9BBY (Before Battle of Yavin), Rattatak System, Separatist Holdout

Along the metal lanes of crude walkways and narrow entrances, Asum 'Sroam peeked ahead of the corner and ahead he saw more of the robotic skeletal frames that he had already burned dozens of today, they had given up their previous strategy of mindlessly walking forwards with intersecting arcs of fire. A strategy that might've worked, had they been fighting Unngoy or Young Jiralhanae, but they were faced by a Sangheli Spec Ops team, and were quickly gunned and cut down. However, now the Automatons were massing at narrow entryways, in this labyrinth of a facility, and were spacing themselves a meter or two apart to avoid multiple machines falling to one strike.

This changed Asum's suspicions that the commander of these lifeless heretical husks was directing them from somewhere, and he would report such to his fleet master when he was done here, if he did not find this Human himself. This place screamed Human to him, from the flimsy, yet ergonomic way their opponents were built, to the simplistic design of these never-ending hallways.

What was by far the strangest however was the Machines the Humans sent, he had fought Humans on dozens of worlds, and had had led raids on almost as many Human Facilities. He was familiar with the Human's, how weak their Armour was to plasma fire, how easily their legs, arms and heads came apart, like pulling apart a crayfish almost. Yet, he had not seen a single human today, only these... Things.

He signaled to his brothers, all of them veteran Sangheli, who had killed many a human warrior, and more than a few of their "Helljumpers", the ones who rode into battle conveniently packed into metal coffins, and he quietly yearned to fight a Demon, although he had seen none. His Squad Received his signal, engaging their active camouflage and moving forward, towards the unsuspecting machines.

Within moments the Sangheli Warriors fell upon the Battle droids and tore them apart with Energy Swords and Plasma Rifles, a few reacted quickly, opening fire, but failing to break the shields of the few they hit, and some of the Machines even seemed to react with fear, panicking and pushing aside other droids to get away, but after a brief and pointless struggle, they were pieces of scrap on the floor.

Now that another chokepoint was clear, Asum proceeded forward with his brother, reaching what appeared to be the control room of the planetary shield. Asum destroyed a couple of obviously non-combat, wheeled Machines, moved forward to set the plasma charges to detonate the facility that had been protecting the Human planet from the Fleet of Particular Justice and motioned his brothers to withdraw.

He checked his time, it had been 23 minutes since he and his brother had begun the assault on this facility, and since then he had only destroyed these frail machines, he had not seen them before on other Human worlds, and as he examined the smoking remains of one in front of him, its circuits still sputtering.

Asum lifted its arm up reluctantly, as if touching the heretical machine may make him sick and, he was disappointed. This machine was weak and frail, unlike most of the equipment the Humans used, which was primitive, but rigid.

This was the first time he had seen the Humans employ such cowardly tactics, although he was aware of their usage of unholy AI's, Asum had never heard of them being used directly like this, and the weapons he had seen were of concern. These small weapons, roughly the size of a plasma rifle, were energy weapons, that much was indubitable.

This new information confirmed what the presence of the planetary shield he and his team had been sent to destroy had already hinted at. The Humans were adapting, this was now obvious to him, which both concerned and excited him.

On one side, the Humans, despite their heresy and treacherous tactics, were indeed tenacious. Although their weapons were generally primitive, and their kind condemned by the Gods, Asum had an unspoken respect for them, but he was mostly disgusted by their very nature.

He and his 17 other brothers had come with the rest of the Fleet of Particular Justice, on it's warpath to find more Human worlds, from which they would cleanse the Vermin. Here, on this planet that intelligence had yet to identify, they had indeed found a settlement that was undeniably Human, but even from the start of this battle it had been obvious to the Sangheili that something was different.

The first difference he was aware of was the ships they encountered, upon exiting Slipspace the Human ships immediately moved towards them and seemed to begin a holding pattern of all things, rather than the standard Human defence of withdraw and engage from distance. But it wasn't just their behaviour that was odd, the ships themselves were all unusual, and not one was one they had seen before, and they all used almost exclusively energy weapons, with surprisingly sparing use of missiles.

The Fleet of Particular Justice opened fire on these Humans once they were in range, and was met with disappointing results, these ships were also shielded, and beckoned forth a swarm of seemingly cheap and robotic fighters. This left the Fleet momentarily stunned, for they had never seen Humans like this, the ships themselves were varied, and strange, the largest being a round ring surrounding a smaller sphere, more like a small space station, albeit one that was mobile, and spat out fighter wings at a sickeningly impressive rate, it now seemed to act as the flagship of the Human fleet, along with 5 smaller, cigar shaped ships, slightly larger than a Corvette, but absolutely an issue, as well as over 20 slightly smaller jagged looking ships, that looked especially cheap in their construction. These ships engaged the Fleet of Particular Justice in a rare fight that was not a fighting retreat on the part of the Humans.

