Chapter 9
Wayward Station, High Orbit, Actium
May 6, 2545
0935
Amber
Amber was bored.
It was hard to believe, but it was true.
In her experience, being bored in the military was a bad thing. Mainly because there always seemed to some sort of chief petty officer lurking around the corner, waiting for the exact moment for some hapless sailor to get bored, so they could pounce on them and spirit said sailor away to some inane work party on the other side of the ship. Or the good idea fairy would suddenly stop by and bless the ship's newest butterbar with another "great" idea and suddenly the entire division would find itself in another this-is-optional-but-just-kidding-it's-totally-not "team-building exercise."
Of course, that was when the ship was in garrison. Having never been in combat before, Amber had kind of assumed the opposite would hold true when the ship was deployed to the front, and that being bored in an active combat zone would have been a good thing. In her mind, being bored in a combat zone would have meant she wasn't sitting on the edge of her seat, about to piss her pants, waiting to see if every breath she took would have been her last. Or that every shake and tremble was a sign her ship was about to fall apart and throw the entire crew into the cold vacuum of space.
Yep, being bored in a combat zone, Amber had assumed, would have been a blessing.
But now that Amber was in an active combat zone, she was finding that being bored there was somehow worse than being bored in garrison. Because yes, while her life wasn't currently in danger, that didn't necessarily mean the same could be said about her friends. And because she really wasn't doing much at the moment, Amber didn't have anything that could distract her from the fears that were currently plaguing her mind. Fears such as: where was Poolsie? Was she okay? What was she doing? Despite having only really met during boot camp, Amber had spent most of her military career next to Poolsie, making this occasion one of the few times in the last couple of years they were separated from each other and Amber was finding the separation to be more stressful than she would have thought.
Then there were the fears about her ship, the Gabrielle. Amber hadn't seen the Gabrielle since the ship left the docking station some two hours ago and hadn't had any contact or visual of her ship since then. She hadn't even heard a word about its status. Given the chaos and the vastness of space, that shouldn't have been that unusual expect for the fact that according to scuttlebutt, several hundred UNSC warships had already been destroyed, many with all hands lost. Amber had no way of telling whether the communications blackout between her and the ship was the result of her simply not being in range of the ship, or whether it was because the Gabrielle was one of those hundreds of casualties and thus no longer had the capability of communicating with anyone on the mortal plane. Was Amber's home away from home really gone? Were all her friends dead? Was she the only one left?
And Amber hadn't even started to really worry about her aunt who, as far as she knew, was still on the surface of Actium, getting ready for the Covenant to make landfall. Amber had tried to call her up via her direct line, but the phone system was flooded with calls and Amber didn't have the clearance to try to use encrypted military lines.
In short, Amber was feeling rather scared, and cranky at the moment.
Amber let out a very loud sigh. She almost couldn't believe it, but right now, she almost wished a petty officer would suddenly appear and assign her to some random work party. She would be forced to sit around and work on some bullshit assignment, but at the very least it would have kept her distracted and her mind occupied. Because right now, there was literally nothing for her to do.
She couldn't leave her turret because the station was still at general quarters and the Covenant threat was far from over, which made sense, but unfortunately there wasn't anything left she could do inside her turret. She had already calculated all of her turret's fields of fire, mentally mapping out all of her obstructed lines of sights, location of obstacles, and what not. She had spent plenty of time getting familiar with her turret, getting a feel for its turning speed as well as how long it would take for her gun shield to engage. She had already triple checked the status of her Onager, its barrel, as well as all five capacitors, making sure they were all in perfect condition and that there was a minimal chance of failure for the upcoming battle. Amber had even gotten on her radio to find out more information about the station, and had learned the fire control director for this section was the same asshole that had assigned her to this turret in the first place, one FC1 McCreary, and that aside from her, McCreary was in charge of three other Onager turrets. Upon learning that, Amber had immediately tried to draw the other gunners into a conversation, but no one else seemed particularly interested, and all talk quickly died out, leaving Amber with absolutely nothing to distract her.
Bored out of her mind yet, feeling completely stressed at the same time, Amber grabbed ahold of her control stick and idly began rotating her backup sights around so she could take another look at the area around her in the hopes there was something that would catch her attention. Unfortunately, just like how it had been fifteen minutes ago when she had tried the exact same thing, everything looked exactly the same: she was surrounded by all sorts of military defense platforms, all of which had gathered together to form a very wide circle, with ByzasStation being right in the center of it all. All the platforms were at full alert, with weapons primed and ready for an attack that was quickly looking like it wasn't coming.
Panning outwards away from ByzasStation and towards interplanetary space, Amber casted around until she spotted the ships that made up JTF Byzas, spread out in a rough battle line. Forming the primary line of defense, all ships were spaced several hundred kilometers apart with their forward bows pointed outwards, ready to repeal the invaders. Like the defensive platforms that surrounded her, all the ships were motionless, floating idyllically through the cold vacuum of space.
Letting out another loud sigh, Amber leaned back in her seat, vigorously rubbing her face. She wasn't sure how much of this she could take. She could almost feel her sanity slipping away by the second! Honestly, she didn't know what was worse: the boredom she was facing, her fears for her friends and family, or the anticipated but not yet manifested Covenant attack.
Movement on her screen caught her eye and she slowly looked up, not really anticipating she would see anything. It took a few moments for her to process exactly what she was seeing, but when she finally did, she abruptly sat up in alarm and grabbed her radio.
"Delta Fire Control, this is turret Eight Delta: are you seeing what I'm seeing?" Amber asked as she stared intently at her screen. "Because, um, from what I can tell, it looks like half our ships are abandoning the battle line."
Indeed, on Amber's screen, nearly a dozen warbirds were firing their thrusters and moving away from the rest of the formation.
At once, Amber's radio came to life as the other three turret gunners in her section began to the notice the same thing.
