Author's note: Sorry it's been so long, folks- I didn't realize it's been two months since I last updated this story. Sorry if I left anyone hanging. Anyway- enjoy.
CHAPTER 04
0758 HOURS, 17 JANUARY 2546 (UNSC MILITARY CALENDAR)
HIGH ORBIT OVER ASTEROID M6-17, 205 ZETA INDI SYSTEM
ABOARD COVENANT DESTROYER RIGHTEOUS INTENT
David dove to the floor, feeling the hairs on the back of his neck strain against the inside of his MJOLNIR armor's bodysuit as the four lines of energy streaked through the middle of the corridor, striking- nothing. Every member of Scavenger was braced against either a wall or the floor, and they wasted no time in getting up as thunderous booms sounded from the wall where the passage behind them wound to the left.
David sprang to his feet and closed with the nearest Hunter, not even bothering to go for his rifle, which would be next to useless against the armored behemoth. He charged it just as it swung its massive two-ton metal shield horizontally at him, holding his arms forward and bracing for impact. He caught the shield mid-swing, but the two ton mass was both much heavier and moving much faster than he was. His momentum simply wasn't enough.
He moved backwards with the shield, letting go when the motion overbalanced him and sent him staggering back. As the Hunter took its turn to charge, he planted his right foot and made as if to try and halt the thing's attack. As five tons of armored Hunter barreled towards him, he pivoted back on his right foot and sidestepped the charge entirely. Yanking his M90 shotgun off the magnetic panel on his back, he sprang forward and squeezed the trigger as fast as his tendons would pull, feeling the successive bangs course through his arms as the shotgun discharged. The Hunter, though, surprised him. It swung its shield-bearing arm around with incredible speed that defied the behemoth's size. David's half-dozen shots pinged harmlessly off its shield. The Hunter followed up with a swipe with its cannon arm, and David, despite holding his M90 out to block it, was knocked clean off his feet.
Before he could recover, a green glow from the periphery of his vision told him what was coming. He rolled into a crouch and poised himself to spring, but before he could, an overpressure wave drove him onto the floor with a clang before doubling in strength and hurling him backwards. As he came to a halt, David growled- he was a Spartan, not a rag doll in a windstorm.
As David righted himself and tried to get his bearings, something struck him as odd. He shouldn't have survived. A point-blank shot from a fuel rod gun should have reduced him to a cinder and turned his armor into a molten puddle. He turned to look at the Hunter that had shot him- or the Hunter he thought had shot him.
The three and a half meter tall Hunter was a sight indeed. Its heavy armor and shield were scorched jet black, and it dripped orange blood from its soft midsection and head. Moreover, there was slackness in its limbs, and slowness in its movements- if anything, it looked like the Hunter had been hit by a stray shot from one of its comrades. Not wasting a second, David thundered towards the disoriented Hunter and plunged a fist into its underside.
Even through the titanium-layered undersuit, David could feel the warmth and pressure of the Hunter's innards around his outstretched hand. Every centimeter of his fingers felt pinpricks of sensation, including movement inside the Hunter. As both David and the Hunter stood there, frozen by the strangeness of his move, a loud, wet squelch indicated movement from the area where David's hand was now engulfed. It was a moment before he realized that his fingers weren't moving, and neither was the rest of the Hunter.
The Hunter twisted and flailed, trying to distance itself from the Spartan. David in turn clenched his fingers and heaved, tearing dozens of long, sinuous orange strands from the Hunter's midsection. The Hunter shrieked in pain, sending a thousand needles of sound directly into David's eardrums, but he didn't care. Spartan and Hunter closed in on each other, neither bothering to aim a weapon. David sprang up just as the Hunter swung its shield, vaulting over the its head and slipping his combat knife out of a thigh sheath as he did so. As the Hunter paused for the single moment he was out of sight, David drove his combat knife into its abdomen, then swept the short blade to his left before plunging it in again, all the while sending gouts of dark orange blood spewing to the floor of the Covenant ship.
