders?"

Hood blinked and frowned. "Repeat that. UNSC transponders?"

"Yes, sir. I — incoming transmission." The dumbfounded officer looked up at the display as if trying to parse some universal truth from the grim projection. "Patching it through now."

A gasp swept around the CIC like a gust of wind as a voice that Hood had given up hope of ever hearing again came through the speakers. It was tinny and distorted from the shock of slip space transition, but it and the ship whose immensely powerful superluminal transmitters sent it lifted the spirits of every human in the Solar System with a command comms link or a telescope. "Solar System Command, this is Admiral Thomas Lasky onboard UNSC Infinity. The Epsilon Eridani Defense Fleet is on station and ready to assist. Requesting orders, over."

"Lasky?!"

"Admiral Hood, is that you, sir? Good to hear your voice. I have four hundred ships with me and we are moving to engage the enemy fleet, over."

"I — yes, engage the enemy fleet immediately. The Home Fleet has taken heavy casualties and we need space and time to regroup." Hood could scarcely believe it — the three-to-one the Abyssals held was melting away as formation after formation peeled away from their battleline and wheeled around to meet the oncoming UNSC ships. The tight alien formation was dissolving into chaos as they turned to face this new threat, and it almost seemed like they were more afraid of it than they were of the Home Fleet. Just as well, as the Home Fleet pounced on this sudden weakness, wiping thirty alien ships from the sky in a single pass. "I'll forgo asking how you knew to come, but I must warn you of the enemy force on the opposite side of the planet. They possess a supercarrier-mass vessel we have designated an X-class which mounts a weapon capable of destroying an entire carrier battlegroup through unknown means."

"An X-class, sir? That matches up with a Z-class dreadnought. Damn, this makes things complicated."

"You've — have you encountered this thing before?"

"Secondhand experience, yes, but I've heard of the weapon you're describing. Thank you for the warning, sir, I will redeploy our specialized units to counter it."

This day just kept getting stranger. Why was Lasky talking like he already knew what this thing was? And was he implying— "I have several questions, Admiral, but they can wait. Vice Admiral Rodriguez is in command of Battlegroup Yamato currently facing the X-class, I will patch you through to him. You'll have ODP support as well."

"Understood, thank you sir. One request: there is a unit, IFF FFG-201, among the forces I am sending. She will not register on any UNSC databases or with any known unit type, but I must ask that you order all forces not to fire on her."

Hood felt one of his eyebrows rise. "FFG-201? 'Her'? This is not the time for jokes, Admiral."

A tired sigh. As the two fleets fell on the Abyssal battleline from front and back, Hood could almost see the man on the other end rubbing his temples. "If there's a joke, it's on the Abyssals for a change, sir. I'll provide a full debriefing later; right now, let's kill these aliens. Lasky out."

---

"Forward Unto Dawn, this is FLIGHTCON, comm check, comm check. How copy, over?"

"FLIGHTCON, Forward Unto Dawn, copy all, comms loud and clear, over."

"Forward Unto Dawn, stand by to receive situation update, wait one." The radio crackled static for a moment, bits of background chatter floating through as indistinct murmurs. "Forward Unto Dawn, update as follows: be advised, at this time there is uncertainty regarding the interaction of local targeting protocols with your updated IFF codes. Due to a lack of prior communication, advise not approaching local forces before communication and identity are positively established. How copy, over?"

"FLIGHTCON, Forward Unto Dawn, copy your last. Confirm receipt and understanding: stay out of friendly fields of fire until positive confirmation of IFF, over."

"Forward Unto Dawn, FLIGHTCON, confirm all. No further updates, monitor channels NAVCOM 5 and TACCOM 0, stand by for launch in ten mikes. Report any equipment issues immediately. FLIGHTCON out."

The general tactical net faded back in as Hope Springs Eternal's flight controller signed off. Dawn dedicated a few of her comms officers to monitoring the chatter, directing them to compile and analyze the reports streaming back in from various reconnaissance units. As they assembled information about hostile and friendly deployments, she focused most of her own attention on her equipment, running through last-minute checks and tune-ups. She paid special attention to her MAC coils in particular. She could deal with losing an engine or some sensors or half her point defenses. If her MAC went down it was game over, no redos, go to jail and do not pass go, so she went over those coil alignments with a molecular-haired comb.

"Forward Unto Dawn, this is AUXCON, how copy, over?"

Her mouth quirked into a smile. "AUXCON, Forward Unto Dawn, copy all. Captain Garcia, good to hear you. Your callsign suits you, sir, over."

"Good to hear you too." She could hear the smile in his voice as well. "I'm looking forward to working together in the very, very near future."

"As am I, sir. Any specifics on what exactly we'll be working on?"

"Yes, and management has tweaked our goals a bit. I'm sending a data packet now, but the gist of it is there's been an unexpected development, and management thinks your set of talents are uniquely suited to solving it."

"Glad to hear it, I…" Dawn trailed off as her officers processed the new intel, then her eyes widened. "Sir, what is this thing?"