"What the… where the hell do these assholes think they're going?"
"Delta Fire Control, Seven Delta. Uh, I'm seeing the same thing here. Is there something we should know?"
"Five Delta here. It looks like it's just the Air Force pulling out."
"Oh, it's just the Air Force? Never mind then. Waste of material those flyboys are."
Amber snorted in amusement at that last sentence, though her levity didn't last long. While it was true Air Force ships were significantly more limited in the fight against the Covenant when compared to their Navy counterparts, at the very least they were good for filling in the ranks and sure enough, the withdraw of the Air Force was leaving noticeable gaps in the battle line.
"Fire Control to all turrets," McCreary's voice sounded over the radio, sounding irritated. "Everyone calm down, there's nothing to be worried about. All we're doing is switching ships with another JTF: the Air Force wants to consolidate their ships over Cyprium. To make up for the shortfall, command is transferring a number of naval ships from other JTFs and reassigning them to our sector. Give it a few minutes for everyone to reform."
Amber frowned as she considered what McCreary had just said. Nothing McCreary had just said made any sort of tactical or strategic sense and she decided to say as much.
"Fire Control, turret Eight here. That doesn't make any sense," Amber affirmed. "Why the hell would command suddenly decided to shuffle a bunch of ships around in the middle of a Covenant attack? And if it really was that essential, why wouldn't they send the reinforcements in first, before taking ships out?"
"Eight Delta, are you an unrestricted line officer? Are you currently positioned in any of the bridges or CICs on any of the ships or stations in the general AO?" McCreary snapped. "Because if your answer is 'no' to any of those questions, then keep your damn commentary to yourself. You have no idea what's going on right now; you don't know what the big picture looks like and you've got no idea what our tactical dispersion is right now."
Amber felt a surge of anger at McCreary's blunt dismissal of her concerns, but she suppressed the urge to fly off the handle. She didn't know what this guy's fucking problem was, but she wasn't interested in getting in a pissing contest with him. Still, she couldn't help but snap back, "I don't have to be URL officer to know that leaving a hole in your own defensive line doesn't make for a good strategy."
"The officers making these decisions are some of the best officers the entire UNSC has to offer. I'm sure they've already taken all the factors into consideration, and don't need you to point out any flaws. And even if they haven't, the gaps will only be there for a couple of minutes."
"Yeah, but if the Covenant have even half a brain cell, they would know that this is the best time to launch an attack on our sector in order to take advantage of the expected chaos that rotating ships around will cause!" Amber pointed out.
"Turret Eight, shut. The. Fuck. Up. You don't - "
Before McCreary could finish talking, he was suddenly interrupted by a small robotic voice.
"Slipspace rupture detected."
"Oh shit! Fire Control, turret Five! I got visual on slipspace ruptures in sector three niner seven three!"
Amber blanched at the call and immediately panned her gun sights over to that sector in time to see half a dozen slipspace portals appearing a couple thousand kilometers in front of JTF Byzas. Rapidly emerging from said portals came nearly two dozen Covenant warships of all classifications, shields primed and weapons ready to fire. Instantly all hell broke loose.
"Holy shit, we're under attack!"
"Delta Fire Control, turret Seven. Are you seeing this? Are you seeing this?"
"Of course I fucking see it! God dammit! How many ships is that?"
"Five here: I count twenty-four Covenant warships!"
"Fuck! Dammit turret Eight, you just had to say something!"
Amber ignored that last part as she panned around to see how the fleet was responding. They must have been distracted by the rotation of ships because they were only now beginning to react. But before most of the ships could reorientate themselves in the direction of the enemy, the Covenant promptly open fired.
The space between the two fleets lit up as plasma and laser fire spewed across the great expanse and slammed into the UNSC forces. Immediately casualties began to light up across the board. Amber watched in horror as one frigate get hit simultaneously by five separate plasma torpedoes causing fire and explosions to erupt all over her hull. Before the ship's crew could properly respond, she was immediately struck by a combination of plasma cannon fire and pulse lasers which simply caused the entire ship to disintegrate.
Panning over to the left flank, Amber watched as a Halberd-class destroyer, almost identical in appearance to the Gabrielle, just open up on all the Covenant within range with every weapon system they had. But before the ship could fire more than a single salvo, she was speared amidship by a plasma excavator beam. An explosion erupted from the destroyer's dorsal hull, corresponding roughly to the where the main reactor to the MAC was located, and immediately the destroyer fired her thrusters and began to break contact. But before the ship could travel further than a couple kilometers, a combination of plasma torpedoes and pulse laser fire gutted her, leaving her dead in space.
All across the line, the same scene was being repeated over and over again. Whether it was because they had been distracted by the unexpected reallocation of the Air Force, or whether it was because of the ferocity of the Covenant attack, or whether it was simply because of sheer numbers, more and more UNSC ships were going dark by the minute. But the Navy was quickly waking up and responding in turn.
In the center of the line, Amber could see a Covenant destroyer get struck by MAC rounds from an entire UNSC destroyer squadron. The rounds outright disabled the Covie shields and caused untold amounts of damage to the ship's hull. Before the Covenant could return fire though, the entire ship detonated in a brilliant blue flash and zooming in, Amber could just barely make out the shadow of an entire flight of Longswords peeling away as they finished their attack run.
Nearby, the UNSC Canberra, a Marathon-class cruiser which was acting as the flagship for JTF Byzas, was engaged in a furious dual with two Covenant corvettes. The space between the three ships was a maelstrom of explosions as all ships involved were rapidly exchanging fire, which was being countered by countermeasures, which in turn was getting intercepted by counter-battery fire. At first glance, it appeared to be a losing dual for the Canberra as her opponents had energy shields and she didn't, but the Canberra was maneuvering in such a way she was able to keep at least one corvette between her and the other corvette, forcing the Covenant to be very selective with their shots least they accident shoot each other. In the meantime, the Canberra was free to fire with impunity, which she did, and soon Amber could see an explosion erupting from one of the corvette's hull, indicating that at least that ship had lost her energy shields.