David did not pause with his initial victory, proceeding to systematically disembowel the Hunter with equal parts blade and fist, never letting up for a single second. The huge warrior continued to grow slower and more sluggish, the margins by which it missed its attacks on him growing with each swing. All around them, the sounds of close-quarters combat sounded deafeningly, but David didn't care- for now, only he and his opponent existed. Then, finally, as David took a moment to steady himself, the Hunter simply collapsed, still bleeding orange-brown fluid.
His breathing haggard, David walked over to the now-still corpse and drew his combat knife from the Hunter's midsection with a wet squelch. As he picked up his shotgun and was satisfied with its condition, he looked around at the four wet Hunter corpses and sighed, making sure that the external sound system was off. With the commotion Scavenger had created, stealth could no longer be counted on- and neither could time. So much for doing things quietly.
The team set off at a full sprint, not caring if they were seen- it simply wouldn't matter at this point. As they raced through the bowels of the ship, they heard the hoots and yips of Grunts mingled with the growls and roars of their Elite commanders, a chaotic din that echoed down the corridors after the six Spartans. At last, Scavenger came to a door that was elaborate even by Covenant standards. Easily ten meters high and that same amount wide, its five interlocking sections were joined by a large circular seal the size of a MJOLNIR chestpiece.
Sierra turned to Celia. "Breach it- we'll cover you." Celia nodded curtly before advancing to the door and pulling equipment out of her pack. As David turned to face the oncoming Covenant, he noted that she had pulled out not just the standard C-12 foaming explosive, but also a length of thermite det cord- knowing Celia, anyone on the bridge would be in for a very rude greeting.
"I'll need one minute to set up," Celia called from behind them.
Logan chuckled darkly. "At least give us a challenge, Cee."
"How about I give you a black eye, then you cover my ass?"
Logan's reply was interrupted when a glowing pink needler shard whizzed into his shoulder plate and pinged off the titanium armor. Scavenger took up firing positions and sized up their enemy. It was a fair-sized force; several dozen Grunts accompanied by around half a dozen Jackals and headed by ten or so Elites- David didn't really care about the exact numbers. Every single one of them would be dead in under sixty seconds anyway.
"Do it," Sierra hissed, and an earsplitting crack filled the room as Jacob pulled the trigger on Shadow of Night. For an instant, nothing moved. Then, one of the blue-armored Elites fell limply to the ground, a hole in its neck spouting blue blood.
All hell broke loose.
The Grunts broke ranks and charged the five Spartans, yowling and screaming, firing randomly as they came. Several actually primed grenades and charged Scavenger with the explosives in hand. Quite a few, however, broke and tried to run, only to be set upon by a number of the Jackals and Elites, who shoved, bullied and kicked the recalcitrant Grunts back into the fight, if a fight it could be called. The Jackals who weren't restraining Grunts closed ranks and fired their energy pistols on overload charge towards the Spartans, sending flashes of static across David's heads-up display. The Elites were easily the best tacticians of the enemy, taking up positions along the corridor's sides and opening fire while the Grunts attacked from close range.
Correction- while the Grunts died at close range.
David met the first Grunt head on, taking its skull clean off its neck with a point-blank shot from his M90 before hurling the headless body at its two startled companions, bowling them over. Two more shells vacated the shotgun, downing twice that number of Grunts in under a second. In a similar amount of time, the same weapon's reinforced stock did much more damage, battering through chests, caving in skulls and cracking through the paltry armor of the squat Covenant cannon fodder. Everything became a blur for David; there was nothing in the whole world except him and his next victim, be it a Grunt, Jackal or Elite. If a shell from his shotgun wasn't what killed it, then it was the butt, and if whatever-it-was survived blunt force trauma to the face, it certainly went down after colored lines started appearing across its throat, courtesy of a six-inch titanium-steel blade. David wasn't sure how many he killed, and he didn't care. Celia needed a minute; Scavenger would give her an hour if she needed it.
