Chapter 7: Unforeseen Revenge
Thank you all for those three reviews I got, It was great to read over them and even take on board some suggestions.
For instance, Foley24's review actually reshaped the story a tad, initially, Jimaenius was going to shoot the brute with a spiker in the head. I didn't like it very much, but Foley24's review gave me an idea that may completely change the story and the plot; read on to see…
Covenant loyalist staging area, Thruf, 30th of January.
Jimaenius' spiker had no effect on the invincible chieftain. He drew a plasma grenade, but was forced to use it to drive back the pack that was slowly advancing up the corridor. They cheered and goaded their chieftain as he raised his hammer over the Sangheili. Right up until the grenade detonated and blew their line apart.
Jimaenius suddenly came up with an idea. Almost anything that could hurt the invincible chieftain would further injure the Sangheili. That only left one plan. The Jiralhanae knew that it was perilous and near suicidal, but it was his best chance of saving the Sangheili.
He reached to the handle of energy mace. The mace was attached to the back of his right leg. He reached back and seized the handle, pulling it out. He grasped it with both hands and extended the handle outwards with a tug. The four plasma prongs blazed on atop the mace. Jimaenius did not like using a energy mace. Most of the time he would ram his spiker at anything inside his reach, but the energy mace was a much more specialised weapon.
Usually soon-to-be chieftains would use these maces to get used to the feel of a gravity hammer. Jimaenius had trained with a hammer on the Spearhead, but he never had with the energy mace. He'd literally picked up from the armoury without a second thought.
The chieftain did not notice as his invincibility faded, and at the same time, Jimaenius charged him, twisting to his right to maximise swing strength from the mace. He stepped in and swung at the brute. The Jiralhanae cried out in shock and pain as the mace smashed into his side, cutting through his armour and giving it a dent. The chieftain was sent sprawling across the room. Jimaenius spared a glance at the Sangheili. He looked tired but unsurprised by Jimaenius' intervention.
Something caught Jimaenius' eye. In his shock, the chieftain had dropped his gravity hammer. In normal brute etiquette, It would have been unacceptable to pick up a chieftains hammer in a duel, but this wasn't a duel. Jimaenius sheathed his mace, shrinking it down and clipping it to his back leg. He reached out and picked up the gravity hammer. His fingers tightened upon the hammer's grip. He looked up at the chieftain, who was slowly getting to his feet, his right hand pressed over his injury. He looked up too, and froze when he realised what had happened.
Jimaenius didn't hesitate. He lunged forward and spun backwards, using the momentum to increase the power. The chieftain didn't hesitate, going for a weapon upon his thigh, before realising he was unarmed. His eyes widened, and Jimaenius introduced a hammer to his chest. There was a responding gong as the hammer struck home. The chieftain flew across the room, slamming into the wall hard. He rolled off the wall and fell to the ground, unconscious.
Three shots impacted Jimaenius' shields. He turned to the source of fire. Three brutes had their weapons up, two spikers and one brute shot. Jimaenius charged again, spinning around and slamming the hammer into the brute. This one however, lacked the armor that the chieftain did, and the hammer strike smashed the brute's midsection. His chest was rendered into bloody chunks as the gravity hammer rammed home, tearing the brute in half.
The two others stopped and stared, and Jimaenius swung again, sending the hammer into one's helmet. The helmet was knocked off and this brute, being slightly more armored, was slammed into the ceiling and remained stuck there, still in one piece. Jimaenius lunged upwards and brought the hammer across the chest of the final brute. This one was thrown backwards and sent sprawling across the floor, armor heavily dented. He rose from his ready stance and stared at the rest of the brute pack.
The brute pack froze, horrified by what they had seen. There were about twelve of them left, but only half had weapons drawn, and only half with any intention of using them.
"Everyone, get into the maintenance tunnel!" The human suddenly ordered.
