Het, chapter 7 is here, i would recommend rereading chapter 6 first, i have worked on it to flow better as its own chapter and into this chapter.
Enjoy :)- i own nothing.
UNSC Sevenfold, Interstellar space, August 20th 2587
Lieutenant Commander Skye walked through the hallway towards the A.I core near the rear of the ship, if his plan was to succeed he would need Lorelie out of the way, he could have done it from the bridge but the Lieutenants were damn observant and would have noticed and they would have tried to stop him. No what he planned was a much safer and much simpler option, the few loyal soldiers that followed him would storm the bridge as soon as the A.I was down, they had orders to take the crew alive where possible, mainly so they could be used as examples later on after he got the ship to a free system, away from the tyranny of Earth.
But of course all that meant taking the ship and holding it until the Slip-Space drive was operational again, which wouldn't be too long now. As he approached the A.I core two guards stood to attention, they were unflinchingly loyal to the UNSC and they would be taken care of, he couldn't risk a couple of soldiers ruining his plans, but he would deal with them after he had dealt with Lorelie.
The A.I core was a fairly large if empty room, the data matrixes were in massive processors within the walls and underneath the floor, there was however a terminal along with a holographic plinth where Lorelie could show herself if need be.
"What are you doing Lieutenant Commander?" Lorelie asked as the door shut behind him, he didn't answer straight away and walked over to the terminal where he could shut her down,
"Lieutenant Commander you are not meant to be in here," Lorelie said, her holographic form appeared on the plinth, she was wearing a pure white toga with a golden trim, her blond hair was tied up in a series of plats and her feet were in a simple pair of reed sandals, she looked cross and he could tell she was as the Core warmed up, a physical reaction to her simulated emotions.
"I am simply making sure that the data core wasn't damaged and that you were at full capacity; we wouldn't want to go into the first full naval engagement since the end of the war with a faulty A.I now would we?" He asked with an almost sadistic smile on his face, it was a small but tell-tale sign of a horrible plot in his mind.
"Commander it is against protocol for you to be in here, I will report you to Commander Walters and Admiral Lasky if you do not… what are you doing?" she stopped her threat midway as he started the A.I shutdown process, "Lieutenant Commander Skye! It is punishable by death to disable a ship board A.I without a…" she never finished, her avatar froze before flickering off, and now she was dealt with he had to deal with the UNSC marines.
Thankfully two soldiers loyal to him would be dealing with that any… the sound of gunfire finished the thought; he walked out of the core to see the two marines on the floor with gaping holes in their chests, their armour did little to protect them from the 30. Calibre bullets that had peppered their bodies before they could even react, not the way a marine would like to go, they prefer to die gloriously in combat against anything that threatens Earth, not that there had been a lot of that since the end of the Covenant war, sure there were small skirmishes with pirate forces along with Covenant loyalists as well as the New Phoenix incident.
One of his men aimed at him as he walked out but quickly holstered his weapon as he saw who it was; they were dressed in simple camouflage with ballistic vests.
"Has the team taken the bridge now?" Skye asked the two men, one of them nodded as he answered,
"Yes sir, most of crew tried to resist but they were subdued, we caught them off guard so most of them were unprepared, all the survivors are being rounded up in the mess hall, we've got our engineers working on the Translight drive, it should be ready in a few minutes." The man replied,
"Good," Skye walked past the two men and towards the bridge, soon he would take control of the Sevenfold and take it to the free systems where it could be studied and then copied.
He entered the bridge, it was obvious that at least one officer had been shot but there wasn't enough blood for him to think the officer in question was dead, he was quite proud that the bridge was secured so quickly, it showed that the men were good at what they trained for.
He sat in the command chair and looked at the men he had replace the actual bridge crew, they were loyal to the cause, there weren't all that many people to man the ship now, it was meant to be operated by a crew of hundreds not a measly twenty six people that had little training to operate a modern UNSC Destroyer.
"Sir, the Commander's Pelican has left the alien command ship, orders?" the man asked, Skye frowned, he had expected the Commander to be gone long enough for him to take the ship out of the empty space between systems.
Skye also knew it wouldn't be long before the Daedalus Carrier group arrived, he would be cutting it close… very close.
