Disclaimer: You know the drill…
A/N: Hey, I've got a question. What color are Maria's eyes? Please tell me they're not the same color as Fayt's…
Chapter 6: Into the Fray
A horde of horribly disfigured, misshapen creatures surrounded them. Fayt held his arm out in an attempt to defend a kneeling Maria from the oncoming swarm. Behind them, a Covenant Phantom was going through its final stages of lift-off, the engines flaring to life and propelling the craft off the ground.
"Go, Maria! I'll hold them off!" Fayt shouted as he hauled Maria to her feet and pushed her to the waiting dropship, but Maria resisted and shoved his arm away.
"No! I'm not leaving you behind!" she shouted, planting a shot in the chest of one of the creatures, putting it down.
"No time for arguments, just go! We don't have a lot of time left, and only I can hold them off!" Fayt lopped off the head of one of the creatures and cut open the chest of another.
"I won't!" Maria protested again.
Fayt rounded on her furiously. "Just go, damn it! You want to die here with me?"
"Better that than live the rest of my life full of regrets that I didn't stay behind!" She shot back with a defiant look on her face.
The look of fury on Fayt's countenance softened, replaced by one of puzzlement.
"…Why?" He finally said.
Maria opened her mouth to reply, but before she could utter a word, a massive jerk suddenly pulled Fayt off his feet and flung him off the ground…
This was the second time Fayt was being jerked out of his sleep, this time with a jolt so strong that he was flung out of bed, coming to a hard landing on the deck.
"What the hell! Did something just hit us?" Cliff quickly sat up on his bunk, his eyes darting about wildly.
"Move it! Let's get to the bridge!" Fayt quickly picked himself up, taking a moment to grab the Levantine and Mythril Sword and sheath them before he rushed out the door with Cliff and Adray. They bumped into Sergeant Baxter, Major Harrison and the Master Chief on their way out.
"We've just exited Slipspace, and right in the middle of a space battle! It looks like we've arrived at the Delta Halo, but the strange thing is that the Covenant ships are firing upon each other!" Major Harrison stopped for a moment to catch his breath.
"What? Does that mean that some of the Covenant have gone rogue?" Fayt asked.
"Most probably. From the looks of the transmissions we've managed to intercept from the Covenant fleets, it seems that there's a civil war going on. The Elites, Grunts and Hunters are on one side and the Brutes, Jackals, Drones and Prophets on the other." Major Harrison was talking so fast that he had to draw in one long breath before he could continue.
"Like that's got anything to do with us! Let's hurry up and get to the bridge!" Cliff said before he started tearing down the corridor.
Chewing on imaginary steel nails – though he probably wouldn't have noticed if he'd had actual hardware between his molars – Captain Wallace sat upright in his command chair of the UNSC Marathon-class cruiser Reynolds. He was ready for action, and so were his men. He had ordered them so.
They had an alien ring world to visit and fellow UNSC personnel to rescue from that world. If they were lucky, the mission might turn out to be even more than that.
He knew better than to rally his troops by making gruff and patriotic speeches in a misguided attempt to fire them up enough to put their lives on the line for the UNSC. He knew the right carrot to dangle when he wanted to inspire troops to give him their personal best.
"Ring world Delta Halo on screen, Captain." Said Lieutenant Scott from the tactical station. 'I'm extending our sensor net, Captain. Scanning ahead for enemy vessels…"
Wallace gave the young officer a smug look, raising both eyebrows. "I figure our fleet of this cruiser, five destroyers and seven frigates can pretty much take care of any little opposition we'll encounter way out here, Lieutenant. This place is in the middle of nowhere! Why would the Covenant be here in the first place?"
"Sir! Enemy vessels!" the Lieutenant shouted, double-checking his tactical readouts as the human fleet homed in on the Delta Halo.
On the screen he displayed a full analysis of what lurked high above the ring world. The soldiers on board the Reynolds and muttered in surprise.
Wallace clenched his jaw and leaned forward. "What the hell… Covenant shooting at each other? Well, that just makes things easier for me!" he recognized the smooth-shelled, shark-like shape of the Covenant's various vessels, be they carriers, cruisers, destroyers etc.