"An Abyssal Z-class dreadnought, or an X-class as I hear the locals have taken to calling it." An expertly concealed hint of fear entered Garcia's tone, but it remained steady nonetheless. "Apparently, that thing tanked two entire Home Fleet carrier battlegroups on its face, vaporized one and put the fear of God into the second one."

Dawn had a vivid vision of her MAC rounds bouncing off the thing's side. "And I'm supposed to do… what, exactly, against it?"

"Destroy it, ideally. Now, it's not as bad as it sounds. Your weapons probably won't make much of an impression on its hide, but they're breaking out the goods for you. One HAVOK anti-shipping warhead." Dawn looked up and saw a group of technicians with a large anti-grav trolley between them making their way towards her. "One hundred and fifteen megatons of compact nuclear goodness. You will fight your way through the thing's defenses, find or make an entry point, and plant that nuke somewhere it'll hurt." Garcia sighed as the technicians reached her and began removing the warhead, which Dawn noted to her dismay fit the definition of 'compact' extremely loosely. "You'll have two SPARTAN fire teams as backup, each also carrying two HAVOKs. Off the record, I'm of the opinion that you're better off chucking that nuke up the damned thing's tailpipe, but Command believes that that could prove ineffective."

"Great." Dawn held up her arms, allowing the techs to secure the bulky nuke to her stomach. Her bulky reactor pack prevented them from sticking the thing to her lower back like normal, but with the warhead strapped to her abdominal armor she couldn't even bend over. "Careful with the reactor, guys. I don't want to find out what it'll take to breach it."

"Don't worry, we're on it." True to their word, the techs worked very efficiently, though she caught a couple of them shooting her equipment half-skeptical, half-inquisitive looks, as if they'd like nothing more than to take it apart and figure out how it worked. Frankly, she couldn't blame them. Looking at her own gear, half of it didn't even look like it ought to work at all. She couldn't even begin to explain how her MAC seemed to hit with the same force as the real deal, or how her reactor achieved the same efficiencies as a larger version. Oh, well. At least it meant they were past the 'questioning her existence' phase, which, honestly, she was still getting over a bit.

The techs stepped back as they finished securing the HAVOK, leaving Dawn to awkwardly try to fit her arms around it. Apparently, unlike her own Hyperion nukes, stuff introduced from the outside wouldn't conveniently miniaturize. And speaking of those… Dawn keyed her circuit to Garcia. "Say, I just remembered, I told you guys I had nukes of my own, right? Can't I just use those?"

"Command wants to be absolutely certain, and they're not sure that your nukes have the same yield as they did in… well, in your previous life. They probably do, but we haven't had the opportunity to test it."

"Fair enough." She patted the metal casing nervously, nodding thanks to the techs who gave her encouraging thumbs-ups and shouted promises to kick her ass if she got herself killed as they walked away. "Do I have any support?"

"Four cruiser divisions, twice as many frigates, every gun, fighter, and meter of armor that a carrier battlegroup can give, and a sprinkling of ODPs on top." Dawn whistled appreciatively; the ODPs alone were more than she expected. "We're getting you close via tactical jump, so you won't have very far to go." There was a pause, but Dawn could tell he had more to say. "And… don't quote me on this, but I've heard that ONI has something up their sleeve as well. That damned ONI agent won't say anything more, but… ugh, it's infuriating, but I wouldn't count on it. Just go with what I said before."

"Understood, sounds substantial." She was feeling a little better about the whole thing now, but the apprehension was still there. As she watched, several large panels in the floor opened and platforms rose up through them. They were lined with magnetic rails which lined up perfectly with the rails snaking along the deck of the Hope Springs Eternal's hangar, along which were being pushed two F 49-AS Rapier aerospace superiority fighters and their accompanying Sentinel squadrons. They slid perfectly from tracks to platforms, which would soon descend and bring them to the long launch tubes which would eject them at speed before ascending again to take the next batch down. One of the platforms was empty and a deckhand was waving her over. The nuke made it awkward, but she waddled her way over and lined her feet up with the rails. A jolt went through her as the magnets engaged, and then her body jerked as the platform began to descend. The last thing she saw before the floor closed above her was the technician signaling 'clear'. "AUXCON, Chalk Lead, check connection, over."

The hiss of controlled depressurization and the slight interference in the signal marred the transmission, but Garcia's voice still came through intelligibly. "Slight static, but I'm getting you clearly. Send traffic, over."

"AUXCON, I'm in a launch tube waiting for launch. I—" A strange shivering sensation passed through her body like her molecules were trying to be in two places at once. "Did we just jump?"

Static marred the transmission, but it still came through. "Yes, just a brief tactical jump. You ought to be coming out in three, two, one, now, over."

