Chapter XXIX: Pirates!

March 8, 2540 (UNSC Calendar)/

In orbit above Valhalla, Delta Tyranus System

"Shit just got real buddy," Pavel said.

"You said it," I agreed.

The ship had been rocking constantly for the past thirty minutes, we had been hit with plasma torpedoes twice now and the archer pods on starboard were all empty. That left half our reserves in ventral, dorsal, and port sides. The MAC ammunition had to be running low as well. On top of it all, two of our longswords had been shot down, which could only mean one thing. We were being cleaned up for boarding.

Our ship was a modified ship, which is something I've already said before. Ours was faster, tougher, and deadlier than every single frigate on the UNSC fleet. We had been doing one hell of a job at kicking some serious Covenant ass back there, or at least that's what I imagined, since we had been dispatched to deal with a wave of boarding craft sent to our ship.

As usual, most of the covvie ships latched themselves to the hangar doors. Mostly because they were the thinnest piece of metal on the ship. I'm using the term 'thin' loosely here, since they were a meter thick. Oh, and they were actually made out of Titanium-A plating. That shit was a real bitch to cut, and the covvie boarding parties could do nothing other than cut. Anything resembling an explosion could send their crafts into oblivion. Right now, I could tell that they were about done. The large hangar was empty of humans, however, the smaller, balcony-like floor above it wasn't. Normally, most of the non-essential equipment would've been kept here, or the pelicans would park there whenever the Inconvenience had to drop of supplies in-atmosphere. This time, it was filled to the brim with marines aiming guns at the sparks coming from the hangar walls.

The first piece of metal fell of. It was thicker than it was in diameter. Must've been a bitch to cut through. At first, there was no movement, then a couple of squads poured out, they were mostly elites. It made sense, sending in the big guys first and then reinforcements. The elites were killed in about half a second. A couple hundred marines firing at the same time tends to have the same effect, but it wouldn't remain like that forever. A few of the boarding craft were bound to contain hunters, or even more talented elites. Who knows, the moment of quiet after the piece of metal dropped from the wall and before we started firing could've serves as cover for a couple of cloaked elites to jump off. Unpleasant feeling.

It seemed like it was choreographed. All twenty metallic circles fell to the hangar floor in unison, with hunters, elites, jackals, and grunts pouring out of the boarding craft. This meant that those craft that were already latched to our ship could serve as access for the next wave of Covenant troops. I would've dwelled on the situation for a little longer had it not been for the large amounts of targets in the place. The hunters were the first to go. Rockets took care of that. The behemoths didn't manage to let of a single shot, but that would change soon. Elites started firing at us, and I could tell that most of those elites were rangers. The ones with jetpacks. Believe me when I say that shooting a flying target is a lot harder than shooting something on the ground.

"Swarm!" someone yelled.

And it was a hell of a swarm. The drones must've been really cramped in that shuttle if they could burst out in such large numbers. Those weren't particularly dangerous, but they had this thing that made you loose your cool, and when they worked jointly with ground forces, they served their job just fine. They distracted us from the deadlier forces on the hangar floor. I was forced to take cover behind a scorpion, one of the five that our ship had on board. Some gal was smart enough to hop in on the turret of the tank and maul away at the bugs. Soon, the floor was covered with carcasses the size of humans. Some were still twitching a leg or an arm.

But the drones had served their purpose, a group of elites had made their way up to the second level, they had climbed through the stairs and killed most defenders. It wasn't like it was unexpected, whenever enemy soldiers decided to board a ship, they almost usually made their way through the first line of defense. We started falling back to the blast doors that cordoned off the hangar from the rest of the ship. We slowly walked backwards while taking out any alien that decided to be a hero and come to close to us. I myself focused on the jackals that hung out further back. I tagged half a dozen of them before the blast doors slammed closed right in front of me.

"Vent the hangar!" someone ordered.

It was standard operating procedure, really. All vehicles are usually secured to the floor of the ship, so no danger there, the only downside to this plan was that the bodies of any killed marines would be lost to space, never able to receive a proper burial.

"Done," someone said.

I could almost picture the Covenant soldiers flying out through the hangar doors, slamming into each other and trying to hold on to something for dear life. Some of them would make it, only to suffocate in the cold vacuum of space.

"Ok marines, go back to your regular positions, we'll live the gauss here in case any alien bastard decides to come through this doors."

"Oorah!" came the unanimous response.

