Episode 4: Welcome To The Jungle
Chapter 2: Clobber The Covenant
"You can't win a war without logistics, stable supply lines and innovation."
This chapter has a special guest appearance from another one of my favorite fantasy novels!
I'll give you a hint: Remember the first Lore Chapter I wrote for SH50K?
With Hoth's bastion of hope destroyed, and Anakin and his companions stuck on Pandora, the Covenant have no opposition preventing them from reaping the spoils of the Time Lord archaeotech that was left behind after the massive battle on the ice planet. Their orders are to deliver it to the Dark Lord necromancer, who actually promised to give them something in return... or maybe Vecna's lying, and he'll backstab the Prophets of the Covenant. Time will tell.
Currently, aboard the Forerunner Dreadnought (also known as the Anodyne Spirit,) sanctimonious San'shyuum Prophets Regret and Mercy have been interrogating and torturing Har Har Bunks, a Gungan Republic scientist who was assigned with working on the primordial devices originally belonging to the Time Lords. He isn't giving away details the Prophets can make sense of, though...
"You're only making this more difficult for yourself. We will know how to use this technology eventually."
Prophet Regret was getting frustrated with his most recent job. He had spent hours using the fundamental forces of the multiverse (yes, THE Force) to torture this strangely articulate native of Naboo, and no matter how hard he tried, Har Har Bunks would just keep mocking him with well-chosen words and clever rhymes.
"ACK! Talent and intuition is a waste... when the beholder has no taste!"
"You'll have to cooperate sooner or later, foolish degenerate. Because if you don't, you'll be faced with a grim ordeal... one that I could only describe as worse than death."
Force lightning discharge*
"Aaaah, the excruciating pain... Worse than death? There might be a day when you and your rabid zealot friends take your last breath!"
force chokes*
"That tickles!"
"SHUT UP! I'm manipulating the forces of the cosmos to torture you, not give you an excuse for horrible poetry, you infidel!"
Prophet Regret just walked out of the room. His efforts at extracting information from Har Har Bunks and the other captured Republic scientists were of no use, for two reasons: One, the scientists almost certainly didn't understand how the Time Lord items functioned, and two, they were surprisingly resistant to torture. All the abuse just rolled off of Bunks' rubbery skin.
He hated this assignment, hated the overly sarcastic, witty remarks the prisoners would make, and being a high-ranking Prophet, hated being stuck without his hoverchair for long periods of time (the prison aboard the Forerunner Dreadnought had a security mechanism that disabled all antigravity devices.)
So Prophet Regret naturally chose to report to his partner, Mercy, on the failed attempts to acquire intel on the tech from Hoth.
"How'd the interrogation go?"
"Let's face it, the Republic dross does not know how this junk works. I've tried everything to get them talk, and they just taunt and mock me when I'm inflicting pain on them!"
"That tells me you're doing an absolutely abysmal job at it. Let me show you how to do an interrogation, THE RIGHT WAY."
Then, out of the blue, the artificial ground and the walls of the vessel began to shake violently, as if the Forerunner Dreadnought was nearing a black hole.
"WHAT WAS THAT???," Mercy said to Regret accusingly.
"Don't blame me for something wrong with our holy chariot!," he snapped back.
Then, a Sangheili (Covenant Elite) warrior, Kal Kadam, burst into the room, in a panic. Elites were known amongst the Covenant for their fearlessness and courage, so seeing Kadam afraid was a BIG DEAL.
"You have to see this, my lords. Slipspace wormholes are opening up in our vessel's combat spacecraft hangar!"
Mercy didn't believe it.
"Wormholes? Deliberately being opened inside a ship? That is IMPOSSIBLE, only the Forerunners could do such a thing!"
"Come and see," Kadam replied.
In the Dreadnought's hangar...
An assortment of alien warriors from all the different Covenant worlds were gawking at the rifts in reality that had opened up in the middle of their capital ship's interior. They didn't know what was happening, and by the time someone got suspicious about the circumstances, it was too late.
Without warning, an Atlas BattleMech from House Anniera leaped out of one of the rifts, which were in truth Stargates opened by a Republic breacher regiment, and it pulverized the closest Covenant Brute with a swing of its piston-driven pile bunker. Hundreds of other Mechwarriors, Gundam suits and manually operated Autobots poured out of the Stargates within minutes, and began slaughtering the crew of the Forerunner Dreadnought.
The Knights of House Anniera, led by the Wingfeather family, had been ordered to teleport directly into an enemy vessel! But why would they perform such a risky operation?
While this was happening, a Gloriana-class battleship belonging to the Republic's Grand Navy opened fire on the Anodyne Spirit's escorts with turbolasers, plasma lances, and pulsar howitzers, leaving it practically defenseless.
Granted, the Covenant crew members were not helpless, and their plasma firearms brought down dozens of 'Mechs. But the Annierans were extremely determined, and the deaths of their comrades would only spur them to fight harder and cover each other's flanks.
