High Orbit above Ratattak, Separatist holdout, 9 BBY
Rok 'Talumee swerved his controls hard to his right side to avoid another burst of laser cannon fire, pulling his Seraph in between another pair of CCS cruisers and past, one of the thin fighters pursuing him tried to cut a corner to gain on him by flying extremely close to the Cruiser, while he and the other two pursuers took a long turn around. The Vulture droid that tried to get ahead of him was unsuspecting of how big the shield of the cruiser was, and smashed into it in a short lived fireball.
That's one down, Rok thought to himself, as he pushed his controls again to evade the remaining two. He had hoped to lure the pursuing fighters closer to the bottom of the cruiser so that the point defence of the ship could provide assistance, but glancing over to his display he saw over three dozen friendly contacts had the same idea, and in that area were four times as many enemy fighters. Getting involved into that mess while he was still being chased would be a death sentence.
Pushing his Seraph to the limits he continued to duck and weave through the chaotic dogfight that engulfed the void, narrowly avoiding the laser shots fired at his ship, using his shield to absorb what could not be evaded. He passed by another capital ship engagement, two Munificent's and a Providence class destroyer brutally battling with a CCS Cruiser and a SDV Corvette. Rok was focusing too much on his pursuers to pay heed to who was winning the engagement, as he began to figure out a plan.
Looking back on the chaos of the battlefield, he was terrified that he would not survive this battle, but also ecstatic to be part of such a glorious and hard-fought fight against the heretics, although he would never admit to the former.
But this chaos would not distract him, in fact it would help him. As more laser fire further depleted his shields, he saw an opportunity, one of the smaller Human ships, an ugly construct with jagged plates spreading out over the superstructure, and dark blue linings and an unfamiliar hexagonal symbol. It was a burning wreck, Plasma torpedoes having burned through it's thin centre, breaking it in half as it began to drift apart, unleashing debris and smoke in it's death throes.
Rok once again urged the fighter forward with all the speed it could muster, which was admittedly lacklustre compared to the smaller two chasing him, but he had enough distance to make it work. Slowing down just as he began to enter into the infant debris field, he immediately and with no regard for his surroundings urged the craft into a 180 degree turn, using his own inertia and all his power to turn the machine back the way he came before he was too late. Emerging out of the smoke once more, he found only a single machine heading towards him. He had no time to question where the other one went as the enemy fighter opened fire, his already battered shields breaking, and alarms blaring as he returned fire, for a few brief seconds neither hit the other, as they accelerated towards certain death.
But Rok was fortunate this time, he fired more accurately, and loudly breathed out when he passed by the exploding wreck that just a few moments ago was firing at him.
However, his fortune seemed to now waver, as his alarms blared once more he saw the remaining fighter that had disappeared while he was not looking, it had gone around and was now emerging from the smoke he himself had used to hide just a moment before. It wasted no time in catching up and began firing before Rok could even begin accelerating again. Rok realised he had no more options left, his shields were down, and would not recharge in time, his ship did not have the energy to lure the enemy into another trap, and he was out of ideas.
Rok internally recited a prayer to the Gods as his ship began to shake under the fire, and then it stopped.
He did not die though, opening his eyes, he realised the enemy ship had exploded, for a moment he was paralysed, dumbstruck, that maybe the Gods had intervened on his behalf. However, looking around revealed a disappointing reality, a friendly Banshee had saved his life, although it was commanded by a lowly Kig-Yar. While Rok did appreciate being saved, he had nothing but contempt for the Kig-Yar, and just by glancing back at the situation it was obvious he had abandoned the primary fight to save Rok, merely as an excuse to leave the battle himself. Rok had no gratefulness for cowardice, even if it did save him.
The Kig-Yar himself took the time to admire his own work and navigated closer to the wreckage of the the ship he had just shot down.
Likely looking for salvage, disgusting rodent. Rok thought to himself as he tried recalibrating his ships shields.