"Power up the fleet's MAC guns," he said. "We'll go in and ring their bells before anybody even knows we were here."
Captain Wallace smiled and knotted his hands together as if a scrawny Jackal's throat were clenched between them. "All right, men." He broadcasted through the long corridors of the cruiser. "Let's go kick some alien ass!"
The party entered the bridge with the two marines and the spartanin tow just as Captain Wallace finished his announcement. The major, sergeant and the Master Chief stepped forward and snapped a crisp salute to the captain.
"At ease, gentlemen. You're about to witness space combat at its finest." The Captain said to them before he turned back to the view screen.
From the images that were displayed on the view screens, the party could easily see that the Covenant was tearing itself apart from the inside.
An Elite's carrier launched forth several waves of Banshee gliders that sought out and attacked all of the Brutes' ships within reach. At first the tiny one-man craft were like a swarm of stinging insects, concentrating on the Brutes' massive carriers. Nearby, they made quick work of the smaller Shadow bombers, whose onboard plasma torpedoes would have been devastating against capital ships but who were almost defenseless against snub fighters. The Banshees moved fast, striking, destroying, then searching for new targets.
Seeing the carnage, the loss of numerous carriers and Shadows, a group of the Brutes' own banshees broke through and attacked one of the Elite's cruisers. The Brute pilots were very much differentfrom their Elite counterparts. They attacked recklessly but determinedly, and they careened forward into the Elite's carrier with plasma cannons blazing until they slammed against the hull of the massive craft, exploding on impact and sacrificing themselves to take out an opposing alien vessel.
As the alien firefight continued in orbit, Captain Wallace narrowed his eyes. He waited for a moment, watching the destruction, and then a smile crept over his face. "Attention, all ships!" Captain Wallace's booming voice broadcast through all thirteen human vessels. "Battle stations! We're gonna come in with all guns blazing and let them alien bastards have it!
Lieutenant Scott watched the frenzy on his tactical screen. "Sir, shouldn't we wait, send in some reconnaissance to gather tactical data before we make our move?"
The captain gestured towards the screen. "You can see with your own eyes, Lieutenant – and I've never been one to sit on my hindquarters gathering background information when it's time for action."
He rose from his hard command chair, knowing that standing would give him a more powerful leadership presence. And just for kicks, he added a forward arm-wave for some drama, ordering his all of his ships forward.
With the Reynolds in the vanguard, the human fleet plunged into the fray.
When Captain Wallace's ships plowed into the space battle above the Delta Halo, it reminded him of an expert break in a game of billiards.
Covenant craft on both sides scattered in all directions, reeling from the sudden strike of the unexpected human forces. Captain Wallace broadcast no warnings and requested no surrenders, just ordered his ships to inflict all the damage possible on the aliens.
He cheered silently inside as the first shots were fired.
The MAC guns blasted quickly, taking out Covenant frigates and a badly damaged cruiser. Before the large projectile weapons could recharge their capacitors for another shot, Captain Wallace launched his full fleet of impressively maneuverable Longsword interceptors.
He paced the bridge of his ship, keeping an eye on the tactical displays, getting updates from Lieutenant Scott and occasionally watching the battle through the viewport windows.
The Longswords launched from the human fleet immediately activated their radar cloaking before engaging a group of harried Seraph fighters. The alien ships had superior air-to-air firepower, as the UNSC knew from previous engagements, but the Seraphs were obviously at a disadvantage against an adversary they could not detect with the radar that they were normally reliant on.
The Longswords pounded them, damaging their shields and hulls, taking out a handful of the vessels with their missiles. After heavy pummeling from the human weapons, the Seraph fighters retreated, inadvertently passing close to a mass of opposing Banshees that completed the slaughter by letting loose with their fuel rod cannons, expelling blasts of greenish radioactive energy that was very similar to the ones that Fayt and his party had avoided before back on the Covenant vessel they had first landed on.
The Seraph fighters were doomed.
Their work done, the Longswords streaked off to engage more alien targets.