Pavel and me made our way back to the bridge, setting up there. There were two ways this could go. Either the Covenant decided not to send anyone else to attempt to board, or they send an army with the purpose of overwhelming our defenses. Then again, we could also be blown up altogether, but I wasn't willing to remember that.

I stood there, listening to the captain's orders for what seemed like hours. It was only after half our fleet was taken out that things got worse. The covvies had decided to throw all they had at us. We really must've made an impression, because the screen in front of the captain's chair showed no less than seventy boarding shuttles making their way towards us. Our lone longsword would do its best to take out as many as possible, but it couldn't do a lot, same goes for the point-defense guns. Maybe fifty ships would be able to latch to ours, but that was still a helluva bunch of covvies in our ship.

"…and Sergeant Castillo," called the captain.

"Yes sir?" I asked.

"Please do stay here, I have a feeling we might need you and your friend very soon."

"Yes sir."

"Why the hell doesn't he know my name?" Pavel asked me, hurt.

"Shut up."

Shit was about to get real. Or realer.

I heard numerous impacts on our ship a few moments later. The boarding craft had made contact. It was relatively quiet for a while afterwards, although I knew that the marines were fighting off the Covenant boarders, painting the corridors with their blood. I knew that we weren't doing so well when small groups of soldiers started coming towards the bridge. I ordered them to cordon off the area around the most vital part of the ship. They set up barricades but were careful to leave small spaces for the rest of the marines on the ship. This was our fallback point, when all else failed we made our last stand here. At least that's the theory, this ship had never faced so much danger of being overwhelmed.

"Venting lower decks," Eliza's voice stated. No doubt that all defenders there were either dead or had retreated.

At least a few of them must've made it out, because some of them arrived here to the bridge. Our perimeter was made wider, with everything we could move being put to use as barricades. If we failed, the captain would lock the blast doors of the bridge and vent the entire ship, killing every single thing that remained on board.

Hope we don't get to that.

Finally, after half an hour of fighting tooth and nail for the ship, about a hundred soldiers were here, ready to defend the last part of the ship with their lives. Eliza vented every single area that didn't connect with us a couple of times, no doubt killing a lot of enemy soldiers. The non-essential ship personnel such as pilots and other sailors had long since left the ship. They had evacuated in the bumblebees right after the first part of the engagement ended. They were supposed to land in an evacuation port in some city, they would wait out for as long as possible before leaving, after all, they didn't want to become refugees and then be sent back to their ship after public humiliation for abandoning a ship that ended up winning an engagement. I hoped Marina was fine.

Finally they came. They came in hordes. The first wave of enemy soldiers were quickly shredded by a wall of ammunition fired from behind the cover of barricades. I hadn't bothered to do anything yet, I would start firing as soon as the Covenant got some sort of front to face us. I'd take out any unshielded elite or sharpshooter jackal that decided to leave cover. For now, I just let the other marines do the job. The ones with shotguns were actually pretty useful, they fired at the walls or floor at a 45-degree angle, and the pellets would bounce away in all directions. Pavel thanked me more than a couple of times for his shotgun, he took out a bunch of aliens with it.

I fired the first shot if the engagement since the hangar at an ultra with its shields down. My first shot hit it right in the eye, the exact place where I had been aiming at. Enhancements did have their advantages. From that point on I was a killing machine, taking out elites left and right. Actually it was more like the front, since we were in a long corridor.

Despite our efforts, we were slowly but surely being pushed back. Every now and then a marine would be hit, then another one, and finally we wouldn't have enough firepower to hold the position, so we'd move to the next one. We could simply hope that they ran out of soldiers.

I was piling up a bunch of enemy corpses so that they wouldn't be able to cross a certain corridor when we were all ordered to fall back to the immediate area surrounding the bridge. That meant that they must've broken our line someplace else. I primed a couple of landmines that someone tossed me and left at a full sprint. No way an alien bastard was going to hurt my girlfriend. I'd kill them all before that happened.

"Pavel, what's happening?" I asked my friend as I met him on our way back.

"They tumbled through the portside corridors, apparently they threw hunters at them."

"Fuck," I said. "Did someone take out the hunters?"

Pavel simply shrugged and helped a marine move a barricade to cover the bridge. In less than a minute, the space around the bridge had been made into an impenetrable wall. That wall only had little holes for us to shoot through. However, it would be made very penetrable if anything heavier than a plasma grenade was thrown at it. I took place besides my one and only male friend. There were now about sixty men and women left alive in the ship. Excluding the bridge crew. We would buy them as much time as possible before someone told the captain that it was time to vent the ship, maybe a couple dozen marines would make their way to the bridge and then they would open every single airlock on the ship. Just maybe.