"Tell the men in Engineering to get the Drive online now," he ordered, "If the Pelican gets too close to landing before we jump into Slip-space blow it up, make sure they don't land," he added, there was no point taking any chances, he could see the Pelican getting closer and closer, the alien fleet was directly in front of the Sevenfold, they were nothing but small twinkling lights against the dark void.
He felt the hull rumble ever so slightly for a second before it stopped, one of his men reported that the Pelican was down but had landed inside the hanger and that was not good, if even one of them survived they would cause trouble for his small crew, especially that damn Forerunner.
"Have a team go make sure there are no survivors," he ordered, soon enough a team was moving into the hanger, he turned his attention from the view screen to check on the status of the Slip-space drive.
UNSC Sevenfold, main hanger, August 20th 2587
Philip jolted back into conciseness minutes after the crash, he was still in the pilot cabin of the Pelican but the bulkhead into the troop bay had shut itself just the crash and he was on the small bit of floor available in the cramped cabin with his back to resting on the door, he heard someone talking, their voices weren't muffled by a helmet leaving him to believe that whoever had taken control of his ship was coming to make sure he and the rest of the team were dead.
"Raul, go make sure the pilots dead, we'll check the troop bay," a voice ordered, Philip reached for his service pistol attached to his thigh, his entire body ached from the crash and if he were a smarter man he would know that his wrist was in no condition to fire the powerful handgun as he had fractured it in the crash, thankfully that was his worst injury.
The pilot was limp in her seat, he could see that she was still breathing but she was out cold leaving Philip to deal with the 'Raul' by himself, he saw the silhouette of 'Raul' against the bright lights on the hanger ceiling, he had a M45D Tactical Shotgun pointing into the cabin, Philip aimed the M6H sidearm at the traitor and fired, the recoil of his sidearm caused his fractured wrist to crack and break, his shot hit Raul in the shoulder causing him to drop the shotgun.
Philip was in agony, he cradled his shattered wrist in has good hand, he vaguely heard the other two people shouting along with Raul's cries for help, he heard the high pitched sound of an energy weapon discharge once than twice as the two other voices were abruptly silenced,
"Train, Felix, secure the door; make sure we don't have any unwanted visitors," the Lieutenants voices rang out, "Glory, check the pilot cabin, and check on the Commanders okay," the sound of Glory's energy weapon discharging again silenced the injured shotgun wielding man, Glory stood where the Insurrectionist stood just moments ago, her armour could tell that the Commander was indeed alive and had in fact been the one to fire the shot and not the Pilot. She used a constraint field to move Philip out of the Pelicans Cockpit and lowered him to the floor gently before releasing the pilot from her constraints and using her large six fingered hands hefted the unconscious pilot out as well.
David saw the Commander and rushed over, noting that his wrist was injured along with several fingers David motioned for Becky to come over,
"Becks see what you can do for the Commander, he'll live but we need him in fighting shape, ASAP," David instructed, as Becky worked on the Commander David took a look at the pilot, she was banged up pretty bad from the crash and would be lucky to survive until she received proper medical care,
"Well, that was fun," the Commander said through gritted teeth, "Lieutenant, we have to head to the A.I core to get Lorelie back online, without her we're done for, but we need to be quick, can't risk the bastards knowing we're alive or our destination at the A.I core," Philip stated, David seemed to agree with this statement,
"The only problem is we don't know how many people they have on board or if there are hostages and if there are we don't know where they are or how many there are," David stated, Philip shook his head,
"Doesn't matter, without Lorelie we don't stand a chance, plus she can get the information required in a fraction of a second, hell she'll be able to kill some of the fuckers before they can do anything," Philip replied, Becky shoved a makeshift caste onto the Commanders wrist before they set off on retaking the Sevenfold.
Office of Naval Intelligence outpost Trevelyan-Forerunner city-August 20th 2587
The Librarian walked down the bustling hallway towards her private chambers, she w2as disturbed by some recent news she had heard; someone had taken a Human colony as slaves, of course the high ranking Admirals of the UNSC voted to retake the colony, this didn't disturb her, in fact she expected such a reaction but what had disturbed her but it was who had done it, the rumours she had heard said that the race was bipedal and had four eyes, other than that information on them was sorely lacking, she still knew who it was; Batarians, it had to have been, no other race she knew of matched the description.