From the bridge of the Reynolds, Captain Wallace raised his fist with a shout, cheering the victory. The bridge officers, along with the two marines and Fayt's party applauded. The Master Chief remained silent, standing still as a statue.
"Our MAC gun capacitors are recharged and ready to fire, sir." Lieutenant Scott said. He tapped a voice receiver in his ear and acknowledged, then turned to look at the captain. "The destroyer Napoleon also says their MAC is ready to fire again."
"Good. Let's target the same Covenant ship." The captain said. He stared at the broad selection of targets on the tactical screen. Dancing his fingers through the air, he muttered, "Eenie, Meenie, Minee, Mo," and jabbed his index finger forward. "That one."
"Targeting, sir," Lieutenant Scott said. He opened a link to the Napoleon. On cue, both human warships fired their powerful Magnetic Accelerator Cannons, intense magnetic fields focusing power to launch a super-dense ferric tungsten shell that obliterated most ships on impact. The concentrated onslaught hammered through the Covenant carrier's shields. Within seconds, the carrier's hull failed and the giant alien vessel exploded.
Captain Wallace let out another victorious hoot. "Who'd have thought those things could have come in so many different pieces!" Next he watched the Longswords take out four more Seraph fighters. He rubbed his stubby hands together and looked around the bridge. "I think we can pretty much rest assured of a victory here, men."
Cliff frowned and took a closer look at the tactical display. "That's a bit of a premature assumption, don't you think, Captain?"
Two Covenant cruisers moved towards Captain Wallace's thirteen clustered ships. Their lateral lines glowed for several seconds, bloodred light pooling until it was a solid band. They brightened until they finally burst forth; four teardrops of ruby light, each five meters long, streaked towards the human fleet.
The human vessels scattered, but the inbound balls of light, the Covenant's plasma torpedoes, matched their movements, tracking their ships.
The plasma torpedoes slammed into three of the human's vessels; half of them fried couple of frigates while the other two gutted a destroyer. In a single salvo, already one quarter of the human forces had been destroyed.
"Damn! Get some of our boarding craft out there! We might not be able to take them out from the outside, but we can tear them apart from the inside!" Wallace turned to Major Harrison. "Major, get your men into the boarding craft! Time to let the Marines strut their stuff."
The major saluted sharply. "Yes sir!" He turned around to address Sergeant Baxter and the party.
"Sergeant, get your men prepped and ready for action! I want them ready for boarding in ten minutes!" Baxter promptly acknowledged this order and exited this bridge with the Master Chief. Harrison turned to the party. "Well, I know you guys are practically thirsty for Covenant blood, so I guess you can join in the 'fun' as well."
"Oh yeah! I was wondering when we'd get around to this!" Cliff whooped.
Lieutenant Scott suddenly piped up from his station, "Sir, you may want to delay that boarding order first, captain. We've got some guests of our own." He indicated on the tactical display the dozens of Covenant Phantoms that were headed straight for them.
Captain Wallace growled as he stared at the tactical screen, realizing that his forces may be in for a tougher fight than he had counted on.
"Get ready guys! We' re about to have company!" Fayt shouted as he pulled out both the Levantine and his Mythril Sword, holding them out in ready positions. He stood at one of the airlocks with Cliff, Sophia, while Adray and Peppita were standing guard at another on the other, with marines backing them up at both positions.
Sophia was more or less able to keep herself upright. She had just gotten out of the infirmary with only half of her treatment finished, and she had her left arm in a cast with bandages wrapped firmly around her forehead, right leg and her midsection as well. Fayt had insisted that she stick with him in case she pushed herself too far and ended up worsening her injuries.
Looking out the viewport, Cliff could easily see at least half a dozen boarding craft headed straight for the Reynolds. He quickly did the math in his head; one dropship meant roughly about a dozen troops, and if there were six dropships out there, then that meant that they had roughly about seventy-two enemy troops to deal with.
Seventy-two might be rough for them, unless…
"Fayt, if you've been thinking about pulling off that stunt with your Gene again, now would be a good time." Cliff said as the Phantoms neared the airlocks.
