Chapter 1 – Escape from Reach
The Covenant fleet was glassing the Planet Reach. Amidst the chaos, Task force meant to carry out operation Red Flag was attempting to escape and prepping to go to slip-space. The commander of the fleet was the Captain Jacob Keyes while Admiral Kovalic was critically injured and in the Med bay with doctors trying to save his life. The burning remains of Admiral Freemont's Sector One Fleet floating behind the
(1600 hours/ September 19 2552/ UNSC Cruiser Lyonesse/ location Epsilon Eridani System)
On board in the Spartan area Dr Halsey was helping Noble Two Kat B-320 repair her cybernetic arm after it was damaged by a covenant sniper. This left her un able to use it. To keep the parts where they were, they had magnetised a small plate of metal and placed each part of the arm that they removed onto it so they could begin repairs. At the same time the rest of the Spartans were sat down cleaning and preparing their equipment for the next mission. Every so often they would here the distinctive Thump. Thump. of the M66 sentry autocannons.
Somewhere else in the ship, the medical team were trying to keep Admiral Kovalic alive. During the surgery, there was a series of glancing hits to the ship. Because of these glancing hits the damage to the Admiral became so bad that he would later die before reaching any sort of hospital.
Once in orbit, Keyes began to try and get the fleet out of the system to a random location but keeping them together so if they were tracked, they would have a fighting chance at getting as many people home as possible. The Tannenberg had just linked up with the fleet and Spartan blue team as well as the few marines rescued from Gamma station, were en route to the Lyonesse. Once the dropship was aboard the Lyonesse, they were told to wait there until they had dropped out.
"Cortana, I need the Fleet to stick together to ensure we can have a fighting chance against covenant forces pursuing us.
"No but I can send them the coordinates to jump to." Cortana proposed.
"Do it, if we split up, we will be completely destroyed." Keyes agreed.
Once they were away from the planet Cortana had each of the ship board AIs input the coordinates and begin the jump. The Fleet began to attempt to pull away from the Fleet of Particular Justice and make a safe jump to an unknown system. "Cortana, ensure that every ship has completed the Cole Protocol. I don't want the ships to be caught and the Covenant to capture us before we are able to complete it." Keyes said
"All ships have completed the Cole Protocol Captain. Should we be caught and our ships crash, the only way the Covenant will find Earth s by stumbling on it or by capturing an AI, I have a plan should we need to stop such a possibility from occurring.
As the ships were jumping, Covenant plasma fire struck the each of the ship's particle accelerators.
"Sir the slip-space portals have become unstable." Cortana said as the lighting and monitors started to smoke and spark.
Just as the Captain was about to order that they drop out of slip-space, the exit portal opened. In the middle of space, the multiple slip-space portals opened and spewed out the small fleet of ships. Their sensors then immediately came to life.
(1625 hours/ September 19 2552/ UNSC Cruiser Lyonesse/ Location Unknown.)
"Captain, we have a fleet of ships to our port side. There are three capital ships with fighters and escort craft. They have begun to charge weapons and the shields have been raised." Cortana reported.
"Order the fleet to bring the MACs online. Have the frigates and destroyers target the escort craft and fighters while the cruisers target their capital ships." Keyes ordered.
The ship began to vibrate a bit as plasma fire hit the Titanium A armour of the hulls.
"Very high yield plasma weaponry. However, damage is not too bad, there are sections of ships being breached but their accuracy is quite poor this means we are not hit by too much fire and will sustain less damage. It seems that their plasma isn't guided like that of the covenant's plasma torpedoes. From the scan I got of their ships before they raised their shields, the ship designs are not utilising all the space to create an extremely structurally sound spaceframe. The armour plating is more akin to an outer skin of the ship and its defensive capabilities are limited to the shields, support craft and their Plasma cannons. However, the shields are very powerful and will require a very co-ordinated strike by all our ships." Cortana analysed quickly
"Order the fleet to line up their MACs on the first ship and are to fire their MACs in three round bursts, then I want the Autumn to fire all of its Archer and Shiva missiles." Keyes ordered over the battle net.
As the fleet lined up on the first of the unidentified warships, the first of the fighters came into range of the point defence turrets. once in range all the M910 Point defence guns fired at the fighter swarm and the UNSC fighters began to fire their ASGM-10 missiles into the swarm. Less than a minute later, the fighter swarm had lessened to an extent where the dogfighting was more or less even.
The MAC barrage of 36 MAC rounds flew down range towards the first ship and slammed into the shields. the shredder capability of the rounds somewhat helped in reducing the shields to the point where after the first five of the thirty-six missiles from the Autumn caused the shields to collapse and the other 31 missiles flew in. One of the Archers hit the bridge sending the ship out of control and smashing into the shields of the warship next to it and exploded in a massive fireball.
"Switch targets to the ship with the weakened shields but order that only the MACs are to be used." Keyes ordered. The next ship to receive MAC fire had 30 MAC rounds hitting her shields. because of the shields being weakened, the next ship had its shields dropped by one of the MAC rounds and the next five or so rounds shredded though the ship and hit the main reactor. This caused another massive explosion.
The bombers, seeing what was happening were attempting attack runs on the cruisers. These were intercepted by the Rampart M-910 guns and some of the Nandao fighters. However, a few of the bombers got through and managed to score a few hits onto the cruisers. One of these hits knocked one of the Red Wall's secondary reactors offline.
"Captain, we have one enemy Capital ship remaining. The reports are that the In Amber Clad and Tannenberg are attempting to engage the fighters and allow for more of our fighters to engage the bombers. The Red Wall has lost on of her secondary reactors so is will be reduced in her rate of MAC fire but her Spitfires, Sentries, Archers and Shivas are still mostly operational. We are down from 30 MAC rounds per Salvo to 27 rounds per salvo. As such we will have to use more missiles." Cortana reported.
"Order the ships that can to fire their MACs at the remaining warship as well as all ships are to fire their Archer, Shiva, Hyperion and Streak missiles." Keyes ordered.
Seconds later, 21 of the 27 MAC rounds flew towards the capital ship as well as 816 missiles flew towards the last ship. The MAC rounds weakened the shields somewhat. But, when the first hundred or so Archer and Shiva missiles hit the shields, they dropped. The remaining seven hundred missiles utterly destroyed the ship.
After that all available energy was diverted to the destruction of the fighters and bombers. Half an hour later, all enemy forces were destroyed.
"All enemy forces destroyed sir." Cortana
'That was a tough battle to be sure' Keyes thought to himself. "Have the fleet set course for the Sol system and Earth. Earth is going to need every single ship we can get our hands on to defend Earth. we have some useful new equipment on board our fleet that could help Earth's survival, so we better get there fast." Keyes said.
"Yes Captain." Cortana replied.
The slip-space portals opened and the fleet accelerated into slip-space on course for earth leaving the debris field of alien ships.
A/N: For the Missile count, there are 32 Archer missile pods and four Shiva missiles on each of the cruisers (Halopedia-PoA), The Paris Class have 26 Archer pods and 3 Shiva Silos, The Stalwarts have 16 Archer and 76 Streak missile pods, The Charons have 50 Archer pods and 3 Hyperion Missile Silos and the destroyers have 26 Archer pods and 3 Shiva missiles. The total of each firing one archer and streak per pod and all the Hyperion's and Shivas equates to 816 missiles. other than the cruisers all the numbers are in the 2022 Halo Encyclopedia. Edited 18/01/2023