As the Kig-Yar examined the wreck, something began to move within the debris, some pressurised gas came hissing out into the void as what seemed like an inconsequential item on the wreckage came apart and started moving outwards. Rok realised these were more machines, tiny things with buzz saws, red eyes and yellow paint over it's shell like body. dozens of them immediately swarmed from the wreckage, latching on to the Kig-Yar's ship and began to cut away at it, pieces came off as the Kig-Yar began frantically manoeuvring, randomly trying to shake them off as he screamed from panic.
Rok muted his screaming using his console, the Kig-Yar had gotten selfish and was paying for it, he did not want to listen to the infernal shrieking of such a pathetic creature.
He had no time to dwell on this turn of fate, as a transmission came through his communications.
"All ships, prepare for Slipspace jump", Rumbled the message from the command ship.
Rok looked to the back of the covenant fleet, a squadron of ships that had disengaged themselves from the worse of the fighting were clearly about to enter Slipspace. This could be a great advantage in battles, and Fleet Master Vadamee' had used the ability to great effect in destroying Human fleets before, as Rok had personally witnessed. However, while it could be used to quickly end an already favourable fight or turn the tide of a pitched battle, in combat Slipspace jumps also carried great risk. The calculations needed to make such precise jumps were complicated and took time, and if a ship master misjudged the situation, he may find himself stuck in a ship to ship fight he could not win, without being able to escape.
Rok had heard stories of a battle from several years ago. A Jiralhanae clan chief who had landed his squadron of ships into the kill zone of several human ships, and he had paid bitterly for it, his fleet being nearly entirely destroyed before being able to escape. Rok did not for a second believe that Fleetmaster Vadamee would make such a careless mistake.
The Shadow of Intent, eight CCS-class cruisers and their accompanying escorts began their Slipspace jump, the wide portals opening to swallow the flotilla of ships. Rok observed that the Human fleet made no effort to reposition itself despite being clearly able to see the manoeuvre from their position, this confused him, as they were normally quick to adapt, and could not of possibly forgotten the Covenant's usage of the tactic. But Rok was beginning to believe that this Human group was not related to the "UNSC" that he was familiar with fighting, nothing he had seen today was something he had fought before.
Rok watched with anticipation as the final ship entered the small wormhole before it closed, only for another to open up directly in the middle of the enemy formation, the Humans were quick to shift their fire as the Covenant ships emerged, the Human lines being caught between the group they were already engaged with and the ones who had just appeared amongst them. The static back and forth quickly devolved into a decentralised knifefight, one where warships could not possibly miss their targets, and every manoeuvre could cause a fatal collision, several Covenant ships found themselves taking on too many enemies to handle at once and went down fighting. But for every Covenant ship that was lost for the Great Journey, many more Human ships found the righteous fire of the God's instruments.
Rok looked back to his controls to see that his shields had finally recalibrated, wasting no more time, he shot forth and into the fire of battle once more, ever eager to earn glory.
CAS Cruiser Shadow of Intent, high orbit over Rattatak
Thel Vadamee watched with satisfaction as the Human fleet began to dissolve, their organisation breaking apart just as quickly as the battle had begun. He looked to the status of the rest of his fleet, they were fighting for their lives, but with a distinct advantage. The enemy fighters still posed a problem, and one CCS cruiser became the target of their bombers, the Covenant fighter wings being too exhausted and stretched thin to cover it, the shields quickly broke as hundreds of proton torpedoes smashed against it, before melting into it's hull.
Thel did not need to look twice to know that that ship was irrecoverable. As it split along the "neck" of the ship, breaking apart under it's own weakened superstructure. Meanwhile another SDV corvette became the target of two human ships, it's shields broke after taking heavy punishment and shortly afterward an explosion blew out of it's side, a Turbolaser bolt had hit something volatile within the ship and the force of the blast began to push it away, spiralling out of control until it collided with another Human ship, the two met each other in a maelstrom of fire and metal, before exploding into a blinding explosion that left nothing behind.
