Location unknown, provided by Koyara

August 3, 2558

"I've got my missiles hot!" Riley turned back in his chair to look at the commander. "Ready to fire on your go!"

"Let it loose!"

The Blades had found a pair of pirate ships that were aside a third smaller derelict. All three vessels were battered, the pirates' being from lengthy use and the unknown from being impacted by the skirmishers in an attempt to scuttle it. The Ballista seemed to appear out of nowhere when she attacked, bringing down one of the ships and the second one trying to flee.

The smaller pirate ship, the one that was fleeing had its hull raked with bullet holes from the antiair artillery and miniguns. She had slowed down as flames danced in her port hangars. On their frequency, they were sending out a short range call for help to an unknown point. They could have done a longer ranged broadcast, but Riley had his minigun trained on the comm tower, having them resort to their secondary one.

"Keep the second ship trained in your sights Wepps. McGarrett, Pyra, Armes, Sofia and I are going onboard to take a look at where the pirate base might be." He made sure all his mentions heard the announcement as he headed to the armory to become encased in his armor. Weapons were a simple choice, a M7 submachine gun and his favorite A9 handgun. Sofia Inselton; the Blades' chief medic, had the least amount of arms with her customized M6G tranquilizer. Aegis had brought her along in case they had a medical evaluation that may trace further evidence.

Their pelican exited the hangar, accelerating towards the burning ship. No hails from the vessel and no guns were brought online to fire at the boarders. Trip tried not to think of it as a trap when the pilot released the back hatch and the team jumped out. They activated their boot thrusters to decelerate so that they gently landed on the ship's hull. It was unshielded, so there was no need to blast it to knock out its protection. Now all that remained was eliminating the personnel onboard.

Finding a hatch would take too long, so Aegis and Suvorov brought a laser cutter to carve their own entrance onto the top deck. Dan Tyler helped them find the correct place to slice their way in. The cutter's blue beam effortlessly sliced through the metal skin of the Covenant pirate ship. With the entire thing free, a small cloud of green gas rose from the cracks and escaped into space. With it free, Armes was the first one inside, kicking the panel and instantly he was sucked inside the opening, pulled by the ship's artificial gravity generator. Aegis was next with Armes directing the others inside as well. He looked at the shape underneath, seeing a very unfortunate skirmisher underneath the weight of the slab. It was very much a painless death.

"Alright, let's get heading to the bridge."

They agreed to split up, with Suvorov and Armes looking for an extraction so that they could extract a few corpses that they killed along the way back to Ballista for examination. Aegis, Sofia and Laura McGarrett headed to the bridge.

Instantly the trio was met with resistance from nearly a dozen skirmishers. The Spartan's shields flared an orange glow as they were struck with plasma rounds. Aegis found his M7 to be out of any useful purpose at such a long range, so he had his A9 out and putting rounds downrange. His first victim flinched, twisting his head sideways from the neat hole punched in his head.

Laura McGarrett had remained at the back pillar. Since she had no armor, any shots that would hit her would do much more serious damage than to her shielded partners. Although a sniper was her specialty, it would have been unwieldy and harder to use than when she had been scoping out the boarders back on their mission to capture Prith. Instead, she carried an M392 DMR and crouched in the center of the pillar, following Aegis' hand signals when it was a good opportunity to shoot. He waved his hand to signal her. She shot out of her spot, immediately targeting what she had appeared to be the leader of the group. He flinched as the round went through his shoulder, stumbling back and returning shooting with his carbine. The greenish projectiles impeacted in the pillar above her head and she instinctively ducked. Two loud squawks were heard as both Spartans each ambushed a pirate around the corners.

Trip had seized his victim's face and yanked it to the left so that it broke at an unnatural angle. Sofia had slammed her open palm into the skirmisher's face. Purple blood stained the floor as the blow knocked out his body fluids. She drew her dart pistol and shot him three times.

It was clear that Aegis wanted to end early because he primed a grenade and tossed it over to the wall. The angle it had hit the side bounced it into the area the skirmishers were firing at them. Three of them were blown sky high, with limbs that were atomized by the blast. He swept the corner, spraying the survivors from his M7 caseless. The bodies were turned into stew with blood splashed over like a sick looking sauce.

"Bridge is right over here!" Aegis and the girls sprinted to the large set of doors. After pressing a button on the panel, the hatch blinked from red to purple, sliding open soundlessly, save for the common beeping noise on all Covenant ships.

The bridge of the pirate ship was vast, nearly as large as a Covenant light frigate. The controls were much like a pyramid, with them emerging at the top right behind the commander's seat. Nobody was present on the controls, with them all running on autopilot. Trip was about to call out clear to his teammates when he saw something else.

The figure was human for certain, but his back was to them, obscuring his identity. He hadn't been wearing any gear for his ears, so he had obviously not heard them.