What's more, House Anniera had access to baleful experimental weaponry and esoteric techno-sorcery, kept secret from the rest of the Republic, that greatly bolstered the sheer firepower of their assorted combat walkers.
So when Janner Wingfeather, the Lord Commander of House Anniera's regiments, spearheaded the attack, he knew exactly how to take control of the battlefield.
The Annieran general destroyed multiple Locust and Wraith artillery platforms before they could fire on his Knights, then moved on to eliminate the Covenant Hunter bioforms so their heavy weapons wouldn't be a problem either. He was skilled enough with his heavily modified Stalker Battlemech's weapons to land kill shots on virtually everything he fired at, and when lasers, missiles, flamethrowers and repulsor rays wouldn't do the job, he used his signature Achilles plasma cutter to slice up Elites who were trying to reach the controls of nearby vehicles.
Somehow, Prophets Mercy and Regret hadn't been targeted by the ambush party yet (though it is worth mentioning the hangar was a pretty damn big room to be inside of.) Naturally, they were quite shocked to still be alive.
"I'll fight to the end!," Kadam the Elite said, as he prepared to make his final stand. Unfortunately for him, Regret and Mercy used their Force powers to telekinetically drag him away from the carnage, both wanting to have the gratification of saving one life, which was unusual for Prophets in general.
"Now is not the time to fight," Mercy told Kadam. "Now is the time to run the hell away!"
That wouldn't matter, though, because the Annierans were ordered to not take any prisoners. They were going to continue the massacre, irrespective of the resistance they met.
Within 90 minutes of fighting, the Covenant crew of the Dreadnought had been exterminated, all the Prophets aboard were dead, including the High Prophet of Truth, and Lord Wingfeather was going to get what he came for.
The prison section of the ship was left untouched by the breaching attack, and the nobles of House Anniera were tasked with storming it and liberating everyone that had been held captive by the agents of the Covenant, in order to acquire valuable intel, and of course, take the Time Lord artifacts back to Republic laboratories to be studied.
Meanwhile, in the jail cells, right before the Dreadnought was boarded...
Turns out H.H Bunks wasn't the only important person to be taken captive during the sacking of Hoth. A handful of Grimm-slaying Spartan-IIs who had survived the siege of Hoth were also locked up, including Blake Belladonna, Pyrrha Nikos, and Coco Adel. These three female super-soldiers were thought to have been casualties of the icy planetary siege, but as fate would have it, they were still alive.
"Damn preachers keep coming back to the Gungan even though he's proved to be completely devoid of useful intel," Coco remarked, having heard the interrogation involving Har Har Bunks from her cell, where she was chained to the wall with her two comrades, Pyrrha and Blake.
"Yeah, they're not the sharpest heads on the dick," Pyrrha said in reply.
Then Blake noticed something the other two Spartans didn't- her ears were twitching, her Faunus senses telling her that something was going on outside the cell.
"Is it just me, or are the walls around us softly vibrating?"
Surely enough, Pyrrha and Coco picked up the suspicious detail too.
"Wait a minute," Pyrrha said. "Why is the ground shaking? Aren't we in a colossal spaceship with its own gravity? You think the Covenant fleet has reached its destination?"
Instantaneously, just seconds later, the screams of dying alien terrorists and the roaring of explosions broke the silence. Coco was the first to say something about it.
"Holy SHIT! Is someone attacking the Covenant's fleet? What in the God-Emperor's name is going on outside?"
The cacophony kept going for around 300 seconds, then stopped as quickly as it had started. Coco, Pyrrha and Blake were tensed up in the back of their cell, waiting for the inevitable... but it wasn't what they expected.
A young man of lanky build dressed in knightly attire, including a green and brown tunic and chain mail, opened the door to the cell. He was without a doubt a MechWarrior, and one of particular notoriety as well.
"Spartan sisters! I have good news, you should join the rest of us! The Knights of Anniera are commandeering this ship and flying back to Republic territory. The Covenant has stolen something that we desperately need for the war effort, and my older brother, Janner, is handling the whole operation. The devastation of Hoth wasn't all for naught. And here's something else you should know: Ruby Rose was the one to suggest attacking the Anodyne Spirit! She wanted a rescue mission, and we delivered!
Following this statement, Pyrrha miraculously recognized the young Battlemech pilot.
"You're Kalmar Wingfeather, right? I know your brother has a big reputation as the head of a Great Knight House. I guess I should save my questions for him... Coco, Blake, let's go! And make sure to thank Ruby and Yang for not giving up on us."
The prison block was being emptied, and scientists and soldiers taken captive at Hoth were joining up with Janner's task force of 'Mechs, who had orders to deliver the Time Lord treasure back to Republic authorities who could get a better look at it.
Shortly thereafter, on the Dreadnought's flight deck bridge:
Janner pushed a big pile of Grunt corpses out of the way with his 'Mech, and ordered his men to set coordinates to Kronos Alpha, a major Republic space shipyard.