Unfortunately, such victories were rare and the Covenant's superior weapons and defenses were beginning to show as more and more UNSC ships were destroyed. Holes were beginning to form in the defensive line, most visibly on the left flank where at least ten Covenant warships alone were concentrating on forcing a breach.
"Son of a bitch," Amber whispered to herself as she watched the battle unfold on her screen. Despite the sheer brutality she was witnessing, she found herself unable to look away. "Where the fuck are our reinforcements!?"
There was a bright orange flash on the left flank as the last UNSC ship holding position there finally fell, blowing up under a concentrated amount of plasma fire. With nothing in their way any longer, the Covenant began speeding towards Actium.
"Oh shit, breach! The line is breached!" Amber yelled into her radio. Immediately she began charging all five of her capacitors and started reaching for the button that would open her gun shield and extend her turret into firing position.
"Turret Eight, what the fuck are you doing?" McCreary immediately yelled in her ear. "You don't have permission to deploy your gun! Keep it underneath the gun shield until I fucking tell you otherwise!"
Amber grabbed her radio. "We can't just fucking sit here and do nothing!" she yelled back.
"You can and you will because I'm fucking ordered you to! Besides, it's not like you can do anything to those ships, especially at this range! So keep your gun locked! That goes for everyone! All Delta turrets, hold your fire and standby for further orders! Byzas Station will deal with the breach!"
Amber growled, the urge to do something almost overwhelming, but she managed to bring herself under control. Flushing her capacitors, Amber rotated her sights around, bring an image of Byzas Station on her screen.
She watched as the station sprang into action, firing her maneuvering thrusters and pivoting her massive superstructure around so that her main battery was aimed at the incoming ships. In her mind, Amber could almost picture the sight as the breech to the super MAC swung open, and a 3000 tonne ferric-tungsten round was dropped in. She could almost feel the hum in the air as power surged through each electromagnet along the length of the barrel propelling the round forward, and she could almost hear the sliding of metal against metal as the round rapidly picked up speed until -
WHOOMP!
- there was a brilliant flash of light as ByzasStation fired!
In the time it took Amber to blink, the round had already crossed the distance between the station and her target, a Covenant corvette. The corvette immediately exploded as she took the round head on, her shields doing absolutely nothing to stop the massive projectile. Even before the ship could fully split apart, Byzas Station fired again, hitting another corvette and tearing a huge chuck out from her stern as the shell just barely missed. The blow threw the entire ship into a spin but as her crew attempted to recover, Byzas Station fired once more, this time hitting the ship dead center on her ventral hull and causing the entire corvette to simply disintegrate.
The Covenant began to return fire, scoring several hits and leaving burn marks along the length of Byzas Station's hull, but her armor held fast. In retaliation, Byzas Station fired two rounds in quick secession, instantly destroying a light cruiser, and causing massive damage to another corvette.
Watching all this, Amber was tempted to say the battle was quickly being brought under control, but as she glanced back at the rest of the defensive line, she realized how wrong she was. More than half of JTF Byzas had been destroyed already, with the Covenant only suffering light casualties in return. It was clear the entire defensive line was crumbling.
The fact that Actium's defensives were falling so quickly wasn't super surprising to Amber, especially given the disparity in firepower between the two sides. What was surprising was the fact that reinforcements had yet to appear. Surely the rest of the planet was seeing what was happening here? Why weren't they sending help? It was almost as if Command wanted this sector to get breached!
"Alright, all turrets, listen up!"
McCreary's voice cut through Amber's mental tirade and she quickly sat up. "JTF Byzas has taken too many casualties and Admiral Bishorn is ordering a general withdraw," McCreary informed them. "Our ships are going to break contact and fall back to position one three niner four and establish a secondary line of defense behind our orbital defense stations. That means we're about to become the next front line. All turrets, prime capacitors and standby for status check."
Amber blanched as the full weight of McCreary's words hit her, and she hastily reached out to begin, once again, charging all five capacitors on her turret. Outside, she could see whatever remained of JTF Byzas slowly breaking contact and pulling away from the Covenant, flying back towards Actium and theoretically, to safety. All the while Byzas Station continued to lay down copious amounts of fire.
"All Delta turrets, confirm status," McCreary barked. Amber immediately grabbed her radio.
"This is Eight Delta, primed and ready," she reported.
"Turret Six Delta, all good here."
"Five Delta here, I'm - hang on, are the Covenant falling back?"
Amber jumped at that and quickly glanced at her screen. Sure enough, by the looks of it, the Covenant were slowly pulling their ships back.
"What the... the Covenant are winning," someone point out. "Why are they falling back now?"
"Maybe Byzas Station was just too much for them to handle?" someone else suggested.
"That's never stopped them before," Amber muttered out loud as she studied the retreating ships.
Dropping her crosshairs over one corvette, Amber zoomed in until she was maxed out. There was something funny looking about that ship, and when she finally realized what it was, it became painfully obvious what the Covenant were doing and indeed, it was something that should have occurred to Amber from the start:
"Oh shit, they're launching fighters!"
On her screen, Amber could see dozens and dozens of all manner of Covenant fighters pouring out of the surviving Covenant ships: Seraph multirole fighters, Banshee interceptors, Phantom gunboats, even a couple of Vampire close-support fighters. Her HUD became one massive sea of red dots as her targeting computer attempted to keep track of all the enemy spacecraft, but it was a losing battle given how many of them there were.
The fighters quickly broke up into individual squadrons while their motherships made a hasty beat back to slipspace in order to avoid further loss to Byzas Station. Then, almost as one, every single fighter ignited their afterburners and started speeding towards Actium. Amber didn't need her computer to figure out where their trajectory would put them: they were all headed straight for Byzas Station.