"Hey!" He called out to the stranger, "Put your hands where I can see them."

Instead of complying, the man turned around with a Needler launcher in hand.

"Son of a.." Laura stammered.

The man fired his gun, a long beam of needles accelerated towards the three, dispersing as the particles were ridiculously out of range. Also out of range, Aegis raised his submachine gun, returning fire. None of his bullets hit.

Instantly, realizing he was outgunned by two Spartans and an ODST, he turned tail and headed left, most likely to reach the nearby escape crafts.

Sofia was the first to react, already bringing up her dart gun to shoot. A single dart popped out of the M6's barrel, impacting the man's spine. Blood shot out in a plume and he immediately went limp, collapsing on the floor.

"Oh my god." Sophia gasped, dropping her pistol, turning away from her work in utter frustration. "I'm so sorry…I."

"You did what you had to." Aegis assured her, placing a hand on the other Spartan's shoulder. "I would have done the same thing out of reflex." He looked to Laura, who gave him a thumbs up after she had cleared the rest of the bridge.

"Commander, it's Riley." His comlink came to life after the weapons expert had opened a channel.

"Go ahead."

"The ship that the pirates are playing chicken with is being tended to by them before we interfered. I think there might be something they are trying to salvage something from her."

"Is there any way someone on the ship could survive?"

"Hold on." Inside Ballista's ops room, Riley toggled the scanners as he swept them over the ill-fated research ship. "Scanning is picking up a couple of sealed areas. There is a faint heat signature, but I'm unable to tell."

"Okay. Tell the pelican to drop me off on the wreckage and then retrieve the rest of the team back once they've cleared the ship of hostiles. When Drew gives the go-ahead, I want you to burn these pirate ships."

It took only a couple of minutes to jog back to the hangar, where they disabled one of the shield doors, letting the pelican in. Armes and Suvorov were on the other side of the room, using a large tug on massive gravity pods to haul an enormous dome shaped container.

"Whatever the pirates were hiding," Armes tapped the side of the box, "It was in here. This was probably the most heavily defended out of everything."

"I'd have to agree." The commander replied, "There was only one person on the bridge…and it was a human."

"This gets better and better." Suvorov deadpanned.

"I'm not going to have enough room for the commander plus all of your new toys." The pilot reported, hovering just a couple of feet above the floor.

"We're not done securing the ship." Suvorov thumbed back towards the stern. "Give us ten minutes and a dozen dead pirates and I think we'll be good to go."

Aegis climbed inside and sat in the copilot's seat. The dropship left the hangar and quickly sped towards the floating wreckage. It had now drifted into the geosynchronous orbit around a pale moon, which reflected off the hull in her luminous gray light.

He slowed in zero gravity as the Pelican's hatch opened, releasing him into the void. Activating his magnetic boots, he had settled on the hull just like on the pirate vessel. Taking slow deliberate steps, Aegis observed the multiple plasma burns and splashes of blood that were on the ship's interior. They cast an eerie ambiance whenever he shone his helmet's flashlight through the windows. He saw the black name painted on her bright blue hull Ge Hun, but most of her identity was charred out by plasma bolts that may have impacted days ago. He had found himself peering into one of the windows near the stern when suddenly the entire hull shuddered as he felt the heavy feeling inside himself. The wreckage was descending towards the moon's gravity pull.

In that same window, ice had formed along the pane, obstructing any clear view inside. However, after shining his light inside, he suddenly felt a thump; although weak it was no mistake.

"Son of a bitch. Somebody's alive." He moved to the next window, where ice was much less present. Now with the view's clarity much improved, it gave him a good long look inside. He was looking at a cabin with blood stains on the floor in Picasso shapes and sizes. The previously neat room was now all over the place with books and torn pages. Clothes looked as if they had been combined together now had frozen solid. Desperate to search for someone alive, he angled his light around.

Finally he saw a shadow move and nearly recoiled as a ghostly skinned woman appeared at the other side of the window. She wore a bunch of jackets and wool clothes that were bunched up, but it was quite evident that it was wet. With fear-filled eyes, she breathed onto the window, forming condensation that crystallized into ice. He had to estimate that it could have been much below freezing. The ice on the window was wiped away, leaving smears.

As soon as she appeared, she had departed into another room, coming back a moment later. Trip wanted to hurry and he wasn't completely sure on how to get this stranger out. The woman returned holding a red pen and one of the books with the torn pages. She scribbled something on it and held it out, the writing took him a minute a decipher because her hands had been shaking and it was so illegible.

"Better late than never"

Trip raised an eyebrow in amusement. Her face had an odd shade of blue and her shivers were uncontrollable. It didn't take a theorist to tell that her body temperature was dropping.