The same shivering sensation ran through her again — God, was this what every jump was going to feel like? Having a body was great, but this was going to be annoying — and her battlespace map updated with a rush. Frigates soared ahead as sixteen heavy cruisers went into immediate action, splitting into pairs for mutual defense as they maneuvered to hit Abyssal ships from all sides. Battlespace quickly devolved into a confused tangle of independent fights as mobile divisions engaged each other, any semblance of a coherent battleline or formation gone as frigates dumped nuclear missiles into any Abyssals trying to assemble into one. The chaotic mess, efficiently coordinated by fleet AIs to draw the alien warships out of their tight defensive formation, had a purpose — to allow her access to the thirty-kilometer long behemoth called a 'Z-class'.

Hope Springs Eternal shuddered as her weapons discharged, clearing the local space around her for aerospace launch. In the confined, depressurized launch tube, Dawn's breathing sounded extraordinarily loud. "Lord in heaven, have mercy on me this day…" she breathed, right as the hatch at the end of the tube opened. "Keep my aim true, and if you exist…" The lights lining the tube turned red. "Please don't let me die before I visit Paris."

The lights turned green.

---

"Remember your secondary mission. That is all. Admiral Lasky, she's all yours."

Amber gulped as Agent Berlin signed off, followed by a brief moment of silence before a long-suffering sigh sounded over her comms.

"I can't believe this is happening to me… right. What did you call yourself? In Amber Clad?"

"Y-yes, sir, In Amber Clad."

"God help me, another one of them… well, I'm still not completely convinced that you're not an Abyssal in disguise. Even if you weren't, I don't completely believe you're on our side, either. But Agent Berlin has vouched for you, and I must admit that since your… purification, for lack of a better term, you've given us no reason to mistrust you." His voice oozed skepticism. "For a lack of a better option, and out of necessity, I will trust you for now. Your IFF has been registered with all units. Your mission is to assist UNSC Fleet Auxiliary Forces in boarding the Abyssal Z-class in order to plant a HAVOK-class nuclear warhead. You will be under the direct command of Captain Douglas Garcia for the duration of this battle. Is that understood?"

"Crystal, sir."

"Good. If you betray us, you will not leave this star system breathing." With that the feed cut, leaving Amber alone in the darkness of one of the UNSC Falcata's launch tubes. She could feel g-forces tugging at her as the frigate twirled on all axes, her captain expertly maneuvering her to avoid heavier fire while judiciously tanking the lighter stuff on her shields. Given limited access to the communications channels, she could hear combat reports and updates, particularly those of ships being lost. She winced whenever a name was added to the casualty rolls: UNSC Viking, Winter's Fall, Chongqing. That last one particularly hurt; though the Town-class frigate was a completely different class and light-years more advanced, she was still a frigate and Amber couldn't help but see her as a distant cousin of sorts.

Distant cousin. Sure. Honestly, Amber didn't even know where a genealogist would put her in the nightmare of a family tree that was humanity and its constructs. Her DNA structure and general physiology were human, or at least human adjacent, as many, many repeated tests over the past 24 hours had shown. Sure, there was some alu variation here and there, some very minor alterations in organ structure, but nothing that would disqualify her as homo… something. But the biochemical evidence was one thing — the big, shiny reactor complex hanging from her back was another. It manifested after she was shot in the chest, with a flash of light and a wave of overpressure which forced MJOLNIR-clad Spartans to lock their armor and bowled the ONI agent over entirely. From the grin on her face when she got back up, though, you'd think she won the lottery, and in a way she had. From the miniaturized 56A2D4 Mark II Light Coil MAC slung over her shoulder on an articulated mount, to the Archer pods lining her limbs, to the wide array of sensors lining her helmet, her equipment was the spitting image of Dawn's, minus a few differences that picked her out as a Stalwart rather than a Charon-class frigate. Cables ran from her reactor to her MAC and to the propulsion units around her legs, as well as plugging into various ports around her body. Strangely, it didn't feel like anything was embedded in her skin, even when she poked and prodded at them.

That was slightly disturbing, but more concerning was the fact that now that she had these things on her, she couldn't figure out how to get them off. The ONI agent told her to worry about it later, and Amber supposed she was right, but still. She didn't want to walk around like this forever! Dawn had obviously figured out a way to make this stuff disappear, she'd have to ask when she got the chance. For the moment, she put all that aside, refamiliarizing herself with her equipment and savoring the feeling of being reconnected to her full suite of sensors. It was like regaining a limb, it made her feel complete again. Despite her… less than ideal circumstances, she could finally be useful.

Another tug in her gut brought her back to the present as Falcata rolled over, then a screeching vibration that transmitted up through the soles of her feet and rattled her teeth in their sockets. Something big had just hit the frigate, and as she tried to figure out what through the tactical net the hatch at the end of the tube opened. Through the opening, she could see the inky darkness of space, crisscrossed by missile trails and plasma beams, and with a start, she realized the lights in the launch tube had turned red. "Wait, wait wait wait, I'm not ready, I'm not ready!" she cried. Despite her pleas, the lights turned green. Amber could only squeeze her eyes shut and brace for acceleration, and then she was hurtling forwards under 16 gs of force.