Fayt nodded and began to concentrate, reaching inside of himself for the power he needed. At first he felt nothing, but quickly realized that he was using the wrong method to summon it. He was trying to call upon it the same way he did for Ethereal Blast.
He then remembered that he had been overcome by rage when he had first used his Valor Form, and he realized that these powers were commanded by emotions, not by willpower.
He corrected his mistake just in time. As the first Phantom docked and the Covenant troops started bustling out of the airlock, Fayt focused on utilizing his anger against the Covenant and felt that familiar wave of heat roll over him. The heat felt much less intense this time, and this came as quite a surprise to the bluenette, albeit a pleasant one. The rush of strength that he received however, had not diminished one bit from last time, and that was what counted.
His clothes once again changed from black to a bright red, and Fayt leapt forward into the fray, transforming into a flurry of slashing motions.
Just like back in the tunnel on Earth, the Covenant didn't stand a chance. The Jackals feebly attempted the protect themselves with their energy shields, which the Destruction Blades sliced through like paper, and the Brutes that attempted to throttle him instead found themselves slashed open from collar to codpiece. The dead bodies of the Covenant piled high around the embodiment of primal fury as Fayt continued to unleash hisrage upon the alien attackers.
But Fayt got too caught up in his rush of near invincibility, and he never noticed his movements slowing, the frequency of his attacks diminishing, until it was too late.
It all happened too quickly for Sophia to keep track of. One moment Fayt had been jumping and leaping from place to place, causing wanton destruction and wholesale carnage, and the next his clothes suddenly reverted back to black, the Destruction Blades in his hands winked out of existence, and he was tackled to the ground by a group of Brutes.
Fayt had chosen the worst possible time for his Valor Form to run out of steam.
Cliff saw this and, shouting a denial, he fell upon the Brutes with a terrible fury. He grabbed one Brute's head, slammed it into another's with a sickening crack, and jumped on another, snapping its neck. He continued attacking in berserker frenzy, his anger allowing his strength to match up to the Brutes' for just a few moments.
Once the immediate area had been cleared of all enemies, Cliff snatched up the bruised and bleeding bluenette's body and hauled him back to where Sophia was waiting.
"Is he hurt badly?" Sophia looked ready to cry as she started to prepare a healing symbol to repair the damage that her brother-like childhood friend had sustained.
"I don't know. I can only hope that those Brutes didn't beat him up too much. Let's hope to God that his injuries aren't too severe…" Cliff got to his feet and disappeared down the corridors for a moment, before returning with two Jackhammer rocket launchers hefted on his shoulders. "Stay here and take care of Fayt. These two babies I got from the armory are just what the doctor ordered for those goddamned aliens."
The group of Jackals that were harassing a squad of marines suddenly found their formations being blown apart as the Jackhammer rockets flew right in and detonated, sending pieces of Jackal flying in all directions and compensating for the destruction that Fayt had failed to inflict with his suddenly-cut-off Valor Trigger.
Three reloads and six rockets later, three-quarters of the Covenant boarders had been neutralized, but even so, the losses were more severe than back on the Cairo without Fayt and the others to help out.
And so just where the hell is Fayt when you need him? Cliff wondered as he ditched the empty rocket launchers and jumped forward, crushing a Brute with a Hammer of Might attack. Just as he landed to recover, another Brute popped out of nowhere and seized him by his neck, lifting him up into the air. The Brute bellowed in rage, and drops of spittle splattered over Cliff's face. Tightening its hold on Cliff's neck, it began to squeeze.
Cliff began to struggle, clawing at the arms that held him up, but the tendons in the Brute's arms were like solid bands of steel. He kicked at the Brute's midsection, but the alien merely flinched slightly and continued squeezing.
Cliff could already feel his windpipe swell and he started to gag. Well, looks like Lights Out for Cliff Fittir. Sorry about leaving so soon, Mirage… Cliff thought to himself as he prepared to die.
Suddenly, the Brute roared in pain and released its hold on his neck. Cliff fell the ground, gasping for breath. He looked up just in time to see Fayt yanktheDivine Avengerout of the Brute's back and chop its head off with a quick swing from the Veinslay.