On the other end of the bridge deck, the three RWBY Spartans were discussing the most recent news in the war effort with Kalmar and Leeli, Janner's younger siblings and equally formidable Mechwarriors in their own right.
Blake: So you're telling us there's ONE PERSON out of over a trillion at Kronos Alpha, that knows how Time Lord tech operates?
Leeli: Yes, according to our agents in House Steiner. He goes by the name of The Collector, and claims he's a descendant of the Time Lords, who actually have many other names.
Kalmar: Here's something to know, the Covenant call the Time Lords by the name of the Forerunners, which probably means this Dreadnought we're on is a hand-me-down pile of junk left behind from the multiverse's earliest civilization.
Author's Footnote: It should be noted that Janner had Warforged spies operating on Hoth when it was attacked. Some of them escaped to tell the tale, and they informed their master of the events that transpired.
Pyrrha: Aaaand they don't know how any of it works. What a shame, but also what a delight- can you imagine what would happen if the Covenant discovered how primordial technology really worked? Nobody would stand a chance!
Coco: Which is why we need to understand how the software package from Hoth runs. I'm inferring that unlike this ship, it's actually the real deal, not just something the Time Lords saw as totally obsolete.
Blake: Tell us more about this Collector guy. You think he's actually a descendant of the primordials, or just a phony nutjob?
Leeli: I personally think he's a phony, but on the contrary, his DNA samples we secretly collected registered as completely unknown and unique- one of a kind, not to be repeated anywhere else in the multiverse. Which is suspicious beyond belief, because history shows the Time Lords were wiped out in a cosmic war across time and space billions of years ago.
Kalmar: All we can hypothesize is that there is some massive malevolent force out there that has been orchestrating past events and keeping the war going as long as possible. Whoever- or whatever the Covenant may be working with, it's a big deal. We don't even know the full story on how the Time Lords were all killed. And I think the perpetrator of our galactic war, the manipulator and motivator of our enemies, knows something that we don't about primordial history.
Pyrrha: Shall we gather more intel on this matter?
Leeli: Janner's getting us there. When we get to Kronos Alpha, and announce to the docks that we've commandeered the biggest Covenant flagship, we'll be able to contact the Collector and see if he has more info on the War in Heaven, plus data about this Time Lord tech we plundered.
Professor Bunks overheard the whole conversation, and chose to ask a question when he should've gotten involved earlier.
"Pardon me for not speaking on this issue earlier, but may I tell you about a supposition I have regarding our scientific loot?"
"We're listening," Coco said.
"Back on Hoth, I saw a Jedi girl, a Tau named Beidou, hit one of the Time Lord objects with a hammer. Almost immediately, it produced a Stargate that let some people escape the subglacial tunnels. Beidou called it cartoon physics, told us that there are other magical systems out there besides the Force and its many categories. Do you think we just have to resort to the most unorthodox ways of fixing things in order to get proper results?"
Leeli shrugged.
"I'm gonna have to meet this Beidou person if I wanna be sure. That goes for the rest of us. If she escaped Hoth, we have a chance. Still, if someone really is pulling the strings behind all the past events... I'd have a reason to be pretty scared, and I'm usually not scared of anything."
Speaking of the person pulling the strings all along...
In the fathomless depths of Zenith- the deepest layer of the Nine Hells
Vecna was busy with managing more of his pawns and subordinates. He was waiting on his infernal throne, one of many thrones he owned, waiting for a package to be delivered by the High Prophets of the Covenant.
Then someone came into his throne room- a fungal zombie, Count Olaf, with poorly groomed facial hair and surprisingly classy clothes. He was a spy for the necromancer and one of Zalgo the Nameless's countless worshippers in the Nine Hells, Lower Planes, Upside Down, and the Abyss.
"Any status reports on the Time Lord package?," Vecna asked him.
Olaf remained silent.
"TELL ME NOW!," the arch-lich demanded.
"Umm... uhh... here's the truth. House Anniera hijacked the Covenant flagship and stole the primordial technology before it could reach us."
Vecna was FUMING at this point. Once again, the goody-two-shoes "freedom fighters" had beaten him at his own game, just like on Koentus. He hated his enemies even more than he already had, and wanted nothing more than to prove that the ideals of liberty, egalitarianism and democracy were merely lies and fallacies.
But while he was hopping up and down in a mad fury, causing earthquakes in the layers of Hell directly above Zenith, something suddenly popped back into his mind... a perfect opportunity for a step towards victory that he had forgotten, because even calculating evil masterminds have brain farts sometimes.
"Oh... on the other hand, I forgot about something that might make up for these wretched failures! Count Olaf! Tell my armies in the Upside Down to set up their breaching gate portals, and connect them to the forest moon of Pandora! Specifically the spaceport there. There's a catalyst of destruction and doom, just ripe for the taking, flat out in the open- like a big blood-filled gift on a holiday morning."
The Obelisk of Odium shall be mine...
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