Byzas Station abruptly fired again, but this time not at the retreating Covenant warships, but instead at the incoming fighters. The round passed right through the mass, leaving a series of miniature explosions in its wake as the much smaller ships simply had no defense against a projectile of that magnitude, but given how numerous they were, it just wasn't enough. While super MACs were humanity's most effective weapon against Covenant warships, against small craft and gunboats, it was like throwing a rock at a swarm of gnats for all the good it did. Which is where support stations like Wayward came in. Lightly armored but equipped with numerous anti-aircraft weapons, support stations were designed to handle the small craft to allow ODPs like Byzas Station to concentrate on the larger warships.
"Alright guys, listen up!" McCreary barked. "We've got incoming bandits! You know what you need to do! Unlock weapons and standby to engage!"
Amber reached out and pushed a button, opening the metal gun shield that protected her Onager turret and finally allowing it to fully extend. All around her, all sorts of gun and missile turrets were doing the same thing, emerging from their protective capsules and rising to the surface, covering the entire station with weapons.
"Here they come," someone muttered over the radio and Amber glanced at her screen. She felt the saliva in her mouth dry up as she stared at the literal wall of red dots speeding towards her, and she quickly licked her lips.
"All turrets, wait for the order," McCreary commanded, his voice tense. "Kill sats are going to engage first, so don't fire until I say the word."
Amber didn't quite trust herself to speak at the moment, so she clicked the talk button on her radio in acknowledgement instead and rotated her sights around to watch as the kill sats went to work.
Filling the space between all the orbital platforms were a bunch of military satellites, all armed with one or two missile pods. Small, cheap, and fragile, they were only capable of firing a single volley before they had to reload, but under certain circumstances, the added extra firepower they provided could mean the difference between life and death.
"Kill sats firing in... three, two," McCreary counted over the radio, "one... mark!"
Amber watched as nearly three hundred missiles were simultaneously fired. They quickly shot across the void, leaving visible white contrails in their wake as they charged towards the approaching onslaught. As expected, about a third of them immediately lost their target and veered off course due to Covenant ECM. About another third were destroyed as active countermeasures went to work, lighting up the space between the two warring parties with explosions. But the last hundred or so missiles...
Amber's screen lit up with violent blue explosions as the missiles slammed into the front ranks of the incoming swarm. Nearly three dozen Banshees, several Phantoms, and a couple of Seraphs were instantly destroyed, with dozens more damaged, leaving behind a sizable debris field that caused even more damage as the following ranks were forced to fly right through it. Yet despite all this, it hardly seemed to make a dent in the Covenant's numbers. What it did do though, was attract the Covenant's attention, and immediately a number of squadrons broke away from their advance on Byzas Station and started heading straight towards the other defense platforms.
"Lances are engaging!" McCreary reported and Amber glanced at the nearest Lance pod to her position and watched as the turret ripple fired its entire payload of Lance missiles before it was quickly lowered back into the station to be reloaded. Amber briefly wondered if that was the turret Poolsie was manning, or whether she was part of the reloading crew, but she was quickly distracted when her HUD suddenly highlighted a number of the incoming Seraphs.
"Delta turrets, these are your targets," McCreary commanded. "Ramparts and Lances will deal with the other aircraft, but this is our priority number one: we got to take out the Seraphs before they can tear this station apart. Lock onto a target and standby!"
Amber rapidly moved her crosshairs around, looking for a Seraph to lock onto. A number of fighters already had red rings around them, indicating lock ons from other turrets, so Amber quickly found one that didn't. She hovered her crosshairs over the vehicle and waited until her reticle turned red.
"All turrets, hold fast," McCreary ordered "Wait for the command..."
Amber nervously swallowed as the swarm drew closer and closer.
"Steady..."
Outside, the Lance pods were reemerging from the station, freshly loaded missiles clearly sticking out from their tubes. Flames licked the side of the station as the pods fired a second volley.
"Standby..."
Amber anxiously looked around. What the hell were they waiting for?
"Hold it..."
On her screen, Amber watched as the missiles streak towards the Covenant, many of which scored hits, including two which slammed into the Seraph she had locked on to. Then -
"All batteries, OPEN FIRE!"
Amber slammed her finger down on the trigger as hard as she could, trying to pour all of her fear, all of her hate, and all of the anxiety that had been building up inside of her for the last two hours into that one trigger pull. Her HUD shook as her Onager recoiled, but it wasn't enough to prevent her from seeing her round hit the Seraph, cut right through its weakened shields, and slam right into the nose.
"WOOHOO!" Amber cheered as the Seraph detonated in a violent blue explosion. "Screw you Covies!"
Finding herself sudden rejuvenized, Amber immediately panned her turret around, searching for another one of her assigned target as she felt her autoloader kick in as her capacitors began to recharge. Spotting an undamaged Seraph flying through the air, Amber planted her crosshairs over the spot slightly in front of it and as soon as her status light turned green, she fired. Almost immediately the shields on the Seraph lit up, but unlike her first kill, they were at full strength so her round failed to penetrate, but the impact was enough to outright disable them. The Seraph instantly began taking evasion actions but before it could get away, Amber disabled half her capacitors to allow for a faster recharge time and fired again.
Her second round hit the Seraph in the rear, impacting the area right above the engine housing, but at half power, the round failed to penetrate the Seraph's armored hull. The round must have damaged the engine itself though as the Seraph instantly started trailing smoke and quickly ceased all evasive maneuvering, giving Amber a clean shot. Switching back to full power, she fired again, this time putting a round right through the cockpit and clear out the other side. For a brief second, she could see fire shooting out from both holes before the entire Seraph simply blew up.