As she entered her chamber her mind wondered over the memories of her long life, from her first experiments as a first form Lifeworker to meeting the Warrior-Servant that she would eventually marry, she thought about her children before their first mutations into Warrior-Servants like their father, oh how she missed her children, their brilliant grey-blue eyes, their laughs of excitement… it had been over a hundred and ten thousand years since they perished at the hands of the Forerunners greatest enemy and now their only ally. She would give nearly anything for them back but they were gone now, along with nearly the entire Forerunner race.
She thought back to when she had the UNSC Spartans come rushing into the Sangheili base, just four soldiers with fearsome armour, the way the little Unggoy ran away screaming in terror from them, claiming them to be demons, the Sangheili made a valiant attempt at defending against the four Human soldiers, but they all fell by the hands of mighty warriors, they had come to the rescue of a Human scientist and kill Jul 'Mdama but when they saw her they changed their plans, she became their top priority, they still completed their mission with a surprising amount of lethality and brutal skill she had seen only from the Didact's Prometheans.
Of course when she was taken aboard the Infinity she was initially a prisoner, it appeared that Humans still didn't trust her kind, she doubted they ever would. The ships Ancilla, Roland, was a rather interesting character, he said his avatar was that of a World War II Royal Air Force pilot, the Librarian was shocked to hear such words and yet a 'world war' was not all that unbelievable for Humans, but two? That had shocked her, when the Captain of the vessel, Captain Thomas Lasky realised she wasn't going to try and kill every Human in existence and when he learnt her name he had her moved so fast it had confused her slightly as to what was happening.
Lasky then took the time to talk to her, and share with her some of Humanities history, or their recorded history, how they went from a war that had literally threatened to tear the world apart to launching manned missions to Luna, Then as they realised they expanded throughout the Sol System, and from there how they fought amongst themselves and found unity under a single banner, then the invention of the Slip-space drive by two humans, Tobias Shaw and Wallace Fujikawa, led a science team and created the first prototype of the Slip-space drive, Humanity then expanded in a glorious age of prosperity and colonisation, only for Civil war and terrorist actions to threaten everything they had worked to achieve.
But as Lasky said at the time it was the most fortunate piece of blind luck Humanity had ever stumbled upon, when she asked what he meant, it struck a sour note within him, indeed the atmosphere in the room changed so dramatically.
UNSC Infinity, Captains Quarters, Orbit over Requiem, March 7th 2558
She sat in the human built chair; it felt odd to sit on something solid rather than a Hard-light seat, the Captain of the vessel she was aboard had just finished explaining about the 'Insurrectionist' movement of the 25th and early 26th century's, he had mentioned it was a fortunate piece of blind luck,
"How can a civil war of such magnitude, be considered lucky?" she asked, surely he was joking, she had never understood Human humour, the Captains face darkened and he visibly stiffened, his eyes suddenly clouded with old memories, none of them looked good from where she was sat,
"In 2525 at the height of the Insurrection we made first contact, it wasn't the peaceful kind either, they called themselves the Covenant and that we were to be exterminated in the name of their gods, in YOUR name," He spat out the last part, those words had literally taken her back, the shock must have been evident on her face as he soon commented,
"Are you really surprised? Your kind left all your toys out for the Covenant to play with, hell you even left a ship on the Prophets home world, of course they worshiped your kind as gods, they then started to conquer every species they came across and forced them to join and to worship your kind, so when they met us and found we were your inheritors and not 'them' they decided to wipe us out, they used technology they took from Forerunner installations for their weapons, they were hundreds of years ahead of us technologically, we never stood a chance against them." He hissed at her, he blamed her kind for the war and she couldn't blame him,
"Hell we never knew you existed until the end of the war, after tens of billions were dead and hundreds of worlds were burnt and turned into glass, after our Fortress world, Reach, fell one of the ships that did escape ended up right next to one of the Halo's, the official details are classified, even to me but I know a Spartan was forced to destroy it, to stop the Flood from escaping. Than… than they found Earth, Billions of civilians died in the first few days, we were so, so close to losing, hell if the Sangheili hadn't split after their leadership was wiped out we would have died out then and there." Lasky shook his head as he finished.