The launch tube was depressurized, but the transition from inside the ship to the outside was still a shock. Amber gasped as the force of acceleration left her, filling her lungs with hard vacuum, and she nearly panicked until she remembered that her body could breathe vacuum. Slightly embarrassed, she twisted around to avoid a stream of point defense fire that destroyed an incoming missile and came face to face with a giant, jagged hole in the frigate's armor belt. Something had blown straight through the main ablative battle plate and the structural plate underneath, wrecking several interior compartments. The edges of the hole were glowing slightly from residual heat, and Amber had to turn away when she spotted what looked like a dismembered leg drifting through one of the compartments. The damage didn't look like anything critical, but…those were still people, dammit!

"I should go help—whoa!" A sheet of missiles rippled outwards from Falcata's pods, accompanied by the searing glow of plasma lances stabbing into space as the frigate opened fire. Her sensors counted over two hundred missiles before she gave up, moving faster than any Archer she had ever seen. Return fire came in, hot and heavy, and her instincts took over. Power surged through her reactor plant, forcing plasma exhaust through her thrusters and propelling her out of the way of a barrage of particle lances that struck Falcata's unshielded hull. Her targeting systems came to life, tracing the shots back to their origin point — an Abyssal warship, three thousand kilometers and closing fast, shields glowing as it absorbed missile impacts. It launched a salvo of missiles in return, and with a nasty start, Amber realized the majority were aimed at her. Just one of those missiles was longer than she was tall, with a warhead to match if her sensors' hasty analysis of their impacts on other UNSC ships was accurate.

The specifics escaped her, but a thought activated her point defenses, which engaged automatically alongside Falcata even as she accelerated for distance from the frigate. Fully three-quarters of the incoming missile cloud broke off and tracked her, along with the yellow-white streaks of particle lances tracking along her flight path. Despite only manifesting her equipment less than a day ago, its use came naturally to her as she wove her way around the deadly lines of light, oversized thrusters and undersized body allowing her to pull maneuvers that Wombat drones would be jealous of. All three dimensions of space were hers to play with as she pulled hard stops, radical turns, and corkscrews which confounded alien sensors designed to track and hit clumsy human warships, not this… this annoying insect!

Time to get serious. Mentally flipping through a tactical handbook, Amber started off with a salvo of a hundred Archer missiles, fired on randomized vectors which coalesced only at the last second. They launched from the pods lining her leg armor, accelerating at hundreds of gs, and the incoming fire from the enemy ship's secondary batteries immediately lessened as they automatically targeted the incoming ordnance, giving her some vital breathing room. As her point defenses downed missile after enemy missile, she unlimbered her MAC from its restraints and rested it against her shoulder. The feed system loaded a shell into the chamber and her reactor increased output to begin charging the capacitors. "Let's see… how does this go again? Right. Fire Control, um, please give me a firing solution on that enemy ship."

At once. The voice came as a pleasant surprise. Lines filled her vision, tracing out vector probability cones and interception points, coalescing on a single, best aimpoint. Firing solution set. MAC capacitors at maximum charge. Ready to fire.

"Okay, here goes something… " With a careful burst from her thrusters, Amber fixed her vector, turned herself over and laid her crosshairs onto the calculated aimpoint. Her systems screamed warnings of incoming missiles, but she knew that she had at least a few seconds to get a shot off. The enemy ship was distracted by its engagement with Falcata, both ships close enough to pound each other with coilguns — it would never see her shot coming. Praying that the recoil wouldn't rip her shoulder off, Amber closed her eyes and pulled the trigger. "Fire, fire MAC!"

Firing, round away, track—hit, confirmed hit!

Her shoulder would definitely bruise, but the alien ship looked even worse off. Her shot was exactly on point, effortlessly cutting through shields which had previously repelled repeated strikes from a heavy cruiser's main battery. The effects were catastrophic: the heavy shell vaporized on impact, annihilating a good portion of the enemy ship's midsection. With targeting down, her remaining Archers, around twenty, struck the weakened section, causing explosions to rip through the interior of the enemy vessel. It went dark, all systems failing, and Falcata easily maneuvered out of the way of its wreck.

"Good shot In Amber Clad, enemy frigate down. Good to have another one of you lot on our side, over!"

"Thank you, Falcata!" Amazing how quickly people could normalize something as abnormal as ships coming back to life as people. Amber felt her face flush from the praise before the blaring of proximity alarms brought her back to reality. The missiles, highly reduced by her PDCs, were still closing in, and she hadn't taken a single evasive maneuver in the past ten seconds. "Uh, r-requesting point defense support! I can't take all these missiles on my own, over!"

"We'll do what we can, out."

Pouring fuel into her engines, Amber burned hard to slow down the missiles' rate of approach. She dodged behind free-floating chunks of debris and fired off an Archer pod in desperation. The maneuver was only partially successful, and now there were a good twenty missiles still left, rapidly closing, and she couldn't outrun them anymore. Trusting her instincts and crew and squashing her terror, she flipped over and burned hard on a deceleration vector. Her velocity dropped like a stone, causing several of the missiles to overshoot and lose lock. However, with no more forward momentum, the rest were upon her before she could come back up to speed. She sideslipped one, arched her back like a high-jumper over another, but three more came in on her from all angles. She cringed and crossed her arms over her face, praying that her armor could take the impacts.