This brutal exchange continued for another 3 minutes until all that was left was the Human flagship, battered but still defiant, it enjoyed its current position in the middle of the fight, allowing all its weapons to engage a target. However it was a pointless fight, the shields of the ship broke after a short battle, falling to the combined firepower of the Fleet of Particular Justice. A lucky shot with a plasma torpedo hit one of the hangars at the front, that hangar blew up in a spectacular fireball, crippling the enemy ship however the other hangar of the Lucrehulk was still very much open.
This would be used to great effect, as the rest of the fleet began to use more controlled firepower to destroy the flagships gun emplacement, dozens of Phantom and Spirit class dropships flew into the remaining hangar, and disembarked hundreds of troops.
Thel began issuing new orders now that the naval battle was won, the Luminary aboard his ship had been consulted, and had answered that no artefacts of the Gods were on this planet. As such, this planet would burn in righteous fire, as Thel began issuing orders to his fleet, they started to move around the planet into their appropriate patterns.
Meanwhile Thel received a notification that the boarding assault on the enemy flagship had begun.
Confederate Lucrehulk-Class Battleship Silent Shield, high orbit over Rattatak
Asum 'Sroam double checked his gear and his equipment, making sure his plasma sword, plasma rifle and energy shields were all working properly. He had been chosen to lead the boarding party of this Human ship, and although he knew it would hinder their success, he privately hoped the crew of this ship would put up more of a fight than he had just returned from on the planet. The doors to the Phantom opened, and he and his brother jumped out into the large hangar bay of the Human ship, and he was immediately disappointed by what greeted him, more mechanical husks seemed to be the response force of this ship.
Although, this disappointment quickly changed as he began to see what truly awaited him, hundreds of these seemingly disposable skeletal droids marching forward across this massive hangar. The hangar itself seemed to extend around the ring like ship and Asum could see no end in sight. What he also noticed was different types of machines at the front of the approaching mass he saw larger, more intimidating hulks moving towards him, one of them bashed aside a smaller droid that got in his way, before opening fire from a energy weapon built into it's wrist. The two sides clashed in the hanger, between the rigidness of the steel walls and against the cold infinite of the void.
Asum and his team moved up with the regular Covenant infantry, Unggoy rushed forth to meet the enemy, more intimidated by their Sangheili superiors than the army of metal ahead of them. The Covenant took cover behind crates and debris as B1 battle droids and Grunts alike fell in mass, one Unggoy kept trying to shoot his needler into an approaching B2, the needles breaking apart upen hitting the machine's armour, while it still advanced, firing casually into the Covenant positions. It finally took notice of the Unggoy's desperate attempts before grabbing the stubby alien by it's arm, lifting it up, it blasted a hole through the helpless Grunt, and threw it aside.
Another grunt, this one taking cover just behind the next stack of crates, became so panicked by the display, he armed two plasma grenades in both hands, and ran forward to meet the machines, exploding just as he got within arms reach of the B2 that killed his friend. The explosion killed the grunt and destroyed the larger machine and several of the weaker ones, but the battle continued largely unchanged.
The Phantoms that had landed them into the hangar began using their chin mounted plasma cannon, while Unggoy used the turrets at the doors to help turn the tide, eviscerating many Battle Droids. In response the B2's in the hanger ceased their advance and began firing their wrist mounted rockets into the dropships, destroying a couple that took too many rockets, causing them crash down into the hanger floor, turning a chaotic firefight into a bloody slog, the Covenant paying a bitter price to secure the hangar.
An unsustainable price, Asum thought to himself, he did however know what would help this situation. Checking his tactical map while his team covered him, he did the Sangheili equivalent of a grin as he saw the heavy reinforcements were about to arrive, looking back to the hangar entrance he saw the Phantom he wanted most arriving, it too was shot at with rockets, but not enough to ground it, it quickly opened its doors and out of it jumped two massive beasts of war, the Mgalekgolo had arrived, and they immediately began breaking the Human lines. Using their enormous weight and incredible strength, they smashed and crushed what droids got in their way, and blew up those that were too far with their plasma cannons.