She started panning around, searching for another Seraph to kill, but before she could find one, a loud shrill filled her ears and the words "INCOMING MISSILE" flashed across her screen in big red letters. Without pausing to even think, Amber reflexively activated her gun shield and her turret immediately disappeared beneath the station's hull. Microseconds later, the fuel rod cannon came streaking in and slam into her gun shield, leaving a nasty burn mark but causing no other damage.
Hitting a button to re-deploy her turret, Amber swung it around, trying to figure out where that missile had come from, only to reflexively flinch as a series of blue plasma bolts splashed against her side.
Pausing only long enough to confirm nothing critical had been hit, she jerked her turret to the left to see a Banshee flying straight towards her, plasma cannons blazing. Dropping her crosshairs over it, Amber quickly fired but just as she pulled the trigger, the Banshee threw itself into a barrel roll, causing her round to miss, shooting by the Banshee and missing the portside gravity pod by mere centimeters. Spitting out a curse, Amber hastily disabled all but one of her capacitors before attempting to reacquire a lock but by then it was too late as the Banshee rocketed by overhead and Amber just wasn't fast enough to track it.
The Banshee started to bank around for another attack run, a green glow forming at its nose indicating it was prepping to fire another fuel rod cannon and Amber reached out for her gun shield but before she could do anything, a Lance missile came out of nowhere and slammed into the Banshee's side, completely obliterating it. Nevertheless, the remains of the Banshee continued forward along its path, and Amber winced as her turret was pelt with debris traveling at high speeds.
"Thanks for the 'help,' jackass!" Amber yelled at no one in particular as she quickly inspected her Onager for damage. Fortunately the armor had managed to hold strong and Amber quickly rotated her turret around, searching for a new target. She spotted a trio of Seraphs that had been assigned to her pulling out from a dive and she quickly open fired on them, firing two rounds in rapid succession before switching back to full power and firing a third shot.
The first two rounds somehow managed to hit the lead Seraph but as they had only been fired at one fifth full power, all they did was cause the Seraph's shields to lit up, as well as cause all three fighters to take immediate evasive actions. As a result, Amber's third round completely missed, but luckily for her, a Phantom gunboat just happen to be flying by at the exact same time, firing at a target Amber couldn't see.
Amber's third round slammed into the side of the Phantom, blowing off both its starboard side plasma turrets and ripping a massive hole in its hull. Fire erupted from the breach and Amber was pretty sure she saw at least one of the Phantom's gunners get ejected from the ship. The Phantom immediately broke contact and began to peel away from the station.
Sensing an opportunity, Amber decided to abandon the three Seraphs for now and brought her turret around. She began blasting away at the Phantom instead, blow the Phantom's engines into a thousand pieces with a single shot and leaving it dead in the water. She was just charging up her gun for the final kill shot when the Phantom was struck by an Onager round from another turret, blowing it to kingdom come.
Undeterred, Amber swiveled around to search for another one of her assigned targets, which wasn't as easy as it sounded. The problem wasn't finding a target, as there were so many Amber could have literary fired blindly downrange and probably hit something, the problem was determining which target was a priority.
She spotted a Seraph trailing smoke, speeding away from the station and back towards deep space and Amber rotated around so she could finish it off, but then spotted two Seraphs diving towards the station firing their plasma cannons. All three were assigned targets, but deciding the new Seraphs were more of an immediately threat compared to one damaged Seraph, Amber abandoned her initial target and panned around to deal with the new threat.
Both Seraphs were already taking fire from other turrets along the station, so Amber aimed at the Seraph on the left which didn't seem to be taking as much fire and opened up. Her first round missed entirely as both Seraphs were evading, and Amber found they were moving too fast for her to acquire a proper lock so she switched back to single capacitor and began unloading on the aircraft as fast as she possibly could in order to increase probability of hits. White streaks from other angles indicated other turrets had the same idea and soon the shields on both Seraphs were lighting up as they quickly began taking hits.
Abruptly one of the articulating tails on the Seraph Amber was shooting at was blown off as it was struck by a low powered Onager round, causing severe damage and sending the Seraph veering off course and off towards deep space. Amber let him go, figuring the vehicle would shake itself apart soon enough, and turned to shoot at the second Seraph. But just as she started rotating her turret around, the wounded Seraph abruptly turned around and started to dive towards the station at high speeds. Amber felt her eyes widen as she realized what the pilot was about to do.
"Oh shit!" Amber yelped, swiveling her turret to take out the Seraph before he could finish his suicide run. "Incoming, incoming, incoming!"
Charging up to full power, Amber fired a round straight at the Seraph but unfortunately she had been just a bit too hasty and completely missed. The shoot did have the unfortunate side effect of attracting the Seraph's attention as the pilot immediately turned his fighter as best he could and started speeding straight towards Amber's turret.
"Ah crap," Amber spat out. Switching back down to low power, Amber opened up, putting rounds downrange as fast as she could, but the Seraph was approaching from an angle which made it really hard for her to hit him, and the best she could do was hit him with glancing blows which wasn't enough to deter him. Amber felt her stomach drop as she realized even if she were to get a good solid hit on the Seraph, at the speed it was traveling, the remains would still be enough to seriously damage if not outright destroy her turret. Reflexively, she reached for her gun shield even though in her heart she knew the shield wouldn't be able to close in time.
BRRRRTTTTKABOOM!
An explosion ripped through the Seraph's hull as it was unexpectedly struck by a combination of 50mil autocannon fire and Argent missiles from a nearby Rampart turret. The explosion sent the Seraph spiraling right into the station a few dozen meters shorts of Amber's turret where it hit the armor and exploded with enough force Amber swore she could actually feel the vibrations. The explosion threw debris in all directions, and Amber jumped in surprise when something unexpectedly struck her backup sights. She turned to see what it was.
"Fuck!" Amber screamed, reflexively jerking away in her seat as she realize what had hit her sights: it was the upper half of an Elite's body, probably the pilot of the Seraph which had somehow managed to survive the explosion mostly intact. The body just floated there, its mouth hanging slightly open, surrounding by frozen globules of blood, with its dead eyes staring straight at Amber. "Fuck. FUCK! GET IT OFF!"