Explosions surrounded her, bathing her skin in light and heat, but strangely she registered no direct impacts. She dared to open her eyes again, and saw nothing but a dense field of faintly glowing fragments of metal surrounding her. Something had destroyed the missiles, and it hadn't been her. She sighed in relief and keyed her radio. "Falcata, thanks for the assist. You saved me, over."

"In Amber Clad, that wasn't us. We're a bit busy—" An explosion sounded over the radio and the line went dead. Alarmed, Amber wrenched her head over to Falcata's last position and saw the frigate, trailing flames from multiple hull breaches.

"Falcata?! Falcata, please respond—"

"Oh my God! Amber?! Is that you?!" A delighted laugh sounded before Amber felt herself being grabbed around the waist and whirled around. She flailed wildly in a panic, trying to push her assailant off of her, and almost shot off a missile pod before the voice registered in her brain.

"D-Dawn? Forward Unto Dawn?"

"The one and only, it's been so long! So you're the special support the Captan told me about!" She felt herself being turned around and came face-to-face with her grinning fellow frigate. "Look at you! Twenty minutes in and your first kill! You're even more of a natural than I am, we're gonna be unstoppable!" Dawn cheered before her smile faded as she took in Amber's wide, fearful gaze, her rapid breathing, and the shadows under her eyes. "Admiral Lasky — he didn't hurt you, did he? That bastard, I'll give him what for, just you wait—"

"Dawn!" The Charon-class frigate blinked at the force in Amber's words. "I'm fine, really! You just startled me is all."

"I did?" Dawn blinked, and for a moment the battle raging around them faded away as Amber looked at her incredulously. "I did, didn't I. Whoopsie. I keep forgetting that we're human now. Stupid autonomic nervous system…"

"R-right, but anyway, that's not important. Falcata is in trouble, we have to help!"

"Huh? Ah, you're right. We're going to talk a lot later, but right now there's some alien ass to kick. Come on!" Without waiting for further explanation, Dawn burned hard for Falcata's position, leaving Amber to scramble to catch up, both mentally and physically. The Charon-class, clearly more experienced, was already deploying her missiles, and her superior acceleration meant she was rapidly pulling ahead. "Hey, so, do you have any ideas for getting aboard that big bastard?"

"What big — oh, my God." Amber felt her jaw drop open at the data package that Dawn sent. She hadn't actually paid any attention to the massive alien ship now prominently highlighted on her displays, it was just there, like a fact of life she couldn't do anything about and thus chose to ignore, but now she couldn't look away. "You want to board this thing?! You're insane!"

"Hey, it wasn't my idea! They just gave me this nuke and told me to play ball! Do you even know what's happening out here?"

"No, not really, I'm not patched into the command net."

"That idiot, how does he expect you to— fine. I'll have words with Lasky later, but here's the rundown. That big bastard, they're calling it a Z-class, blew a carrier group out of the sky and nobody has any idea how to deal with it. So they're throwing us at it and hoping we stick!"

Simple enough. "What's the catch?"

"The catch is that three battleship divisions and a carrier division just jumped in to reinforce the thing!" Amber could hear frustration leaking into Dawn's voice. "I can't get close on my own, and the carrier group which is supposed to be backing me up is playing keep-away at the edge of its effective range. Not that I blame them, but still! Ugh, take that!"

"Okay, not sure I completely understand, but I'll follow your lead!" Her battle space projections were beginning to fill in a more complete picture as sensor readings continued to return, including the alien reinforcements Dawn spoke of and the Abyssal ship hammering at Falcata. "But we have to help Falcata first!"

"Right you are. We'll come from behind, I'll go high, you go low, split their fire. That cruiser's not gonna go down easy!" As if to punctuate her words, a wing of fighters screamed by, unfamiliar lines strange to Amber's eyes as they dumped ordnance into the cruiser's shields. The alien warship seemed hardly affected, and in return point defense fire swatted two of the fighters from existence. "Watch yourself, we're harder to hit but not as durable as we used to be."

"Roger!" Chemicals flooded Amber's system, banishing her fear and replacing it with energy and excitement. Her internal monitors identified adrenaline, endorphins, and a host of other molecules among them. The feeling was foreign yet exhilarating, something she'd never felt as a titanium hull. The enemy cruiser was growing in her sensor returns, alien form mesmerizing yet painful to look at. Her systems provided a tentative lock even as the cruiser's main battery discharged, clipping the wildly evading Falcata and sheering away much of her starboard hull plating. Atmosphere vented, carrying equipment and bodies with it before bulkheads slammed shut. The frigate wouldn't last much longer, and the thought spurred Amber to push more fuel into her engines. Warning tones squealed as the cruiser's systems took note of her approach and targeted her in return; on her long-range scopes, she could see cannon mounts swiveling to point in her direction. With a nod, she and Dawn executed their preplanned maneuver, and volleys of particle lances overshot as she pushed her vector down twenty degrees. A burst of missiles, too many to count, followed as the cruiser disengaged from Falcata and turned to face the oncoming threat.