Asum had the pleasure of watching them work, the fire they drew allowed his team to destroy dozens of Machines, even the Unggoy were making a dent in the enemy's numbers. Asum watched a new type of machine march though the hangar, this one was big as well, roughly the size of a Wraith tank. It moved with four legs and in the centre of it's spider like body was a head with a massive cannon on top of it, it fired upwards, destroying a Spirit dropship as it hit with the impact of a tank round, causing it to spiral out of control. The spider droid was cumbersome however, and the Mgalekgolo quickly found it, one of them surprising it by smashing through a pile of boxes to it's right. It brought it's shield down on the leg of the machine, breaking it and causing it to fall, the Mgalekgolo then put it's foot on the machine's cannon, stopping it from turning as it fired it's plasma cannon into it's head point blank, executing it.
Using the Hunters to push through, they quickly ended the fight, soon leaving the Hangar mostly empty, as Elite minors and Unggoy dealt with what machines were left in the hangar. Asum took his team and the Mgalekgolo out of the hangar into a new trick. A maze of seemingly identical hallways, Asum quickly rechecked where they were in the ship, judging by where the bridge was likely to be, Asum made an educated guess as to which way to go. Directing his team and the Mgalekgolo further into the ship they advanced through the obnoxiously repetitive hallways. After moving about 100 metres down the same hallway, they finally found some more resistance.
Dozen's more of the disposable machines marched forward towards them, firing in mass at Asum's team, the Mgalekgolo moved to the front and began absorbing the fire, using their cannons to destroy the approaching formation. However while they were doing that, door's on their right and left flank flew open, and Asum's Elites found another type of machine come rushing in. Over twenty droids, similar to the disposable ones came running, a quick glance revealed they were of much better quality than the more common skeletal machines he had fought already. These ones began shooting while running, faster than any Human soldier he had fought. Two of them were hit by the Elites before getting close, one of them falling over into a burning heap, the other was briefly knocked back, but quickly restabilised itself, a scorch mark in it's torso.
The Commando droids fell upon the Elites, Asum activated his Energy sword and quickly lashed out at one that ran at him with a crude looking blade. But it jumped up and over him before he made contact, and made a strike of it's own, it's blade bouncing harmlessly off of Asum's shield, but that would not save him against repeated strikes. Turning around he pulled out his plasma pistol and engaged the droid again, it was fast, if it was an organic enemy, Asum would've called it's strikes and dodges a superior form. But the fact it was a machine became glaringly apparent, it's movements too choreographed, and it's pattern too obvious. Asum waited until it would leap back to dodge his strike, only to not make the stirike and instead shoot it in the head with an overcharged plasma shot.
It crumpled to the ground, making mechanical whirs and a final attempt to strike Asum as it collapsed.
But Asum was disappointed to see the rest of his team having trouble, one of his brothers found himself fighting three of the machines at once. He was unable to fight against so many at once, and his shields broke from the constant strikes, the machines proceeded to carve through him, their Vibroblades making short work of the armour and flesh underneath it, Asum was furious to see one of his Elites fall in a pit of his own blood and began firing wildly after them.
Around him the fight continued, some of the droids focused on hopping away and firing out of reach, bouncing between walls and the floor. Most of the Machines began to fall however, either to the Elite's focused fire or the superior melee knowledge of the warriors. Asum finally got close enough to one of them and cut it down with his energy sword after shooting it in the leg.
Around him the fight with the Commando droids finally came to an end, and Asum was furious, five of his brothers, who he had personally commanded on many missions were now dead, and to Machines no less, the dishonourable nature of their deaths made him angry and he vowed he would cut the head off of the captain of this ship. Moving forward with new vigour, he commanded the Mgalekgolo to charge forward, they had been unable to help in the fight against the Commandos, due to the distracting droids at the front, but now they gleefully stood up and charged. The Hunter's effortlessly smashed the Human lines and dismantled the defensive chokepoints.