But that fight was over a hundred thousand kilometres in orbit above and was not the focus of Asum. Asum regained his train of thought and discarded the hand of the lifeless machine, looking briefly at its weapon, before dismissing it. It was heresy to touch a Human weapon without an order by a Prophet, and although the honour-less Jiralhanae might ignore that Edict, he would not.

Asum motioned his team back the way they came, and after encountering no further resistance boarded their phantom to depart this wretched planet. Their mission was complete, the planetary shield which protected this planet came as a shock, as once again the Humans had never used this technology before, and many dropships and all drop pods deployed to the planet crashed in a rapid explosion as they collided against it. Hundreds of noble Sangheili warriors dead to the Humans before even entering atmosphere, however, the Huragok, after being consulted on this new obstacle, declared that a ship moving slowly enough would be able to pass through, and indeed they were correct.

After making atmospheric entry his team assaulted the shield generator complex, and now here they were, departing from their holy work. He had many, many questions about what he had seen this day, but for now they would have to wait, as the Phantom began its ascent towards the Fleet, he began calling Fleet Master Thel Vadamee, to inform him of the success.

The holographic display that lit up scattered itself a few times while creating the image, but soon he was looking directly at Supreme Commander Thel Vadamee. His golden armour resplendent and glorious even through the hazy communication.

"Report Major", Came Vadamee's immediate order.

"The shield will be down in moments Fleet Master, we encountered only Mechs". Answered Asum, he believed that was the Human word for such Machines, not that it mattered.
"Very good Major", Vadamee seemed to pause for a moment before issuing his next order. "Return to the Shadow of Intent and prepare for a boarding action"

"As you command Fleet Master" was his simple response. He waited until the communication went dead, and then turned back to the now closing doors of his Phantom as it entered high atmosphere. As he watched the purple hue that signified the explosion of the facility they had just raided. As the purple explosion gave way to simple flames, this world got a taste of the judgement to come.

Asum grinned as fire consumed the building, savoring the feeling as the hatch closed.

Shadow of Intent CAS class Carrier, in orbit above Rattatak

Thel Vadamee sat in the centre of the command bridge of the Shadow of Intent, his crew around him working furiously, they were all eager to win this battle, as they were with any battle, especially against humans. However, this was the first time they had encountered Humans like these, their ships were shielded, and their fighters, seemed to be more numerous, and strange then he had seen before.

A Banshee-class fighter chose that moment to zoom past his view of the battle, quickly followed by two slightly larger craft, with thin chassis and curved forward facing wings with what seemed to be a head on the middle.

Thel paid little attention to the passing craft as he resumed his command of the battle, motioning through the holographic display to examine the enemy ships once more. The enemy flagship, a round structure clearly not designed for warfare, was maintaining position, the weirdly designed and unfamiliar curvature of the enemy ships led Thel to privately suspect that these Humans were not of the same group he had been waging war against.

The Fleet or Particular Justice continued its barrage of the enemy fleet, as purple lances and red bolts flew past each other, smashing against various ship's shields. One CCS commanded by an inexperienced shipmaster underestimated the incoming fire and bore the brunt of the enemy assault. Its shields buckled, staggered and then finally shattered as hundreds of Turbolaser blasts poured into its hull, soon leaving a broken, half melted wreck drifting out of formation.

Several other cruisers however took advantage of the distracted enemy ships burning a path through the enemy lines with Energy Projectors and Plasma Torpedoes. Smashing through the shields and crashing into the hulls of three Munificient class frigates, their fragile hulls breaking apart and disintegrating.

Thel quietly grimaced at this sight, while the junior Shipmaster was almost certainly dead and his ship effectively disabled if not destroyed, it would not be participating in the battle either way. But this skirmish did reveal a weakness in the enemy lines.

The way they were lined out, their formations allowing for arcs of intersecting fire, and the flagship in a position where it could shrug off most attacks and command its swarms of fighters. He realised that this new enemy likely had little knowledge of his fleet or their abilities, which meant he could pull them apart with a simple trick.

Thel ordered his crew to begin calculations as another covenant fighter, a Seraph flew past, this one being pursued by three more fighters.

To be continued.