There was a boom from the opposite side of the corridor that Jimaenius and Zhab had been watching. He glanced over to see the Spartan hefting one of the grunt's fuel rods. He'd fired a shot down the corridor and it had fallen apart from the explosion. As the human turned to the other corridor, Jimaenius sprinted to the fallen Sangheili. He found that the Elite was still consious, though in obvious pain. His eyes were open and staring up at the Jiralhanae with an almost bemused expression. He hefted the Sangheil's over his shoulder, and after scooping up his weapons as well, he sprinted towards the corridor where his Squad was retreating to.
Behind him, the Spartan fired a fuel rod cannon. He stopped to turn into the door, and spared a quick glance back down the corridor. The fuel rod slammed into the ceiling above the Brute pack, and fell on them with a thunderous roar. The disruption spread across the ceiling.
"Go!" The human yelled, pushing them into the maintenance corridor.
Behind them, less than a second later, the hallway was buried under a huge pile of debris. Jimaenius laid the injured Sangheili against the wall of the corridor and stared into the darkness of the corridor.
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Maintenance corridor FA-42, Covenant Loyalist base, Thruf, January the 30th
John had thought that the Squad was more effective than it had been proven to be. Their first engagement, and two out of six of them were down. Not ideal.
"In lieu of the engagement, I have some good news." Vala whispered to him.
"And that is?" He replied impatiently.
"No one survived that engagement. Besides us, of course. The Loyalists have no idea we are here. They think the base collapsed. Nothing in the COMs about intruders, plenty about a structural failure. Our cover remains intact." Vala announced.
The Spartan paused in surprise. That was definitely a plus, and they really needed one now. He looked over his Squad. Thel and one of the grunts, Liyik, were down. The Sangheili somehow still had his nuke attached and it was still operable. Luckily, they had brought medical supplies. He tuned to Jimaenius.
"Turn around, give me access to your armour's back stores." He ordered.
The brute complied, presenting his back to the Spartan. Cortana had designed Jimaenius' armor to be very lightweight, so she'd added storage packs to his back. The largest central pack contained the first aid kit. He opened the lock and pulled the pack out, paying it upon the ground.
He opened and and took out the medical scanner. He attached the wire from it into his a point on his wrist. The scanner looked like a target locator, with a more HD screen. John knelt beside the Sangheili and began a scan of him. The Sangheili stared up at him, looking somewhat amused.
"What's the damage?" He asked.
The scan completed with a ding. The Spartan consulted the screen.
"You've broken three ribs, shattered your upper left leg and bagged a deep cut just above your pelvis." He replied, disconnecting the scanner and picking up a biofoam injector.
"You make it sound like I've won it." Thel chuckled weakly.
John opened a biofoam port on the left of Thel's chest and placed the biofoam injector. He pushed it down and heard a hiss as the biofoam entered the armor. Ironically, Cortana had neglected to add biofoam injectors to the armor when she had been rebuilt his armor. John resolved to have words about that when this was finished. Thel relaxed slightly as the foam entered his armor.
"Now..." He mused, "What are we going to do about that leg?"
The Sangheili reached forwards and began to disassemble his leg armor, wincing as he did so.
"This may take som-" He hissed in pain. "Time."
The Spartan nodded and turned to the unconscious Liyik. He raised the scanner and scanned over the Unggoy. A quick scan informed him that Liyik had a slight concussion. He turned and picked up an adrenaline injector. Confirming that this one would work on the Unggoy, he injected this into Liyik's chest port. The grunt lay still for a moment, then sprung up, charged with energy. His brother immediately cheered and slammed into him in a hug.
"Was that adrenaline?" Thel asked from behind him.
"Yes." The Spartan replied, turning back to him.
"What have you done?" The Sangheili chuckled faintly. "He's now overcharged with energy."
Thel had removed the armor plating around his broken leg. His leg was misshapen in several places, bending back and forward at random points.
"Once upon a time, I would have considered these injuries a dishonor." He stated.
"How did we mess up so badly? Our first mission and two down before we're halfway done." John sighed.
"There's some good to this, John." Thel replied. "We haven't had any corridor skirmishes in the simulations, and the enemy our still unaware of our presence."