This continued and Asum led his brothers forward with ease, stepping through the broken remains of Human mechs. However before reaching the bridge a new trap was sprung, suddenly a wall of light appeared between the Hunters who had gotten ahead and the Sangheili who lagged behind, a hard shield that Elites and Hunters, after firing for a short time could not break through with force, Asum watched as yet another new machine appeared, it moved fast by... rolling of all things, the Hunters began to fire at it as it appeared on their side but before they were hit, it stopped and unfolded, deploying a visible shield around the machine, which protected the the machine from the fire. Asum realised how bad this was as five more of the machines appeared from the surrounding hallways and doors.
They quickly deployed and began to open fire on the Mgalekgolo from all angles, the one weakness of the Hunters, their weak rear armour, was now forced to the forefront as all angles of the Hunters came under fire. Asum quickly directed his team to find another way around to help the Mgalekgolo.
The Hunters themselves held on as long as they could, firing on the Droideka's and destroying three of them with direct blasts, but the Hunters began to lose strength as members of their colonies died. until eventually, one of the Mgalekgolo lost too many and collapsed, dying then and there. The other one, feeling the death of it's sister colony went into a blinding rage. Screaming in a way no creature made of worms should and ran forward faster than a beast that big should be able to, it brought down it's shield and crushed the Droideka in front of it with enough force to break the floor. The enraged Mgalekgolo then turned around and began sprinting after the other two, they both folded back up and rolled away down a hallway. The Hunter wasted no time in chasing them.
Asum finally came around just in time to see it running away, seeing it's dead partner, He realised he would have no luck in calming it down and that it was best to let it go. turning back down the hallway, he led his team towards the bridge yet again, this time finding no more resistance along the way. One of his brothers placed a plasma charge on the door and the team took positions to breach through. The charge exploded and his team charged in, finding a scant dozen battle droids inside to fight back, they fell after a quick firefight. Asum was slightly shocked by what he saw, inside were the command crew of the ship, they were not Human, but they looked disgustingly similar to Humans.
They had a sort of grey and brown skin, and lacked many of the facial features of the Human's but they were roughly the same size and shape as Humans. They made motioning signals with their hands and desperately uttered out foul sounding words he did not understand. But it was clear they were trying to surrender to him
How dare they? Was Asum's internal reaction to this display, they had killed five of his honourable battle brothers, they had used dishonourable AI and metal abominations to fight like cowards instead of facing him themselves, they had defied the Covenant and now they were stupid enough to ask for surrender. Despite being heretics, the Humans he had fought before understood there was no surrender. They were vermin to be hunted down and exterminated, but when judgement came for them they did not whimper away begging to be spared.
Asum did not need to think twice to make his decision, turning off his energy sword he walked towards them, when they started to whimper off some more words he didn't listen to, he grabbed the closest one and slammed his head into the wall hard enough to cave in his skull. The rest of the crew began to usher away, desperately trying to back away from the enraged Sangheili. Asum did not stop and continued to kill them with his bare hands, these near human creatures were cowards, and not one tried to fight back, making Asum feel pathetic killing them this way.
After a couple minutes of this one sided melee Asum stopped to look back at his remaining Elites, who had began milling around the bridge looking for anything useful to bring back to the fleet. Asum left the broken bodies behind him and walked to the centre of the room, a table with a holographic display. Most of it was dedicated to the battlefield outside, which now had declined to a few straggling starfighters. Asum looked to another portion of it, he didn't dare touch heretic technology, but simply examining the side of the holotable he could see what looked like a map of the Galaxy.
On the map was a yellow dot indicating which system they were in, that seemed correct to his knowledge of interstellar travel, this planet was rather out of the way for a Human colony, on the edge of the Orion Arm. However the rest of the map didn't make any sense to him, he saw dots and names he had never heard before spread throughout the galactic map, with the only areas without any dots being in the portion of the galaxy actually explored in the galactic "west", including areas already cleansed of Human worlds. Asum picked a dot with a name at random: "Mon Calamari".
Upon seeing this Asum immediately stopped reading and ignored the entire display, it was obviously a trick, a misdirect by the humans, perhaps it had sensed that he was not Human, or whatever this subspecies was. Asum wasn't extremely familiar with Human culture, but he had heard enough shouted insults by their soldiers to know what "Calamari" was, and that it was somehow connected to "squid" a common insult Human's used to refer to his species.