The Librarian cleared her head of such thoughts and memories; they would serve her no purpose and she had much more important things to do than to, she might even try to find out what happened to the Merse.
Flagship Indomitable, CIC, Other side of Relay 314, 2154 Citadel Standard
Septimus arrived at the CIC just in time to see the large Human warship appear next to the much smaller ship that Commander Walters was in charge of, Desolas was at a nearby station watching the fleet arrive with both caution and curiosity,
"I did say that they must have their own form of FTL, granted I was making an assumption but I was right, they did create a viable non Mass Effect based FTL drive," Septimus said as he stood next to his fellow General,
"Yes, what concerned me however was this," Desolas started by changing the screen from the Human fleet to still of the impromptu delegation, more specifically the one that stood by the Commanders side, the figure was wearing a very different armour set to the rest of the Humans along with a golden visor,
"I don't see the problem Desolas," Septimus said with a slight frown, Desolas sighed at the response,
"Look at it Septimus, look at the armour, some of it is floating, floating," he emphasised, "that and how many fingers does the person have?" Septimus frowned then leaned closer, sure enough the person had six fingers and not five like the rest had,
"Indeed that is troubling, how did I miss that?" He asked himself,
"You were busy dealing with first contact, you wouldn't have been looking to count how many fingers one of them had," Desolas replied, "How much do you know about ancient Turian beliefs Septimus?" he asked, it was a sudden change in topic that caused Septimus to look at the other General with surprise,
"By the look on your face I'm going to hazard a guess that you don't know where I'm going with this, so I'll get on with it," Desolas typed in a few commands and changed the screen again, this time it showed a cave painting drawn by ancient Turians, it depicted a group of beings taking their ancestors and storing them in the stars, another drawing next to it showed their ancestors attacking the figures and a last one showed two figures, both were definitely not Turians, one showed a female figure with simple yet elegant features, the other wore some sort of armour and had six fingers, almost exactly like the one on the delegation member,
"Impossible, that must be impossible," Septimus denied the evidence in front of him, "There is no way that could be true, what you're saying is that these people took our ancestors, no evidence has turned up of any race preceding the Prothean's, and unless those are Prothean, it's impossible," Septimus hissed, the idea that he had just had a member of a race that was going through the galaxy before ancient Turians had mastered even the simplest of tools on his ship… he was flabbergasted, he let out a small growl as he moved towards the comm station,
"I need to speak to the alien Commander, NOW!" He roared at the young officer, he was acting probably a little too harshly but he was very concerned about what he had just seen,
"I should probably mention also that our oh so wise ancestors thought that they were evil spirits that would take our children and hide them amongst the stars, of course our knowledge of such a time is severely limited, this was the last cave drawing for a period of around three thousand years, and it is around one hundred thousand years old, older than the Protheans," Desolas added, it only seemed to make Septimus even more desperate to contact the Commander to find out what in the name of the Spirits of Palaven was going on, when the view screen finally flashed into existence he was greeted with a sight he had not been expecting.