The Spartan paused for a second. The Sangheili spoke the truth. Perhaps the Chief's luck was still with him.
"Okay. I'm going to reset your leg." He said, moving his arms to do.
"Do you know how to do that?" Thel asked, sounding slightly concerned.
"I'm just going to straighten it. According to what I have here on Sangheili anatomy, that should be all." John answered. "On three."
The Sangheili nodded, clenching his hands into fists and tightening his jaws together.
"One."
Thel took a deep breath and closed his eyes to brace himself.
"Two."
On two, John reached forward and reset the leg. Thel hissed in pain, but he didn't cry out.
"I thought you said two." Thel muttered accusingly.
"I may have lied." John replied, offering him a piece of his leg armor. "A bit."
Thel gave a mix between a sigh and a snort that only Sangheili seemed to be able to do. The Chief offered him a pain killer to lessen the pain, to which the Sangheili refused. Apparently he still had some degree of honour, though lesser than most others of his kind. Thel attached the armor and locked up his leg armor to use it as a splint. This would give him a good amount of speed, dispite the fact his leg wasn't in the best shape.
"Everyone ready to go?" John asked, to which he got a response in acknowledgement lights.
All of them were as good as they'd ever be. Thel appeared to standing well unassisted, though occasionally wincing when he put pressure on it. Liyik seemed to be up and the usual partially insane ball of energy along with his brother, maybe a bit overcharged with energy from the adrenaline shot. Thel may have been right about that.
"Let's move out." John ordered, drawing his BR. "Let's get to the core."
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A pile of rubble, Covenant staging area, January 30th, 2553
The Chieftain shifted beneath the rubble, trying to find any light. He was tightly squeezed into the rubble left by the Demon. He growled beneath his helmet as he remembered the interruption of a fellow brute. He had been with the group of races. It was impossible for him to think of fighting alongside humans and Sangheili, as well as actually trying to save one. It baffled the Chieftain's mind.
But now back to his current predicament. He pushed against the rubble, and felt it shift slightly. He smiled slightly, sensing victory, and pulled him in a ball, before pushing out as hard as he could. The rubble groaned and he heard it shifting again. He pulled back again, then turned over towards the sky.
He saw a single pinprick of light. He pushed again with renewed strength. The rubble shifted and fell away, opening the passage to the surface. The Brute pulled free of the embrace of the ruins, standing tall over the ruins. The surface of the staging area was below him, but his helmet protected him from the other atmosphere. He roared in victory.
"Chieftain! You're alive?" He heard several brutes say.
He turned around and grinned. The other half of his pack that hadn't been dispatched to the firefight had survived.
"It'll take more than a Sangheili and his friends to stop me." He growled.
Half of his pack tilted their heads.
"What Sangheili, Chieftain? It was a structural collapse that crushed everyone." One asked.
"What? It was a-" Then it suddenly dawned upon him.
He could use this too his advantage. A single ship hunting down the trespassers would bring him untold notoriety. He had permission of the prophet to take one ship whenever he wanted and the crew to command it for up to a year, then he had to return or be considered rouge.
"Never mind. The collapse must have left me with strange... Confusions." He corrected. "Prepare a cruiser to launch immediately. I believe that this was a work of sabotage. I will find who was responsible... And I will hunt them all down."
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Underneath Covenant Loyalist base, Thruf, 30th of January 30th.
Zhab paused as the torchlight from his suit landed upon a wall ahead.
"Dead end." He snarled, turning back to the group following closely behind.
"No." The AI replied. "This is a door."
"To where?" Asked the human.
"The main underground refueling reactor." She answered.
Zhab swallowed, beginning his advance towards toward the door. Upon reaching it, he pushed. The door opened with a quiet creak.
The inside made the Kig-yar's mouth gape in shock. The room was a huge darkened pit, with the occasional rope bridges lashed across the room at random. Two brute patrols marched across these with their weapons drawn, yet none noticed the odd group. In the center of the room, however, lay a huge reactor that glowed plasma blue. It was easily a hundred meters wide and rose and descended for a kilometer either way. Zhab couldn't even see the bottom of the reactor when he looked over the side of the rope bridge.