Asum pulled out his own communicator, contacting the Shadow of Intent.
CAS Assault Carrier Shadow of Intent, High orbit over Rattatak
Thel watched the tactical display on his command bridge, his fleet was nearly in position to begin glassing the planet. He received a Communication from the leader from the boarding party. accepting it, he was interested to see if anything had been gained from the action.
"Fleet Master, the critical parts of the ship have been secured, but I regret to inform you that we have taken heavy casualties and no useful information has been found, just an odd species of sub species of human was commanding the ship" Asum announced, rather timidly compared to when he received orders to begin boarding the ship.
Thel sighed, the news of a until now undiscovered sub species of human was intriguing, but hardly ground-breaking, it did not change what would have to happen to the humans.
"Understood Major, withdraw from the ship and return to the Shadow of Intent" Thel Commanded.
"Yes Fleet Master" Responded Asum, and the comm went dead.
Thel resumed his observation of the Human planet, the Luminary did not detect anything on the planet of worth, and as such there was only one thing to do with it, taking a breath and rechecking the patterns he had ordered to be carved into it. Thel steeled himself and began his command to end the planet's way of life.
"All ships, begin the cleansing!". He demanded of all shipmasters in his fleet.
The planet itself was moderately populated, with mostly coastal cities, the planet had a population of over 70 million, most would die within the first hours of the glassing. However, many local ship captains, from private freighters to deep space mining vessels quickly realised just how much danger the new invading fleet posed.
As many as could reach their ship tried to escape, the motley collection of backwater civillian ships desperately trying to escape the Covenant advance, Banshees and Covenant picket ships pursued them. The chase resulted in hundreds more ships being destroyed that day, with only a handful escaping to hyperspace.
Within hours, the Covenant reduced Rattatak to a molten ball of superheated glass, what was once a bustling trade node on the edge of the unknown regions and home to one of the last pockets of the Separatist alliance became a debris field orbiting a dead world. Nothing but dust and echoes.
To be continued...
Okay that is chapter 2 done. I hope you guys enjoyed, I am sorry if there was any glaring grammatical errors as I was rushed to get this out, I actually typed this out in the passenger seat of a long car ride. I will get around to properly proof reading this and fixing any issues soon.
So just some details I wanted to share:
Rattatak (not to be confused with Rakata from KOTOR, which is mistake I made at the start of writing this story) is near Endor and Bakura and one of the last stops before the south end of the unknown regions, which is where I have decided to place the Orion arm/the Covenant and the UNSC. is it a perfect place for them? not really, but I want to stress this is within the same galaxy.
There really isn't any business in a Separatist holdout this big still existing this long into the Galactic Empire, so i may have stretched that a bit.
The bridge crew of the Lucrehulk were all Nemoidians, not that Asum would know that.
Rok 'Talumee and Asum 'Sroam are both characters I have made up by combining random Sangheili names, Asum is from the same house/clan/family as N'tho 'Sroam from Halo 3 (one of the co op playable characters) but he isn't as pro human as N'tho is said to be. I haven't decided his exact relation to N'tho yet.
And that's all the trivia I feel is worth mentioning, Sorry if the quality dropped off a bit in this one. I do want to thank you guys for reading this, I expected about 20 people at most to click on this, but according to the traffic stats I got around 500 people reading this story, which is a very pleasant surprise, so again, thank you.
This story will mainly be a war/politics focussed one about the Empire stumbling into the Human-Covenant war, so it may be a bit star wars centric for the first half at least, this separatist holdout fighting the covenant is really the prologue to that story, and I am happy that I got that part done, because now I can focus on what the story is about. Consider this my action packed introduction.
I do have big plans related to the Empire and the Covenant, so I am slightly worried I will unintentionally sideline the UNSC a bit, I will try to avoid it but honestly idk exactly how this story will play out, I do have a plan and an ending in mind, but how I get there will be decided story arc by story arc.
Thank you all again and please leave reviews to help me improve.
See ya next time