"You alright, Cliff?" Fayt asked as he helped the blonde up to his feet.
"Yeah. Thanks for the save… Look out!" Cliff shoved Fayt aside just as the overcharged plasma bolt was about to hit Fayt square in the back.
The bolt slammed into Cliff instead, and he reeled backwards, the reflective coating of his battered ablative armor flaring. "Oww…"
"Cliff!" Fayt immediately rounded on the Jackal that had fired the plasma bolt, hacking it into little pieces before he turned back to Cliff.
The blonde was leaning back against a nearby bulkhead, holding his midsection in pain.
"I'm tired of having to take plasma bolts for you, kid." Cliff grinned at him, but his teeth were gritted in pain.
"Get back to Sophia. She should be able to do something about that burn." Fayt put a hand on Cliff's shoulder. "Don't keep running around with injuries like those, ok? I don't want you to end up like her…"
"Don't worry. I'll go get patched up. But don't finish the fight without me!" Cliff started limping back to the first aid station.
Fayt nodded and turned back to the battle, assisting the marines in any way he could.
The Master Chief, who was known to his late Spartans as John, watched as Fayt Leingod once again threw himself into the battle. The boy fought with the skill of a ten-year war veteran, yet his youth also caused him to act in the impulsive manner in which most adolescents and young, inexperienced men did.
The Spartan leader found the teenager to be very intriguing. Apart from him and his fellow Spartans, nobody elsehe knew of had taken part in military activities at an age as young as Fayt's. It amazed him that someone who wasn't a Spartan could still manage to accomplish such great feats that no typical human would even attempt.
But even his thoughts did not distract him from covering his own ass. He sidestepped, dodging a Jackal's plasma bolt, and promptly returned fire with his SMGs. The Jackal screamed as the bullets punched through its body and exited from the other side. The Jackal's lifeless body clattered to the floor.
John continued firing his SMGs in short, controlled bursts, and he was rewarded with five dead Jackals and a badly mutilated Brute. He tossed aside the empty weapons and pulled out his shotgun, at the same time priming a grenade and tossing it into the alien horde. The resulting explosion took out several of the aliens, and injured a score more. One unlucky Jackal was blown right in front of him, and it dazedly raised its head to look up at him.
The Master Chief racked the slide of his shotgun and shoved the barrel in the Jackal's face. The bird-like alien was just beginning to realise the gravity of its situation when John pulled the trigger and blew the Jackal's brains out the back of its head.
He pumped his shotgun again, ejecting the empty shell, and suddenly a trio of Jackals leapt onto him and latched onto his shoulders and neck. He felt a strange sense of deja vu, concerning a trio of grunts aboard the Pillar of Autumn and a very similar incident, but he had no time to worry about that. At first the Jackal's efforts were almsot laughable, but now he realised that the one sitting on his neck was trying to remove his helmet, the one clinging onto his left arm had an overcharged plasma pistol levelled at his head, and the one on his right arm carried an ignited plasma grenade.
The skinny bastards meant to drop the explosive down into his armor and fry his face with a plasma shot. Well, no chance of that happening. The Master Chief braced and shook himself like a dog. The Jackals lost their grip and were sent flying, and he quickly put them down with several decisive blasts from his shotgun.
With that little distraction taken care of, John turned to more pressing matters, like assisting the squad of marines that were pinned down by a line of Brutes.
After ten minutes of fighting, the party gathered in the cruiser's briefing room with the captain, John, Baxter and Harrison, all exhausted from the extensive fighting except for the captain, who looked immaculate.
"So what now?" Peppita spoke from her lounging position on the chair.
"It looks like the situation on the ground has worsened. We've just received a transmission from Commander Keyes, saying that they've somehow managed to forge an alliance with the Elites, Grunts and Hunters. Anyway, they've holed themselves up in a structure called the Library, but they're under heavy assault by some enemy they call 'The Flood'. Here's a recording of the transmission." Captain Wallace pressed the button for the holographic display, and an image winked to life on the holotank.