"Wow." Was all he could say.
"Vala, how do we destroy that thing?" The human asked.
There was silence for a moment.
"Our two nukes, while damaged, are both still operational. If we drop one to the bottom and leave one to detonate up here, the reactor's final explosion should finish this base." She replied.
"Will that be enough?" The Spartan asked.
The AI laughed. "Will it not?"
Zhab swallowed. If the AI found this funny, then those bombs must pack a hell of a punch behind them. He decided he didn't want to be around when those bombs went off.
"Let's get this over with." He snarled.
The Squad glanced over at him, surprised by his outburst.
"Very well." The Sangheili said. "Where do we place these?"
He pulled his damaged, misshapen bomb off his back. The screen on the bomb was cracked, but still displayed readouts of the nuclear device.
"Vala will sync them to go in 15 minutes." The Spartan offered his arm to them. "Jimaenius, drop your nuke down there. Thel, place your bomb here."
The two offered the bombs to the Spartan, and he armed them both. Satisfied, he nodded, and the two moved their bombs to position. Jimaenius dropped the bomb over the side. The flashing red light on it disappeared into the black abyss. The Sangheili placed his bomb on the bridge.
"Now, How do we get out of here?" Zhab suddenly asked. "The passage behind us was blown, remember?"
The Spartan turned to the left and pointed downwards, over the edge of the bridge.
"We'll take that path." He said, and jumped down.
There was a faint thud from below. Zhab leaned over and spotted another bridge about twenty meters below. It swayed slightly under the weight of the falling Spartan. He gestured for them to jump. The Sangheili jumped without hesitation, executing a roll upon landing. Jimaenius glanced over at Zhab.
"I'll take the Unggoy." The Brute growled, scooping up the two onto his shoulders and jumping down.
Zhab suddenly got the image of the Jiralhanae missing and falling into the darkness. He gulped and watched. The bridge was not a wide target, about six meters at the widest point. However, the Jimaenius had made it, and with him, Liyik and Limid. Only Zhab was left. Zhab normally did not care for heights. After all, most of the best sniping points were up high, but there was something unnerving about seeing nothing but darkness below the bridge.
"Here goes." He muttered to himself, and jumped.
He internally cursed as his legs caught on the railing, stalling his jump. He cleared it, but it had cost him a lot of his horizontal velocity. The bridge rushed up to meet him, but he would not land on it. He hadn't gone far enough. Panic gripped him and he reached as far forward as he could, hoping to get some grip on the bridge as he fell by it…
He slammed into the bridge hard, feeling the shock even through his combat harness. His hands lashed out, searching for something, anything to grab to stop him sliding off. Something grabbed his arm. He glanced upwards to see the human holding on the his arm tightly to stop him from falling. Zhab gave a faint gasp of relief, and then the Spartan pulled him onto the bridge.
He scrambled onto the bridge, taking a deep breath as his feet touched solid ground. He gave the Spartan a quiet thanks. The Human gave a slight nod in reply.
"Time is ticking, people. Vala will mark the route out. Let's sprint this. Anyone who can't keep pace, mount up." He ordered.
Liyik and Limid climbed aboard Jimaenius, who accepted them with a grunt. The Sangheili turned to him. Zhab knew what the Elite was going to say, so he spoke first.
"No. I'll sprint his myself, thank you very much." The Kig-yar snarled.
The Sangheili did not look amused.
"Let's face it. You aren't fast. We could easily run laps around you. We don't have time to argue. I don't like it, but we'll do what we have to do." He said.
Zhab sighed, accepting defeat. The Sangheili offered his back, and the Kig-yar climbed aboard, nursing his hurt pride.
"Move, people!" The human shouted.
The Human, Sangheili and Jiralhanae flew along the ground, crossing the bridge in a matter of seconds. The Elite was so fast, even with an injured leg. Zhab momentarily forgot about his injured pride as he looked upon the spectacle of the three sprinters. A closed door loomed ahead, with a waypoint placed upon.