Suddenly, a colossal bang echoed from behind him, accompanied by a flash of fire and a rush of smoke. Heavy footsteps falling shortly afterwards told him that he was also needed behind the now-open door. Without a second thought, David turned on his heel and sprinted onto the Covenant destroyer's bridge.
The scene was utter chaos. Scavenger ran amok on the bridge, gunning and beating down most of the Elite and Grunt bridge crew before they even left their posts. The vast majority of the dead slumped in or near their seats. An Elite shipmaster in customary gold armor lay splayed across the deck, its spine broken clean in half.
David didn't hesitate. Taking two steps, he vaulted over the rail that separated the upper deck of the bridge from the lower half and joined the carnage below with a massive crash as his four-hundred kilogram total bulk hit the metal floor feet-first. The deck crew wasn't even putting up a fight- those that weren't dead seemed preoccupied with escape rather than resistance. David smiled, savoring the cruel irony.
He fired until his shotgun's chamber was empty, not bothering to reload as he switched to his MA5B assault rifle, gunning down what was left of the bridge crew, mostly Grunts at this point. Even as he fired, a lump of bile formed in his throat as he contemplated what his team was doing, and it galled him. This wasn't what Spartans were meant for- they were soldiers, and combat was their forte. This wasn't combat- this was slaughter. It was just too easy.
He ceased fire and flicked on TEAMCOM, yelling to the rest of his team. "This is taking too long!" He then killed the channel and flicked on two settings in his heads-up display: an ONI-issue optical character recognition program and his suit's standard-issue Covenant-English translation software. He hurried over to the command console and booted up the two software packages, running them in parallel. The effect was instantaneous. Multiple windows popped into his field of view as the individual icons were translated, which grew only more numerous as the ONI software generated multiple possible statements for the Covenant hieroglyphs, courtesy of the multitudinous references and situational adjuncts that were attached to the root words of the Covenant vocabulary, giving David a veritable headache to work through. He gritted his teeth, and tried to slow his breathing. Rushing through a translation wouldn't do him any favors.
Finally, after almost a minute of glaring at the panorama of holographic icons, his software translated an icon that read 'Sealed Air' in English. His relief, though, was short-lived. The translated list continued to expand until the translation software had run its course, identifying a full fifty-one alternate translations for the same set of symbols. David bit his lip- he was willing to take the chance. He put his hand to the holographic controls, which gently pulsed red. He clicked TEAMCOM on. "Guys? I'd anchor myself. Right now."
Twelve faint clicks sounded as Scavenger's magnetic boot seals held the Spartans to the floor of the command bridge. The sound was barely audible, though, against the howling gale that had, until recently, been non-existent. It stood to truly testify the unthinking fashion in which the Covenant imitated Forerunner technology. Why the ancient race had ever included airlock overrides in software was anybody's guess, but it could be counted on for the Covenant to copy anything the Forerunners did.
The thought was little comfort to David, who crouched low and attempted to resist the ever-accelerating air flow as it swirled and rushed around him, trying for all it was worth to sweep the six Spartans into the void. And that wasn't the only problem. The suit's thermal sensors indicated sharp drops in temperature all around the team as the innards of the destroyer were exposed to the vacuum, and even the environmental controls inside the MJOLNIR armor could only slow the process underneath the multiple layers of metal, crystal and circuitry. They couldn't keep this up for long.
Just as the temperature readings inside his MJOLNIR began to move outside the optimal range, another reading popped onto his heads-up display. There was zero external pressure. He pinged the rest of the team over TEAMCOM, and then touched the airlock control once again, sealing the doors in the corridors some way down, since the bridge's doors were now no more. A slight hissing noise filled the background as the command deck repressurized, and the temperature figures started to slowly rise.