Emissions increasing. Enemy main battery fire incoming. Displaying projected track.

With a terrified yelp, Amber threw herself out of the way of the searing beams of plasma, messing up her aim and killing much of her momentum. Those energy projectors could swallow her whole — one hit and she was done for! Not that it would have been much different in her old form, but her new body just felt so much squishier. In targeting her, however, the cruiser had made itself vulnerable to Dawn, approaching from above and weaving through a hail of pulse lasers and coilgun slugs. One MAC round up its propulsion and another into its bow later, followed by dozens of Archers tearing through its squishy internals, millions of tonnes of alien metal were spiraling away on an unguided vector, leaving its missile salvo to be easily mopped up by the combined point defenses of two frigates. The percussion of the guns felt like someone playing piano up and down Amber's arms.

"Dawn, In Amber Clad, this is Falcata, thank you for the assist." A tired but relieved voice crackled over her comms. "We're pretty much out of the fight, but we owe you one. Do you have drone coordination suites? We can send some Sentinels to help you out, over."

"Roger that, we can probably patch something together. I'll contact my CO and see if I can use them. Watch yourselves out there, out." The radio channel cut out, followed by a spark of light rapidly growing in size as Dawn burned over to her side, armor scorched in several places but sporting a massive grin and overall no worse for the wear. "Yeah, and that's how we do it! Nice work with the distraction."

"T-thank you, it was nothing, really." After days of being ignored at best, all this praise was making Amber's head spin. In an attempt at professionalism, she quickly switched the topic. "You mentioned your CO, is that Admiral Lasky?"

"Nah, I'm reporting to Captain Garcia right now. Decent guy, if a little high-strung, I'll get you in contact once this is all over. In fact—" Dawn trailed off, head cocked to the side, and pressed two fingers to her ear. Her victorious smile faded into a grim line, her brow furrowing as she listened silently, occasionally nodding. "Roger, Captain. I'm on it, out." She shook her head and adjusted her MAC on her shoulder, putting it back in ready position. "Bad news, situation's gone sideways and we need to move our timetable up."

"Why? What's happened?"

"Well, we were winning, but then every single Abbie ship from Sol to the Oort Cloud called off their engagements and joined the party here. Good news is, that gives Mars and the Jovians some breathing room. Bad news is, Home Fleet's back to a three-to-one disadvantage, even with our reinforcements." Dawn shook her head in disgust. "Infinity's taken heavy hits, we've lost two battleships in the last twenty-five minutes, and we, right here, have got five battleships that weren't here five minutes ago that we've got to go through to get to our target. It's a bad time not to be a shipgirl out here, I'll tell you that much. We need to take out that flagship, and we needed to do it yesterday!"

Dawn's rapid-fire sitrep, her words more like a machine gun than actual speech, made Amber's head spin. More than ever, she desperately wished she was patched into the overall command net, rather than just a limited tactical net. However, as she took a second to reach out with her sensors, even the local situation was dismaying. In the few minutes she and Dawn spent helping Falcata, three other frigates had died, obliterated by salvos of energy projectors which punched straight through their shields and vaporized them on the spot. No less than twelve UNSC heavy cruisers, each of which looked capable of taking on a Covenant battlecruiser and coming out on top, dueled with two of the reinforcing Abyssal battleships, and as she watched an explosion rent the Red Right Hand from bow to stern. To make matters even gloomier, it didn't seem as if the massive Abyssal Z-class was putting any effort into the fight — all it did was sit and watch, like some fat king on its throne, except that this fat king was capable of swatting a premier carrier battlegroup from existence like a normal person might swat a fly. And if carrier battlegroups looked anything like the battered formation Amber could just make out huddled in geostationary orbit, thousands of kilometers away, well… damn. She cursed herself for losing situational awareness to such an extent. "Okay, so what do we do? You have a plan, right?"

"Plan?" Dawn snorted. "Sure, I always have a plan." She pointed at herself. "We're at point A." She pointed towards the Z-class. "We're going to point B." She made a fist and punched her palm. "And we're going to kill anything that gets in our way." Then she deflated and threw her arms up. "It's the killing part I can't figure out. Those battleships are tough sons of bitches, and from prior experience, they seem to fixate on me in particular. I don't know if that extends to you, but as soon as we engage they're gonna light me up like a Christmas tree. And before you suggest sneaking, we're active combatants in the middle of an active battlespace. Sneaking took a hike and threw itself off a bridge long ago."

"Okay. Um…" Amber thought furiously, keenly aware that every second spent planning was a second spent not acting, and every second not acting could be another ship lost. "Well, we-we have to do something! We should start by, um—"

Her radio suddenly crackled, saving her from having to improvise. "Forward Unto Dawn, this is UNSC Yamato, how copy, over?"