UNSC Sevenfold- Hallway A2, August 20th 2587
David moved forward slowly with his weapon drawn, they had gotten Lorelie online again but they hadn't run into any form of trouble, the ship was eerily quiet, the only sound was the low hum of the engine, they hadn't encountered any of the Insurrectionist's on the way to the A.I core, they didn't find out why until after Lorelie came back online,
"What do mean he has hostages in the Bridge?" David hissed at the A.I sharply, her avatar was on one of the many plinths lining the hallway; she looked at the Marine Lieutenant incredulity,
"I mean that he must have predicted your plan, he can't take the ship into FTL now, not with me back online or with the Daedalus right behind us, he had most of his forces move to the bridge with some hostages, mostly the Bridge crew, the rest… the rest he had either executed or placed within the brig, their bodies are still in the mess hall…" Lorelie trailed off slightly, David took the time to ask her the location of the rest of the soldiers under Skye's command,
"Round the corner, eleven contacts!" Lorelie warned them, they were severely limited in options for cover in the empty hallway, David grabbed the Commander and shoved him into a door frame as cover, than both he and Train used the same door frame as cover while Becky, Felix and Glory used another door frame slightly further up the hall as cover,
"How did I not see that?" Lorelie questioned out loud, Walters grumbled slightly and told her,
"Doesn't matter, contact the Daedalus, let the Admiral Morrison know what's going on and to tell Admiral Lasky, relay all information from the meeting to the Admirals, make sure they know," Philip told her, he was panting heavily, his ribs were becoming more and more painful by the minuet, his wrist was throbbing and his body felt like it was on fire,
Just than the Insurrectionist team of eleven men and women came round the corner, most were armed with the 30. Calibre gun favoured by Innie forces, it was terribly inaccurate but it wouldn't matter in such a confined space, a few of them were armed with MA3 assault rifles, one of which seemed to have an attachment to the barrel,
"Contact!" Becky yelled as she opened fire, the Innie forces didn't have the luxury of foresight and an A.I, they were caught without cover, David fired a short burst from his MA5K, the rest of the team fired, Felix and Train were armed with BR85 Heavy Barrel Service Rifle, the Battle Rifle as it was more commonly known as, Becky was armed with a MA5D and was suppressing the Innie's, Glory however was armed with a variation of the Light rifle, this particular model had been used against ancient Humans and was more effective at killing targets with a single shot compared to the variation used against the flood, to incorporate the ability to vaporize the targets the shot was less powerful, they were still effective but she preferred this variation.
The Innie's recovered their wits enough to find some limited cover, a couple jumped back round the corner, others ran for a door frame closer to the ODSTs, David growled as shoved himself into the frame as far as he could, the AP rounds would tear him apart and he really didn't feel like becoming confetti, he leant out and fired another burst and watched as the bastard fell to the ground, bleeding from multiple wounds to her inadequately armoured chest, he counted the number of bodies on the ground, five of them were now dead, that left six to deal with,
"Glory move up and get a better cover, we'll cover you! Train as soon as she moves, you move to her spot, Felix go follow Glory after Train gets to you," David yelled, Echo responded by firing blindly at the Innie's while Glory used her speed and agility to use, Train moved quickly between his cover and Glory's previous cover, when he reached it he tapped Felix twice on the shoulder signalling him to move, which he promptly did so.
The Innie's however soon responded with their own suppressive fire, allowing a few of them to move up, one of them got a little too ahead of himself and paid the price as Glory lashed out with powerful punch, cracking the poor man's skull in the process, her shields flared as incoming fire was directed at her, she lept back into cover, firing as she did, one of the bolts hit a man square in the face causing half of his face to blow apart, brain and skull fragments littered his comrades and the wall behind him,
The remaining five hesitated a second before continuing their assault with renewed vigour, fragments of the metal wall and bulkhead exploded out as bullets imbedded themselves into the metal, Becky gritted her teeth as metal shards rained down on her as AP rounds struck the bulkhead near her heads previous location, she sank as low as possible until she was almost prone before she leant out and fired a burst at the offending Innie who screamed as the 7.62x51mm FMJ-AP rounds tore through the man's chest, leaving his insides a mangled mess of organic tissue.
Philip was unfortunately unable to help shoot the Innies and take back his ship; instead he was forced to let the ODSTs have the 'honour' of killing the traitors, he could hear another Innie scream in pain as he to the floor, only three were left now and the ODSTs would take advantage over the lesser trained men.
Indeed just a few more minutes the fire fight was over, the Insurrectionist forces lay dead in their own blood, the hallway stank of gunpowder and blood, some of the Innie's killed by Glory's weapon were torn apart which left bones and organs exposed, it was a gruesome sight and a reason Philip had joined the Navy so he wouldn't see his enemies corpses staring back at him with lifeless eyes that still showed the persons last emotion.