"Turret Eight, what the fuck is your problem?"
Amber grabbed her radio. She must have accidentally hit the talk button when she was in the midst of freaking out.
"There's a fucking body on my backup sights!" she reported, warily eyeing the body as it just floated there.
"Reverse the magnetic polarity of your gun sight to clear it. And Eight, next time you start crying, keep it off the damn radio," McCreary snapped and before Amber could retorted, he yelled, "As for everyone else, pick up your rate of fire! We got too many damn fighters breaking through!"
Amber casted around her turret before finding the button that would allow her to clear her sights. She jabbed it and watched as the body was repelled away until it was far away enough it was no longer blocking her optics. The sight of the dead body floating there still disturbed her greatly though, so she spun her turret, trying to hit the body with the barrel of her Onager in the hopes of shoving it out of the way. That turned out to be the wrong decision as instead of pushing it away, all it did was cause the body to burst, spewing frozen blood and intestines all over the place.
"God dammit," Amber muttered to herself, feeling sickened by the sight. There was nothing she could do about it now though, so she quickly turned her focus back to the battle. Immediately, she spotted a Banshee firing a fuel rod cannon at another turret and grateful for the distraction, she quickly opened up on it. She hit the Banshee's portside gravity pod with a snap shot, throwing the Banshee into a spin while simultaneously cause it to burst into flames. The Banshee flew through the space for a few dozen meters before colliding with the blown up wreak of a Vampire fighter, causing it to finally explode.
Taking pains to avoid looking at her backup sights for now, Amber glanced at her HUD for another fighter to shoot, only to see all the targets that had originally been assigned to her by McCreary had disappeared, and new targets were being assigned.
"All Delta turrets, listen up!" McCreary commanded over the radio as Amber's HUD finished updating. "We're getting new targets: Central Fire Control is picking up the signatures of multiple fighter squadrons vectoring in to begin bombing runs on Byzas Station. We can't let them get away with that because if that station falls, we all fall. Shift fire to the following navpoint, I'm picking up an incoming flight of bombers. Take them out!"
A navpoint suddenly appeared on Amber's HUD and she immediately swiveled her turret in that direction. As she did, she finally started paying attention to what was going on with the rest of the battle outside her personal field of view.
The entire area was ablaze with anti-aircraft fire as every single station in the entire defensive line was under heavy attack. Covenant fighters were everywhere, firing their weapons, deftly maneuvering between the various defensive platforms and occasionally diving in and out to launch attack runs. UNSC forces were fighting back with every single weapon at their disposal doing their best to hold back the tide, and doing a credible job as attested by the growing debris field of destroyed Covenant spacecraft. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to completely stop the Covenant from launching one attack run after another, and more and more stations were beginning to go dark; in the distance, Amber could see one support station just simply come apart as it took concentrated fire from multiple squadrons.
At the center of everything was Byzas Station. As the largest and most deadly of all defense stations, Byzas Station was the focus of the Covenant attack and taking most of the fire. They was responding in kind, returning fire with every weapon system they had including their super MAC, but due to the need to maintain room for the super MAC's firing and recoil mechanisms, Byzas Station wasn't armed with much more than Rampart turrets and Argent V missile batteries, of which weren't capable of taking out heavily armored aircraft like Seraphs or Phantoms by themselves. Said aircraft were attacking the station with impunity, causing heavy damage. Fire was raging across several sections and there were a number of hull breaches already. All in all, it wasn't looking good.
Rotating around, Amber looked for the Seraphs McCreary had warned them about and spotted four Seraphs approaching Byzas Station from below with their bomb bay doors just beginning to open.
"All turrets, focus fire!" McCreary ordered. "Don't let them drop a single bomb!"
Charging up to full power, Amber planted her crosshairs over the lead vehicle and fired. She watched as the round streak across the void towards the target –
- and then stared in astonishment as the round punch through the Seraph's shields and fly right into the Seraph's open bomb bay. The impact not only set off the Seraph's entire payload of plasma charges, completely destroying the spacecraft, but the ensuing explosion was so large it actually consumed the second Seraph in the line, causing serious damage. The second Seraph quickly lost control, veering off course and flying straight into a nearby Phantom, the collision destroying both vehicles. Seeing the damage done to the lead vehicles, the remaining two Seraphs immediately broke contact, peeling away from their attack run and disappearing among the chaos.
"Damn," McCreary commented over the radio, sounding astonished. "Good shot Eight."
Amber couldn't help but grin to herself as another navpoint appeared on her HUD.
"Good work guys," McCreary complimented. "Now let's see if you can do it again. I'm picking up a flight of gunboats bearing down on Byzas Station from above. Take them out!"
Amber quickly moved to obey, spotting the six Phantoms in question. Already, the Phantoms were exchanging fire with a couple of Rampart turrets on Byzas Station but it was a one sided battle: armed with heavy plasma cannons, the gunboats made short work of the lightly armored turrets. The Phantoms then turned their weapons against the station itself, tearing chunks of armor off with every shot.
Switching over to half power, Amber opened up on the ships. Knowing there was no way she could repeat her performance from earlier, rather than focus on just one of the Phantoms, Amber instead methodically worked her way down the line, planting a shot into each of the Phantoms, trusting the turrets in her section would come up behind her and finish the ships off. As soon as she was done, Amber rotated back to the lead vehicle to see if she need to lend her fire to something else.
The first Phantom was already gone, probably having been destroyed by one of her fellow gunners. The second was venting atmosphere from a breach in its hull, though it was still firing its weapons. Amber was about to finish it off when it was struck by a series of Argent missiles fired from Byzas Station, causing it to detonate. The remaining four, however, had immediately taken evasion actions the moment their shields had been struck, so Amber swiveled her turret around so she could help her section hunt down the remaining few.