Sierra took charge immediately. "All right, team- take up consoles and commandeer the ship. Use your OCR readouts and Covenant translation software to identify the stations. Two- you take the weapons station; Three and Four, communications and engineering. Five, you have the helm. Six- fire up the Slipspace generator-" she paused, apparently lost in thought, "-and get ready for a jump."
"WHAT?" Hayden roared back, before injecting a measure of control into his voice- a rare event. "We are not running from this fight."
"I didn't say we were running," Sierra snapped back, "do it."
Hayden stared back at Sierra for several more seconds, but then turned around and began to search the control panel for the controls to the destroyer's Slipspace drive. By that time, David already stood ready at the weapons controls and was looking through the different holographic panels. There seemed to be a large number of unnecessary controls at the weapons station. From what his translation software could read, there were multiple magnetic field controls, including an equivalent of what was known in UNSC slang as a 'pincher'; a field that selectively accelerated particles of a certain rotational direction and velocity. These he saw were linked to the reservoirs for the plasma torpedoes. "So much waste…" he murmured. The plasma reservoirs would release a volume of plasma, only a fraction of which would be spun and accelerated into a superheated ball. It saved some power, but was inefficient in terms of plasma usage. If UNSC ships had plasma weapons, not a molecule would have been wasted. But that's why humanity was retreating from the Outer Colonies, wasn't it? The Fleet didn't have such weapons, relying instead on the sheer kinetic energy of MAC slugs and clouds of Archer missiles to destroy their enemies. The strategy worked well against Insurrectionists, but against shielded Covenant warships…
David cleared his head and moved his hands over the controls, cycling the plasma before it would have to be used- just in case.
"Weapons are ready for use," he reported back.
"Got the NAV system figured out," Celia said with a quick thumbs-up.
"Reactor's at ninety-six percent; one of the coils got shook up, but she'll do," Logan piped up.
"Slipspace engine reeled up, which is funny considering how apparently we're not running."
"Cut the chatter, Six. Three, what's the status on coms?"
Jacob was still working feverishly at the communications controls. "They're pinging us, Sierra. Want to know why the Ship Master hasn't reported in; there's a Prophet on board one of the other destroyers and he's getting cranky."
Sierra did not reply for several seconds. When she did, it was apparent from her tone that the immediate situation was not foremost on her mind. "A Prophet… why, though…?" After apparently coming to a decision, she turned to Hayden, although she did not share her revelation. "Six, chart a Slipspace transition for these coordinates."
"What coordinates?" Hayden demanded.
"These coordinates," Sierra replied, still cool as ice, "I want you to jump this ship, but we won't be leaving the system. Like I said, we're not running."
Hayden paused just long enough for David to envision the smile on his face. His reply made David wonder what was honestly going to happen. "Who are you and what have you done with Scavenger One?"
"Can it, Hayden, and chart the jump."
"Aye, sir."
David did one final check on the status of the plasma reserves of the Covenant destroyer, but he noted the uncharacteristic remark on Hayden's part- and on Sierra's.
Sierra continued. "All right. Three- kill the coms; Covenant chatter won't do us any good. Four, divert power to weapons stations and Slipspace generators- goodness knows we'll need it. Two- get a firing solution on those destroyers."
The process did not take long, considering that the three ships were in stationary orbit. "Done," David reported.
"Good. Now reverse the vectors of the firing solutions."
"What?" was all David managed to say.
"Don't ask- just do it," Sierra barked.
David reversed the vectors into the firing computer- a maddening experience given his inexperience with Covenant ship controls. It would have been hard enough on a UNSC ship, with readouts and controls he could understand, and he would always prefer his boots on the ground with a rifle in his hand, but there was something inherently frustrating about this… he wasn't sure, but it wasn't any one factor that irked him so- their education on Harvest had consisted of more than just military training and tactics. Déjà had also gone into topics less directly related to combat, but still essential. One was an old concept- that any one thing was worth more than the sum of its parts. Maybe that was it.