I fired at an elite as it turned a corner, it took cover before someone tossed a grenade at it. I was satisfied by the sound of flesh falling down on the floor. The grenade had bagged at least one kill.

"This is going to become a kill fest," some marine said.

"For who?" someone returned. The UNSC Marine Corps had more than its fair share of cynics. I prided myself in not being one of those, but if I managed to survive this, I'm pretty sure that I'd get there soon. I kept on firing at any targets, killing a good bunch of covvies. Pavel was forced to switch back to his machine gun as he ran out of shotgun shells for his ACS. He fired short bursts at the covvies, no doubt trying to conserve ammunition for his machine gun. I had long since switched to single-fire mode. Trying to keep as much lead in my pockets as possible. I also made note to bring back a couple of assault rifles from fallen marines in case anyone needed them.

For a while it seemed like we could hold this place forever, the boarders were beginning to pile up on the floor. The bridge crew kept on battling the Covenant Navy, not that they had much choice, it would be impossible for them to escape. Finally, our luck ran out. A single hunter went through the barricade on the other side of the ship, I turned around and saw a dozen marines jump out of its way and shoot it down, but the damage was done, elites and grunts were already crossing the wrecked barricade. Marines were pulling out their knives and jumping to the backs of the elites, going for the neck. I saw more than one soldier go down while stabbing at the warriors. I watched as two elites made their way through the stunned defenders and into the bridge, we hadn't even had time to warn them. I ran after them, but I knew that it was to late. They would go inside and kill everyone before I managed to stop them, at least that's what would've happened had I not been faster than a regular human, but what happened then wasn't much better.

I entered the room right behind the two elites. One of them was a golden-armored zealot, the other was an ultra clad in white armor. The golden armored one took aim at the captain, the other stared spraying the walls with plasma fire. As I sighted the back of the golden elite's head, I knew I was making the logical choice. The choice that any soldier would've made. If the captain was killed, then we were all pretty much dead as well, especially since there were now only about ten more sailors on board the ship.

I fired two shots from my rifle, both hitting right below the zealot's helmet. Its shields absorbed the kinetic energy that the rounds gave out. I didn't care, I was already lunging towards the elite. I hit it below its shoulders, slamming it to the holo-table that was meant to be used as a miniature for battles planetside. I grabbed the elite's head and slammed it into the table hard, cracking the material slightly. The zealot decided to give me the backhand that its race seemed to be so fond of, but I was ready for it, I dodged even as I reached behind my back for my knife. As soon as its arm had flown over my head, I launched my arm upwards, hitting the elite's unshielded mouth with my knife. The blade actually went all the way through the elite's head. It looked slightly surprised before it died. I turned around. The sailor closest to the entrance was dead, face-first on his consoles, a pool of blood forming on the floor and vapor coming from his clothes. The second sailor met the same fate even as I un-holstered my pistol. Next in line was Layla. I let out five quick shots in the time it took the elite to shift his rifle. He didn't seem to be bothered by it, but his aim slipped, if only slightly. The next plasma shot went through the chair and hit Layla below her left shoulder. The elite now turned to face me. I emptied the rest of my magazine on its face, managing to drain its shields. Only then did another marine seem to understand what was going on in the bridge, and killed the ultra with a burst to the legs to bring it down and a double tap to the head, taking it out. I just zoned out for a moment, I watched as Layla, the only person I had cared for, really cared for since I left my home, bled out on her chair.

I took two quick steps towards her, and in the corner of my eyes I could make out marines pushing back a few lone elites. Pavel was firing his machine gun without stopping, no doubt killing tons of covvies, but the only thing I could focus on was that Layla was going to die. I grabbed her and gently put her down on the floor, even as the remaining marines killed the last enemy soldiers. She was looking at me, a look of accusation in her eyes. It was right then when I knew. I knew that she had seen me choose to shoot the elite that was targeting the captain over the one that shot her. She knew I had put her in second place, and she hated me for it.

"Set a course for the landing site of all the bumblebee pods Eliza," the captain ordered, there was shock and fear in his voice, but he wasn't loosing it just now.

I opened the case strapped to my thigh and pulled out the biofoam, I placed Layla on her side and rubbed it all over her burnt back. I could hear her moan with pain, she was in the brink of life and death, and she was still trying to appear strong, swallowing her pain.

"I'm so sorry," I told her, just as the pain became too much for her and she slipped into unconsciousness.