"Yep, you guys are on cleaning this up afterwards, no way am I making my crew suffer any more than they already have done," Philip joked weakly, it was dry humourless joke that seemed to signify that fight had indeed ended,
"Fine by me Commander, as long as we through Skye out of an air lock and I get to push the button," David replied,
"Not if I get the fucker first you won't," Philip growled, the man's timing was ridicules, it seemed as though he wanted Humanity to fight another war against an alien conglomerate, although it would make sense, a weakened UNSC would be easier to break free from but if the UNSC kept hold of its rebellious colonies after The Great War than whichever faction Skye supported were truly stupid in believing it would work.
"Commander, I have contacted the Daedalus and have reported our situation, Admiral Morrison will be sending a Marine forces on board to assist you in retaking the Sevenfold, they should be here within a few moments," Lorelie broke the silence that had settled in, true to her words the Sevenfold rumbled as docking points from the Daedalus' latched onto the Destroyer,
"Come on let's move to the bridge before things get too out of hand, if we're lucky Sky will realise it's over and surrender," the Commander said,
"He's just as likely to shoot everyone out of spite," David replied grimly, causing the group to move through the halls to the bridge,
"Commander, Skye is getting… desperate, when Marine forces from the Daedalus started boarding he has the crew on the bridge at gun point, he's hiding behind our own people," Lorelie reported, Marine forces had stacked up along the way to the Bridge, a Marine Captain met with them,
"Commander, Lieutenant, glad you could make it; the Admiral just gave us the go, Commander, you'll have to stay back," the Captain told him,
A couple of Marines stayed back with the Commander as the rest of them barged through the bridge a few minutes after the Commander and Echo team arrived, Philip was around the corner just in case things went south, he heard several long bursts of rifle fire and the shouts and screams before he heard what sounded like a standoff between Skye and the Marines.
Philip let his anger get the better of him; he stormed forward towards the bridge, he could see that most of the bridge crew were still alive, tied up but alive, some however had been executed before the Marines could stop them, Skye was holding Lieutenant Vickers to his chest with a M6H pressed into her chin,
"SKYE!" Philip roared, "Drop the gun! It's over, you lost," Skye however did not drop the gun in fact he just pressed it tighter to the young Lieutenants chin,
"Stay back!" Skye roared back at the younger Commander, things were bad, he needed to end this now but he was limited for options, the Marine Captain was trying to persuade Philip to back off the bridge but his concern fell on deaf ears.
Flagship Indomitable, CIC, Other side of Relay 314, 2154 Citadel Standard
Septimus saw the view screen flick on, he saw Human soldiers wearing a different armour variant than the ones that escorted the Commander, they were all fighting other members that had some sort of weird clothing and armour, one of them wore a uniform similar to the Commanders, he was holding a younger looking human at gun point, they were yelling at each other, before anything else happened the Commander entered, his uniform was not the perfectly straight grey uniform, it was wrinkled and ripped in a couple places, blood and dirt had coated sections of grey uniform, his face was cut up slightly and his wrist was in some sort of caste type thing.
The Commander yelled something as he walked into the bridge and things seemed to heat up, yelling and the body language was tense, Septimus may not have under stood what was being said but from the looks of it there had been a mutiny, a poorly planned and poorly timed mutiny. Just as things started to calm down one of the Humans in the new variant of armour opened fire on the man holding the hostage, a few rounds went straight through the man's head, crimson blood and brain matter sprayed the wall behind him, covering several work stations and the younger officer in the dark red substance.
He quickly shut off the comm before turning back to Desolas who had a similar look of surprise on his face, indeed this new race seemed to be full of surprises and not all of them were good.
A/N; okay when i was writting the original AN it glitched out and didn't save so i'm a little annoyed about that as it was really long, i replied to the following people; Chronus1326, Guest(hater), MatthewG, Axcel, Natzo and Officer Hot-Pants those with accounts PM me and i'll send you what i tryed to write earlier, those without i'll sum up;
Gorgon class destroyers don't have two MAC's they only have one, the Cole protocol hadn't even been started by 2531 so saying it was in effect in 2526 is silly and i really wish that was true Axcel but i didn't come to the same conclusion, it would have been cool if it were true, also you're right about them not conquering but running and that was a mistake on my part.
I would like to thank all of you who have reviewed, Favorited and followed, it really means a lot to me, thank you all a whole tonn ;)