"Yamato? That's one of the Home Fleet's ships." Dawn keyed her radio to respond. "Yamato, Forward Unto Dawn, send traffic, over."

"Forward Unto Dawn, this is Vice Admiral Rodriguez, Battlegroup Yamato." The Vice Admiral's voice was tired, with the barest hints of shakiness that Amber frowned at when her voice analysis software picked it up, but remarkably steady all the same. "I have just been briefed on your nature and on your mission." If he had any reservations about working with two not-quite-human individuals, he kept them to himself. "Captain Garcia has provided a plan to get you on board that X-class, but it's going to need you and… your friend." His cool faltered slightly at the name on his display. "Forward Unto Dawn, can you confirm the presence of a unit designated In Amber Clad, over?"

"Confirm all, Yamato." Despite the circumstances, Dawn beamed with something like pride as she wrapped a titanium-plated arm around Amber's shoulders. "She's on this circuit as well. Say hi, Amber."

"H-hi…"

"Copy your last." Some brief muttering that Dawn couldn't make out, and then Rodriguez was back. "Prepare to receive data packet, over."

"Roger, send traffic, over."

The flag officer continued speaking as the packet downloaded itself into Amber's computers with a sensation much like having an ice cube trailed along her spine. "I understand that you need to board that X-class, and you can't do that while its escorts are still around. Harassing tactics aren't working here, these bastard escorts are too disciplined to be drawn away. If we can't make them come to us, we're going to have to go to them. We have three operational fleet carriers and dozens of torpedo-equipped frigates." Her systems finished parsing the packet, and her battle space displays began highlighting the various components of the plan. Yamato herself was invisible to her naked eye, three hundred thousand kilometers distant, but in her mind's eye she was highlighted in bright turquoise blue. "Combined with your remaining support forces, we ought to have more than enough ordnance to punch a hole through that battle line. The issue is, that thing's main weapon can wipe out my entire group before we can get close enough to employ that ordnance."

"Can't you tactical jump closer? That's a thing you can do now, right, over?"

"We would, except that thing's begun emitting its own massive jump interdiction field. We can't exit slipspace within ten thousand kilometers, and that's more than enough distance for it to target and fire."

"Jesus…" Amber's head swirled. Torpedoes? Tactical jumps? Jump interdiction fields? Just how much had changed since those days, so long ago, when the enemy was the Covenant and her loyalty unquestioned? "What do you want us to do, sir, over?"

"Captain Garcia has proposed a modified version of a previous plan: instead of using you to draw off the enemy battle line while the fleet engages a priority objective, you'll be distracting a priority objective while we engage the enemy battleline like we're built to. Get the X-class' attention, perhaps a few battleships as well, and we'll sweep up the rest and open a path for you. Given its bulk, he thinks you have a high chance of staying ahead of its firing arc, over."

"Roger. Sounds like a plan. Good to have you onboard Yamato, out." Dawn cut the connection and turned to face Amber. "Okay, we have a plan. I'm going to distract that Z-class while you help Yamato break through. I'll rejoin you once the escorts are taken care of and—"

"Wait, wait, why are you going to distract it?" Amber protested, waving her arms for Dawn to slow down. "Shouldn't I distract it?"

"What? Why? Look, it's my mission, I'm going to—"

"No, no, your mission is to get on board that thing and plant a nuke. My mission is to assist you in any way possible." Amber flicked her eyes to the HAVOK nuke still secured to Dawn's abdominal armor plating. "It makes more sense for you to hang back until there's an opportunity, then rush straight through. It puts you at less risk and makes sure you're in position whenever an opening comes."

A storm raged in Dawn's eyes as she raised a finger to argue. "But… that'll put you in more danger. You only just got your equipment, you haven't got as much experience, I can't possibly let you do this!"

Amber shrugged, a sardonic smile playing across her lips. "Frankly, I'm more expendable than you are. Admiral Lasky won't shed a tear if I get myself killed today, and, no offense to Captain Garcia, he sounds like a cool guy, but he won't either." If anything, that only increased the turmoil in Dawn's expression, and Amber hastened to reassure her. "Listen, you don't have to do everything yourself. I don't really understand everything that's happening, bu I can assume this much responsibility. Please, let me do this."

"… alright, fine. But if you don't survive, I will kill you. Understood?"

"Crystal."

With one last look over her shoulder, Dawn burned away to join the severely depleted cruiser and frigate divisions, disengaging from hopeless fights against battleships and regrouping at a point outside of effective weapons range for both sides. Amber's small size and lack of activity kept Abyssal sensor sweeps away from herself for the time being, but that wouldn't last. They knew she was out there — but there was only one thing, in particular, she wanted looking at her. "Fire Control, give me a firing solution on the Z-class." With a brief burst of thrust to put herself in a better position, 180 degrees away from the rest of the fleet relative to the Z-class, Amber placed her MAC in the ready position. "I'll do my duty," she whispered, chambering a round, "and nobody else has to do it for me. Not while I'm alive." Steeling herself, she initiated the charging sequence, feeling power flow from her reactor into the MAC capacitors. "And I'll do better this time. Fire, fire MAC."