It showed Commander Keyes facing the screen with a rather harrowed expression on her face. "Captain Wallace, youhave to send down an extraction team ASAP! The Flood are now coming in even greater numbers and – GET DOWN MARIA!"
Fayt's countenance paled visibly at this statement. The screen shook as a loud explosion sounded off to the side. Commander Keyes ducked out of view for a few moments before reappearing, this time with a half-conscious Maria's arm slung over her shoulder. Maria's forehead had a nasty gash on it, and there were multiple dents and slash marks on her chest armor. Blood oozed out from the sections of her body armor that had been breached.
Commander Keyes started to speak again. "It's only a matter of time before our defenses collapse! We only have minutes left! I repeat, get an extraction team down and get us the hell out of here!" The video stopped playing, and the screen faded to black.
Captain Wallace turned back to the group, his expression grim.
"Well, I believe the transmission speaks for itself the need to get down there ASAP. We've got three Pelicans waiting in the hangar to bring you groundside. You know what to do."
Fayt held onto the handlebars at the sides of the Pelican dropship's hatch with a white-knuckled grip. He was too tense to strap himself onto one of the crash seats, though the rest of the party and a bunch of marines along with Baxter and Harrison had all seated themselves and had secured themselves onto the seats. The only other person who wasn't sitting down was the Master Chief, and he stood next to Fayt, holding onto another handlebar.
Fayt just couldn't stop worrying about Maria. After seeing her half-conscious and badly injured, his heart rate had spiked as though it had just hit a bump in the road. And his heart's racing hadn't slowed even as they descended into the Delta Halo's atmosphere.
"Hey pilot! Are we there yet?" Fayt yelled towards the cockpit over the roar of the wind against the hatch.
Cliff sighed. "Fayt, that's the third time you've asked that. Just relax! I swear you're acting like Peppita!"
"I do not!" Peppita cried out.
"Whatever, girl…" Cliff waved her away.
An alarm suddenly blared, and the dropship banked sharply to the left. Though the Master Chief was hardly fazed by this, Fayt was nearly thrown off his feet, and only his death grip on the handlebar kept him where he was.
"Hang on, people! We're taking heavy fire from Jackal artillery! Evasive maneuvers now!" The dropship banked sharply again, this time to the right, and Fayt started to wish that he had buckled himself down to start with.
The dropship started to shake like a dog, and everybody inside got so rattled that Fayt felt like his teeth were going to come loose from his gums.
After several minutes of teeth-loosening shaking, the dropship finally steadied.
"Phew. Glad that's over." Fayt muttered under his breath.
Then, an explosion sounded, and the deck fell out from beneath Fayt's feet. Shouting out in surprise, he barely managed to catch onto the handlebar that he had been previously clinging on to.
"Leingod!" John reached out with his left hand while never releasing his grip on the handlebar with his right. Fayt stretched out his arm, attempting to grab onto the Master Chief's gauntlet, but his fingers fumbled and he fell back towards the hole in the Pelican's hull, his grip on the handle bar slipping a few precious inches.
Fayt was unable to hold on any longer. "Ah, shit! Heellpp…" Those were his last words before he let go of the handlebar and plunged through the hole, into the darkness beyond.
"FAYT!" Sophia looked ready to unbuckle herself from the crash seat just to leap through the hole after her childhood friend, but Cliff set a hand on her shoulder, shaking his head.
Her eyes brimming with unshed tears; Sophia tore her gaze away from the hole in the Pelican's hull.
"I'm losing control of her! We'll be crash landing near our target, but we'll have to hump the rest of the way on foot! Oh crap, brace for impact!" the pilot yelled before a massive jerk slammed Sophia's head into the wall behind her and knocked her out, filling her world with darkness and bringing her to blessed oblivion.
A/N: Well, I hope you guys are happy. Sorry if it seemes a little rushed, but I never really did any in-depth planning for this particular chapter. Anyway, I cannot emphasize this simple fact enough: REVIEW! You should leave a mark so that at least the writer knows that you've read the story. And to all the die-hard Albel fans out there: Reviews are the Master's source of motivation. So if you want to see Albel consistently kicking ass, then review!
Chief out.