She spotted one of the Phantoms a few dozen meters away, trailing smoke from a hole in its hull, flying along the surface of Byzas Station. Given its proximity to the station, Amber was a bit reluctant to engage because if she were to miss the Phantom with any of her shots, they would definitely hit the station and could potentially cause some serious damage, thus doing the work for the Covenant.
Unfortunately she couldn't just let the Phantom go as it was still taking an active part of the battle, firing its plasma cannons pretty much at point blank range at the station. She supposed she could fire her Onager at low power, so that any missed shots from her would simply bounce off Byzas Station's hull instead of punching a hole right through the armor, but while gunboats weren't as heavily armored as Seraphs, they were more heavily armored when compared to Banshees meaning it would take more than one hit to destroy the Phantom. The problem was, Amber knew she wasn't capable of that sort of accuracy. She needed some way to force the Phantom away from the station, which meant she needed some way to curve her shot, but an Onager just wasn't capable of that. Lance missiles however...
Highlighting the Phantom in question on her HUD, Amber tapped her radio.
"Fire Control, Eight here. I got a priority Phantom in sector niner niner seven three that I can't hit because it's too close to Byzas Station," she told McCreary. "Any chance you can get one of the Lance turrets to engage?"
"Yeah yeah, working on it," McCreary distractedly said. "Hang on… okay... done. Engage!"
Outside, Amber watched as the Lance pod nearest to her emerge from the station and rapidly fire four missiles. Spinning around in her chair, Amber tracked the four missiles as they sped towards the Phantom.
The Phantom obviously saw the missiles coming and started to take steps to evade them, firing off a couple of decoys. But the Phantom quickly found its close proximity to Byzas Station working against them as their decoys actually bounced off the station's hull and back towards them, making them an even bigger target than before.
To the Covies credit, they didn't panic, and instead opened up on the missiles with their starboard side plasma turrets, destroying two outright. But they weren't able to shoot down the remaining two and the Phantom quickly found itself hemmed in between the incoming missiles and Byzas Station. There was only one solution for the pilot: he ignited his main thrusters, launching forward and away from the station –
- and right into Amber's crosshairs.
"Got you..." Amber announced out loud in a singsongy and squeezed the trigger.
Her round shot across the void and slammed into the midsection of the Phantom. At full power, the round shattered the Phantom's shields, punched its way into the hull, and clear out the other side. The gunboat immediately started to split in two but before the two halves could fully separate, the remaining two Lance missiles rammed home, and the entire vehicle blew up.
Amber let out a triumphant laugh, throwing a glance at the Lance turret that had helped her.
"Thank you!" she called out, jerking her turret from side to side in a sort of awkward wave, and was delighted to see the Lance turret returning the gesture.
Smiling to herself, Amber started to turn away to search for something else to shoot at, when the Lance turret simply blew up.
"Ah shit!" Amber yelped as her turret was pelted with debris.
She swung her turret around in time to see two Banshees emerging from the explosion, two green capsules departing from their beneath their fighters and rapidly speeding towards Amber. The words "INCOMING MISSILE" flashed across her screen again and Amber hastily punched the button for her gun shield, which closed just in time to block the fuel rod cannon shots.
Through her backup sights, Amber could see the two Banshees rocketing passed her turret, but she ignored them to look in the direction of where the Lance turret had once stood. Atmosphere was being vented from the hole in the stations hull, and a number of objects were being ejected into space. Amber didn't want to zoom in because she was afraid she was right, but she was pretty sure at least one of those objects was a human body. She felt a sinking sensation in her stomach as it occurred to her that might have been the turret Poolsie had been manning and suddenly, all the triumph she'd been feeling was gone, and all her fears and anxieties from before this engagement began was back with a vengeance.
Amber suddenly felt extremely stressed out, and she didn't know whether she wanted to cry or scream or yell, but all she did know she was struck with an unexpected need to see Poolsie right now, to hug her and confirm, at least to herself, that her best friend was alright. But she knew that wasn't going to be possible right now, especially while this battle continued to rage, and Amber felt a surge of anger at the injustice of it all.
"SON OF A BITCH!" Amber yelled, punching her controls as hard as she could in a fit of anger. "Fucking Covenant!"
Extending her turret, Amber swiveled around, looking for something to vent her anger on. But then she heard a small robotic voice announce over her radio:
"Slipspace rupture detected."
"What the... oh shit! All gunners, new contact, high tonnage!"
Amber jerked her head up to see a number of Covenant warships reemerging from slipspace several hundred thousand kilometers away. Clearly the Covenant had decided Byzas Station was sufficiently damaged enough to risk sending in their warships again. The newly arrived warships promptly opened up, sending plasma fire in all directions.
"All Delta gunners, new target!" McCreary yelled over the radio, and Amber's HUD shifted to highlight a single target, a Covenant corvette that had already been designated as target '12-Bravo.' "Shift fire and engage! Now!"
Seized by a new sense of urgency, Amber shoved her feelings aside, bringing her turret around and aiming it directly at the Corvette. From this distance, even when she zoomed out, the warship looked massive, and she started to wonder if her puny turret would even be capable of damaging that thing. She started scanning the corvette for a weakness, something that would help amplify the damage output of her turret. By the looks of it, the corvette had already seen some action against UNSC forces as its hull was pitted and scored in a pattern consistent with Archer and Rapier missiles impacts, but against from that, there didn't seem to be any significant hull breaches or damaged armor Amber could hit. The only thing that was exposed were the corvette's heavy plasma cannons, but Amber was pretty sure she wouldn't be able to take them on by herself.
"Turret Five, this is Eight," Amber yelled into her radio. "We got to take out that corvette's guns before it can take out our station! Let's focus fire on those portside heavy plasma cannons! You with me?"
"Yeah, I'm with you!" came the reply, and Amber could see white streaks indicating Onager rounds being fired hitting the area where the guns were.