Jimaenius wasn't going to accept no for an answer, - or more accurately, door. He increased his pace slightly and drew his gravity hammer that he had taken from the Chieftain he'd defeated. He drew it back as the grunts gave chitters as they watched the massive weapon build power, and then slammed hard into the door. The door didn't take it never well. It separated into two parts and flew across the room. The other two sprinters reached behind and drew their weapons; The Spartan an assault rifle and the Sangheili a carbine.
The base was still so calm and quiet, despite the looming danger. The sprinters encountered little resistance, but put down what they did quickly and efficiently. Zhab was impressed by the Sangheili's ability to land shots moving at the speed they were, as well as coordinating with the human's fire so well.
"Twelve minutes!" The Spartan yelled.
Zhab was impressed by the progress they'd made in about two and a half minutes. They'd gone a kilometer so far, if the waypoints that were being continuously activated ahead of them were to be believed. No alarms went off in the base, the Loyalists still were unprepared for the surprise. They round a sudden corner to their left, Zhab hanging on to the Sangheili for dear life.
Ahead of them loomed the purple elevator. The corridor was around two hundred long.
"I'll hack the elevator and 'convince' it to open both airlocks, which 'may' cause mass depressurization throughout the base." The AI announced.
"Do it." The Human said.
"Stand by…" She murmured. "Done."
There was a groan in front of them, then a loud sucking as the two atmospheres violently clashed, the larger establishing dominance. The elevator was ripped upwards and thrown into the air outside. The Squad was lifted from the corridor and pulled forward at great speed, before then being forced upwards and high into the planet's atmosphere. Zhab once again hung onto the Sangheili as the pair were thrown high into the sky. Below, Zhab could see Brutes yelling a running as the decompression continued, with pieces of debris flying about the base, destroying containers and the like. Zhab even noted a couple of explosions.
They continued their arced flight through the air, still gaining height, but slowing down horizontally. They were about two kilometers up now, and finally slowing down vertically, before they hung, weightless, for a second. Then gravity took hold and began its persistent drag towards the ground.
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The Spearhead of Dawn, Thruf, January 30th
Cortana had been sitting up in orbit for far too long now. She had begun her probes to see if the Covenant base had noticed the Squad yet. The only thing she heard was that there had been a structural collapse at the base. Either this was pure coincidence, or the work of 'Something'.
Something appeared on Cortana's scanners. A message. She couldn't identify its intended recipients with looking at it. She made up her mind and enagaged the scanners. She received the message in its entirety. It was guarded by a point decimal syntax code: Impressive but very basic. It took her about three seconds to crack. The message was extremely simple; just a few lines of binary.
01010111 01100101 00100000 01101000 01100001 01110110 01100101 00100000 01100100 01101111 01101110 01100101 00100000 01101001 01110100 00101110 00100000 01010011 01110100 01101001 01100011 01101011 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 01101101 00100000 01110111 01101001 01110100 01101000 00100000 01110100 01110010 01100001 01100011 01101011 01100101 01110010 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01100111 01101111 00100000 01101000 01101111 01101101 01100101 00101110
She engaged the translation matrix and translated the binary;
We have done it. Stick them with tracker and go home.
Had she been in holograph form, she would have frowned. There were no defined recipients to the message. It could have been meant for anyone. Yet the message was extremely low bore, meaning that it had only travelled a short distance. It had delivered nearby and spread from that point. Close enough to be within Thruf's gravity well. So it had been aimed at Thruf. So that meant that someone knew where the recipient should be, at least the general area. The Covenant loyalist fleet had not taken any action upon the message's arrival. Upon opening her COMs and receiving a few messages, she found that they didn't understand the message.
So that meant it was meant for them. We have done it. What did that mean? What had ONI done? She replayed the Admiral's message from earlier. Their mission had been to cause a distraction to give the Council time to come to a decision on how to help Eayn. So had they decided? That would explain the message.