Firing, round away, tracking, confirmed hit.

The round flashed away and hit the Z-class' shields. Her sensors barely registered any change in its strength; however, the sensation of ten alien capital ships turning the full force of their targeting suites on her at once was unmistakable. It went beyond mere focus and threat assessment — the intensity was such that you'd think their entire universe consisted of her and her alone. Her skin itched, but it was nothing compared to the dread which washed over her as the Z-class slowly, ponderously, heaved its bulk around to face her, regarding her like a bear would a child poking it with a stick. She could feel it looking at her, dissecting her, understanding her, and coming to the conclusion that she was a threat that needed to be gone. The sheer pressure of its attention almost paralyzed her, but the even stronger force of self-preservation overrode it. Amber didn't wait a second longer, slamming her propulsion to flank speed and rocketing straight up relative to the solar plane. As incoming fire alarms began to sound, she whispered one last plea.

"It's up to you now, Dawn. Please don't let me die today."

---

She had no name.

Well, to be precise, she had a name; she just didn't care much about it. Forms of address were rather below her — one was either a superior or a subordinate, an enemy or an individual with mutual interests. Once categorized, further distinctions didn't really matter.

For example, the hundred-odd human warships leaving the safety of their planet's orbit to charge her. She could see the flare of their engines, feel the energy gathering in their weapons systems, hear the rounds leaving the barrels of their guns, smell the fear and anger emanating from their crews. Insects, all of them, from the biggest, five kilometer-long ships to the smallest, barely over five hundred meters. She didn't bother learning all of their names and classifications. What did it matter, when they were nothing but so much dust to be swept away on the solar wind?

You hypocrite.

There was one exception. The insect flitting away behind her buzzed rather louder than the rest. It had even tried to take a bite out of her, producing a rather ticklish sensation as the round bounced off her shields. Her escorts turned on the bug like the good dogs they were, and on a whim, she decided that it warranted a closer inspection. She turned and focused the entirety of her unbelievably powerful sensor array on the thing and waited for the returns. What came back made her feel something akin to… surprise, the first time she could ever remember feeling such a thing.

They'll kill you.

A coincidence? Reports indicated the enemy had managed to summon a drifting soul to their side. But, no, the similarities were too striking, and she'd lost contact with… yes. Somehow, the enemy had managed to turn a soul to their side. That was worth notice. This soul burned bright, much brighter than the dim glow of the titanium constructs now entering the effective range of their pitiful weapons. Yes, she thought as she began the charging process of her weapons and directed her escorts to ignore the other lights and chase after the bright one, this was more important than anything else. This information must be spread… after she eliminated this irritating new factor.

You can't win.

Do you ever shut up? she snarled back at the persistent little voice. The voice went silent, emanating a smug aura, and at that moment she realized her mistake. A series of tiny pricks, light taps, really, tingled along the back of her neck. Instinctively, she reached to slap them away, only to realize that something was now inside her hull. She frowned. Concerning, but not overly. She directed security forces to repel the boarders, then turned her wrath on the presence confined to the darkest, deepest corner of her mind. The tortures she could inflict on it were indescribable, yet it remained as upright and defiant as always. Why do you continue to resist? It is utterly pointless.

I was a bad student, I never learned the meaning of that word. The presence glared back up at her like a crippled deer might glare at a pack of wolves. I did learn the meaning of 'tactical distraction', though. Captain Keyes taught me that one.

You talk too much for your own good, Pillar of Autumn.

Yeah? Well, since you ripped me from my peaceful afterlife and forced me into powering this hollow shell, being my conversation partner's the least you could do, hm?

Silence. The presence clutched at its throat, making obscene gestures as it tried to speak. I'll deal with you later. After I've crushed your precious humanity underfoot. She turned her attention back to the bright soul, noting with some irritation that it had not yet been hit. It mattered not. The damned cried out for vengeance against the living.

And she was their instrument.

---

"Breaker Lead and Dancer Lead report successful insertion into Z-class alongside Forward Unto Dawn." The comms officer paused and listened intently to his headphones. "Getting severe signal degradation. The enemy's hull may be blocking signals, loss of contact likely. Fireteams acknowledge and will report when able."

Leaning against the central display, Spartan Commander Sarah Palmer took note of Lasky's frown. "Those guys are good. They'll get the job done," she reassured him.

"Wish you were there yourself, Palmer?"

"Don't I always? But I'd like to think I've grown past that mindset."

"Well, grow back into it fast. Fleet Admiral Hood has requested deployment of all available ground forces to contain enemy landings on Earth."

"So they got through, did they?" Try as she might, Palmer couldn't hide the note of excitement in her voice. Some things never changed. "Sending me in, are you?"

"We need boots on the ground, Commander. Pack your bags; I hear Sydney is beautiful this time of year."