Charging up to full power, Amber opened up on the corvette. The results were rather disappointing. While the corvette may have seen action already, whatever damage it might or might not have taken clearly had already been repaired as the corvette's shields were all full strength. While her shots weren't completely useless, as Amber could see the shield fluctuating ever so slightly with which impact, for the most part, they weren't doing much.
"We're not going to be able to penetrate that shield," Amber finally declared as the corvette open fired on a nearby defense platform, destroying it with a single volley.
"Keep shooting. We might be able to get through eventually," Five suggested and, seeing no other options, Amber agreed. Charging up to full power again, she fired.
BOOM!
Amber jumped as a MAC round smashed into the corvette, causing its entire shield to light up. Knowing there was no way she could have accomplished that with her little Onager, Amber glanced at her HUD to see a number of friendly contacts rising up from behind her. Swiveling her backup sights around, Amber watched as a Paris-class UNSC frigate advance on target 12-Bravo, firing its weapons as it did.
"JTF Byzas is moving up to support," McCreary reported over the radio, even as the corvette's shields failed and the corvette began taking hits. "All turrets, continue firing!"
Seeing the opportunity to finally be able to do some damage, Amber opened up on the unshielded corvette. Explosions rippled across the corvette's hull as her rounds hit home, and Amber could see one of the heavy plasma cannons explode in a blue flash. Shifting fire, Amber started shooting at what looked like a hanger bay door, hoping to catch whatever ships that might still be in dock off guard.
In the corner of her screen, Amber could see the super MAC on Byzas Station open fire, shredding a Covenant destroyer with a single shot. No longer being harassed by enemy fighters, Byzas Station was free to engage the Covenant warships with -
Amber froze as a thought suddenly occurred to her: where did all the fighters go?
Abandoning the corvette for the moment, Amber spun her turret around, looking for the swarm of Covenant fighters that had been attacking them not even five minutes ago. They were all gone, and Amber knew they couldn't have returned to their motherships as she would have seen them. She stared at her HUD, a sense of impending doom descending upon her, as she began frantically searching for where all the fighters went. She felt her blood run cold when she spotted them in the distance behind the defensive line.
"Fire Control, this is Eight," Amber desperately yelled into her radio. "Be advised, I got eyes on enemy fighters pushing through our defensive line and heading straight towards Actium!"
"What? How?"
"The fleet must have pushed up all their ships to join us on the line, and didn't leave anyone behind to intercept anything that might have gotten through," Amber thought out loud. "Fighters must have saw the opportunity to push through!"
"But why? The battle is up here!"
Amber quickly thought it over. While fighters were capable of causing large amounts of havoc, they weren't capable of glassing a planet by themselves. To do that, the Covenant need their warships. But in order to get their warships down to Actium, they had to take out Byzas Station. And Byzas Station was too heavily armored and too heavily support, even though that support had been degraded somewhat, to take out from a distance. Now the only way the Covenant had to take out the station was to destroy the station's ground based generator.
"Fire Control, those fighters have got to be headed straight for Byzas Station's power generator," Amber warned. "Who's standing between Actium and the fighters?"
"Ground installations! And that's it! God dammit!"
"McCreary, you need to get on the horn and have someone warn the Army that they've got a shit ton of contacts headed their way," Amber urged. "Cause –"
"Fire Control, turret Seven! We've got boarding craft coming straight for us! Eight, LOOKOUT!"
A loud shrill filled her ears and Amber reflexively glanced at her screen in time to see the words "COLLUSION ALERT" flashing across her screen, as well as a Covenant boarding pod flying straight at her. There was no time for her to activate her gun shield. All Amber could do was throw her arms in front of her face –
- and then everything went dark.
According to Halopedia, the Halo universe has a massive amounts of named missiles in their inventory, but unfortunately the details regarding the differences in their sizes and roles are somewhat lacking. For the sole purpose of trying to maintain some continuity in my story, I had made myself a little chart kind of defining what each missile's role was, which I will attempt to replicate here. Unfortunately, I don't think graphs will be shown on fanfiction, so what I have is three columns: the first is the cannon missile or launch system, the second will be what I considered its real-world equivalent to be, and the last with be just a short description of their role.
Note, of course this is all my interpretation, and it's very possible it's all wrong. I also don't have all the known missiles in the Halo universe, simply because some of them won't get used until after the war ends, and some I just don't plan on using.
(Hopefully this will end up looking right on FF.)
In no particular order:
Halo Missile Real-World Equivalent Role
- Scorpion missile AGM-65 "Maverick" Air to ground anti-armor missile
- Anvil II missiles Hydra 70 rockets Unguided air to surface rocket
-Anvil IV missiles Zuni rockets Unguided air to surface rocket
- ST/Medusa AIM-120 "AIMRAAM" Medium range air-to-air missile
- ASGM-10 missile AGM-84 missile Air launched anti-ship missile
- Anaconda missiles (replaced by Argent V missiles)
- Argent V missiles ADATS missiles dual-purpose anti-air/anti-armor missile
- ASRGAM 10X missile* Harpoon missile multirole anti-ship missile
* used in the launcher labels on Halopedia as the "Unidentified SAM launcher
- Ares missile (replaced by Archer missiles)
- Archer missile P-800 "Oniks" Medium range anti-ship missile
- Howler missile P-500 "Bazalt" Extended range anti-ship missile
- Rapier missile BrahMos-II Long range anti-ship missile
- M95 "Lance" turret RIM-7 "Sea Sparrow" Medium range anti-ship missile
- M41 SPNKR FGM-148 "Javelin" Dual-purpose anti-armor/anti-air
(*Edit 7/26/19: I completely misunderstood the roles of some of the missiles I had initially written here. Many thanks to Thorthemighty321 for pointing that out, as well as providing me with some better and more appropriate alternatives.)