Stick them with tracker and go home. That was simple to understand. She began the process, heating up a tracker pod's maneuvering thrusters and moving it to a launch tube. She flared the engines slightly, putting her on course for a ship in the Loyalist fleet. The Spearhead was invisible, and passed over the cruiser unnoticed. As she did so, Cortana launched the tracker. The battlecruiser did not have its shields up, and the small tracker maneuvered onto the cruiser and landed on the hull quietly and unnoticed. It gave a ping, and Cortana put it into standby mode.
Tracker deployed, she switched to the other objective; getting home. She opened the COMs to find that there had been a sudden explosive decompression. It didn't take a genius to figure out who was responsible. With the Covenant distracted, she began a series of scans across the planet, ignoring the fact she might be noticed. She picked up the Longsword's transponder. The fighter had crashed a short distance from the base, and scans revealed that a few major systems had been damaged. As it was forbidden to allow Section 4 tech to fall to enemy hands, she activated the remote detonation.
Then she picked up eight contacts; The Squad and their nukes. The nukes had reached 12:12, and were armed and deployed. With the longsword destroyed, there would be no way for the Squad to escape. Cortana came up with her plan. The Squad had been launched airborne by the decompression. She calculated their Apoapis. 2.25km from the surface. The Spearhead was just fast enough to catch them if she came in just right…
She powered the thrusters as set her course. The ship fell into the planet's atmosphere, building up a fireball as it did so. The base came into sight, a place of chaos as the decompressed air threw objects about. Smoke trails were visible. The frigate continued; straight into the AAs target range, however the big guns were unoccupied as the frigate darted over. They were still cloaked, but the cloak was fading in and out as a result of the atmospheric plunge. They could be seen, but only if you were focusing on the sky. No alarms were raised. She identified the locations of the transponders of the crew. Right where she wanted them.
"Gotcha." She yelled triumphantly.
The Frigate swept in, opened its bay doors and let the Squad fall inside. She immediately shut the door and powered the engines to full.
"Good job boys, time to go!" She said over the COM, and the Spearhead rose into space.
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The MRS class stealth cruiser was developed in 2551 and started production in 2552, with only one in production when the Great Schism tore the Covenant apart. Expensive, advanced and difficult to maintain without huragok, this ship would have been a match for the Spearhead in stealth terms. It was no match in weapons terms. It was this ship that a Brute chieftain chose to use to hunt down the Sabotagers of the staging area on Thruf. The ship floated above Thruf, intentionally isolating itself from the mess of COMs that had kicked up when the base had mysteriously vented. It was the only ship in the Thruf system paying attention; and it found what it was looking for.
It spotted the somewhat hidden frigate as it rose from the base. The chieftain, having found his target, grins and gives an order for tracker to be deployed. This would be no problem. The Spearhead has shields, advanced ones at that. But this isn't any old covenant tracker. Small and self-reliable, the tracker using the point of a slipspace trip to bypass the shields when they go down for a brief second, before deploying upon the surface of the selected ship.
The chieftain is angry for his shaming, but is patient. He knows that the best revenge will come through patience. And he has what he needs. A ship, a loyal crew, and his mind. No stranger to tactics, unlike most of his kind, he may very well be a match for and experienced Sangheili shipmaster; though maybe not every one.
The frigate abandons its cloak, but is unnoticed by the larger fleet. A certain cruiser peruses, though. Suddenly, a bright light flashes across the surface of Thruf. Two HAVOK class nukes detonate beside a reactor, sending it into critical in a millisecond, and it too explodes with the force of a nuke. 70% of COMs in system stop. The Loyalists are stunned, puzzled. An entire base has blown itself to shreds. They do not know why.
The frigate glows as the slipspace drive charges, and then a portal erupts in front of it, and the ship enters. Unknown to them, they are persued by an unknown probe, one which takes advantage of the jump and slips through the shields, latching itself to the hull. A screen lights up on a cruiser, and a brute chieftain grins.
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Next week's update may be delayed; I have some school tests this week and probably won't have as much time as I would like. Anyway, thanks you guys for all the reviews, It really helps me keep going.