Bringing his mind back into the here and now, he directed his hands over the holographic controls, and blue icons translated into numbers on his HUD.
"Firing solution calculated," he called.
Sierra nodded. "Good job, Two. All right- jump the ship on my mark… mark."
David managed to blurt out, "But where-" before a massive blue-white flash enveloped the destroyer and catapulted the ship, with Scavenger on board, into Slipstream space. Just as suddenly as it had begun, space flashed again, and they were the exact same distance they had been from the other two Covenant warships- only they were now on the opposite side.
"Two-fire all plasma lines at the closest enemy destroyer."
David paused a moment, slightly dumbstruck, before acknowledging. "Aye," he replied.
David's hands flew back and forth, manipulating the fields and adjusting the tracking spheres for each of the eight plasma torpedoes just launched at the now-doomed enemy ship. The eight balls of white flame collided with the blindsided destroyer, causing its shields to flare for an instant- but only for an instant- before collapsing. The plasma- super-pressurized ionized gas at five-thousand degrees Kelvin- consumed the ship, eating through armored hulls, collapsing decks and igniting atmosphere as it tore through the ship. When it reached the ship's fusion reactor, heat met heat in a massive golden-white blast that had David's visor not automatically polarized to compensate, would have blinded him. When the light had dissipated, nothing remained- not hull fragments, not inner compartments, and definitely not crew.
Sierra barked to the rest of them. "Status!" she demanded.
"Engines report plasma drain- it's going to take a while to recycle the plasma to fire again," Logan replied.
"Divert all plasma as it comes to powering the energy projector and raising our forward shields," Sierra ordered. "Five, maneuver us at flank speed at heading zero-six-two by three-four-three."
Celia answered, "Answering flank speed," but Logan butted in. "With the plasma drain, we're not going to be able to reinforce the shields, maneuver and fire at the same time, not so soon after firing. Recommend we forgo the projector and wait until plasma torpedoes are ready again, sir."
"Noted. Five, what's the status on movement?"
"Single remaining Covenant destroyer dead ahead, sir!"
On the control deck's central viewing screen, the bulbous, almost organic shape of a Covenant destroyer loomed large. Unlike its destroyed sister ship, there was no damage on this one, and a single area on its nose glowed bright blue.
Jacob, who had rushed over to the sensors panel, yelled "They're firing their energy projector!"
"Reinforce forward shields now!" Sierra roared. The blue orb on the Covenant ship's nose grew into a cohesive rippling globe of crackling energy- during ship-to-ship tactics training on Harvest, Logan had once described the energy projector as 'a MAC round and a lightning bolt hooking up'. David found the analogy strangely fitting.
"Shields?" Sierra asked, and through the urgency David detected the barest hint of nervousness.
"There's not enough power to reinforce it fully!" Logan warned. "I've done all I can!"
Sierra turned to Celia. "Five- ahead full at zero-zero-zero- by zero-zero-zero!"
"Answering ahead full, sir! This is gonna be rough!"
Their captured ship accelerated towards the enemy destroyer, closing the distance between the two in under half a second, as the blue globe of energy on the Covenant vessel blossomed into a searing white flame. Still Righteous Intent plowed on. As they neared the opposing ship, the white energy leapt forward, washing over their shields like water over rocks. Several successive thumps soon followed.
"We've lost most of the sensors, but the viewing cameras are still online," Jacob reported.
"Forward shield has collapsed- nose integrity at fifty-one percent!" Logan called.
"Still accelerating…" Celia said, half-warningly, half-matter-of-factly.
David looked over to his own console, and saw that the energy projector had been completely blasted to pieces. He slammed a fist down onto the console, growling, "Energy projector is offline," through gritted teeth.
Warning sirens began to blare across the ship, useless noise to a skeleton crew already aware of the situation. "One thousand kilometers!" Jacob warned. "Five hundred… two hundred … collision imminent!"
"Brace yourselves!" Sierra shouted.