He remembered that he also had a datapad in his left thigh case. After double checking that he had his boots secured to the hull, he took out the palm sized tablet and typed, "Are you alright?"

She gave him a stare that told him that he was stupid to ask, given the statistics, but nodded anyway.

A solid clank on the hull caused him to nearly jump in surprise. Armes had reached his side with additional equipment. Without taking his eyes off of the survivor, he gave him signals to the crew onboard and sent him back to Ballista. The ship had been caught even deeper into the gravity pull, given the rate of their plummeting; he had less than seven minutes to get her out before the drawing crushed the vessel.

"Who are you?" She wrote on another of the pages.

He stuck his datapad to the window with his name typed out. She gave another look of frustration and anger and turned the page writing. "Navy?"

How was he supposed to explain that? He responded that he headed a freelancer team hired to eliminate the skirmisher pirate influence around the area. His response seemed satisfying, bringing a bit of relief to her eyes.

"Is there a pressurized area where we can bring in an extraction?"

"The aft hatch about ten feet down is still sealed, if your craft is a pelican." The woman's movements were getting slower and her eyes closed then opened again. Aegis knew that once she fell asleep, it would be impossible to wake her. He hammered his arm on the window, careful not to use his full augmented strength in case he broke it. Totally possible, the Spartan's strength was quite enough to easily shatter the glass, especially when combined with his MJOLNIR armor.

"What is your name?" He typed, holding it to the glass.

"Meredith" It took her a few seconds to write it down.

"You must stay awake Meredith! If you fall asleep you're dead! Is there a sealed area where I can get in?"

His facts must have gotten to Meredith's head as she looked around before writing on her last page, which was already wet with below zero water. She nodded, pointing to the hatch mentioned earler.

"Head to the second area and do not exit no matter what."

Meredith nodded, nearly falling on herself, but managing to catch her body. Had he been able to get through the window without creating a disastrous change in pressure, he would have been at her side in seconds, cradling her cold body in his arms.

Aegis detached his boots and used his thruster pack to scale the side towards the hatch. With the diameter about the width of the pelican's back hatch, he sent further instructions to the transport. Opening the hatch, he lowered himself inside; making sure that the status light was green for being shut completely. Continuing through the interior, he stopped at the sealed hatch to the second room. With a couple of knocks on the door, he waited, getting one in return. She had made it.

As the door opened, another shudder took him by surprise and both the rescue and rescuer were thrown into the wall. The groaning came from the ship as if laying on her deathbed. She jerked upwards again. Trip quickly got onto his feet, but Meredith was much slower, with her endurance rapidly draining.

"Trip! This is Drew! We've got the hulk being pulled back down by the moon! We've hitched Ballista to her hull and are throttling it in the opposite direction, but hurry! The cables are already straining past their limit!"

"I'm working as fast as I possibly can!" With his subject currently freezing, his priority was to help get her temperature back to normal. Reaching into his pouch, he took out some warming packets, squeezing them vigorously to start their reaction. He peeled back her clothing, making her flinch slightly, stuffing the heated pellets inside. She must have lapsed between her states of mind, but probably knew that they were going to be okay when a stranger had gotten into her pants.

The ship groaned again as they heard the pelican settle on the hatch which opened a second later, with ODST McGarrett and Spartan Armes bounding out. They saw Aegis and his passenger and rushed forward. Laura bringing her DMR to cover their backs in case of a hidden threat and Rex Armes had take Meredith's other side as they sloshed through the cold water, now with ice floes drifting as if near the polar region. Working quickly, the four of them got inside the pelican, which sealed its bay and unlatched to the ship's side. Looking outward, Trip could see the Ballista's twin cable launchers and cords attached to the remains of the other ship. Unfortunately the silvery moon was now very close, with the wreck falling even closer. The frigate's engines were on as maximum as they possibly could go without straining the cable, but it was much of a losing fight.

"We're clear!" Aegis shouted to Drew back aboard. Seconds later, the cords snapped as the engineer cut the lines. The destroyed ship, now fully unrestrained, plummeted towards the surface, eager to make its newest crater.

As the pelican was guided inside the hangar bay, Aegis found himself battling against sleep. Sofia immediately rushed in once they landed to tend to their newest passenger while the others, still in much better condition than him, began to head back to the armory to remove their suits.

Drew had appeared out of nowhere behind Aegis as he removed his helmet. The air smelled of hydraulics and oil, but it felt like first breath on clean mountain atmosphere. His partner held a steaming ceramic cup of coffee.

"Sorry mate. No booze until your blood is back to normal."

He had no energy to argue that it was worth the risk for the worst case of decompression ever recorded, but as he sipped it, he savored the familiar sting. Drew had put in a shot of whiskey.

Bit of a close call! So what does Meredith know about their pirate targets? Or will she even tell them?