Elster sat calmly aboard the Pelican, listening to the coms between the Frigate and the Sabre squadron. Uneasily, the woman lifted up her assault rifle and looked it over, before murmuring something to herself as more images of the old played in her mind. She swore, she needed to get herself checked the moment they arrived back anywhere near Eusan space. Her head hadn't been right since she first laid her fingers on a rifle here.

She slid the weapon back onto its magnetic lock on her armor's back, then stood up and started rifling through the supplies on the nets above their seats. One of the Marines aboard(because these were apparently Marines) asked her, "Something up, Sarge? You're lookin' awful uneasy, even behind that void-sealed suit..." and he paused as he saw her retrieve a machete off the top rack of the Pelican's storage. She hummed, clipped it to her belt and sighed as she saw a sudden switch of the troopers' expressions to fear.

"If we're going Close Quarters, I figure I need something bigger than a knife..." Elster replied. She sat herself down and scanned the troop bay of the Pelican, uneasy still. Images of a similar drop bay, filled with infantry clad in black uniforms, resolved ahead of her. It was blurry, but less so than previous memories. The soldiers themselves looked back at her, their faces invisible behind the armored helmets bearing the three stars of Eusan on their foreheads.

She felt a light tap on her shoulder and turned to see what her HUD only tagged as 'Fwb. Seo, A. INR-SA52514'. Alina. The girl's two visor ports were opaque, but even behind them, Lilith could see the scarlet eyes of her beloved and the creases of a small smile. The two nodded to each-other, Lilith remaining her usual stern self even as she was aware the thunder of anti-air artillery could soon break the awkward silence aboard the dropship.

She blinked. Elster did. Shaking her head, the girl looked again to the seat next to her to see a female technician working on making sure the data for the detonator was properly in place. Elster suddenly felt a pit in her stomach, however. She suddenly felt the entire place shudder, grabbing onto her crash seat. She looked to the pilot and yelled demandingly, "What the hell was that?!"

"Plasma charges are hitting the Savannah! The enemy's still got their main guns up!" The pilot reported, clearly worried for their own well-being, "We should be getting the all-clear from Noble Six soon, though!"

"Good..." Elster nodded. She stood up from her seat again and walked up to the cockpit to regard the hangar of the Paris-class frigate as a slew of activity went on, with the deck crews moving supply crates left and right and securing them in place so that the sudden depressurization didn't suck them all out. The workers soon left through the main doors and elevators, allowing the hangar to depressurize. With the Pelican sealed, however, the Replika and her comrades needed to worry very little in that regard.

She turned to the pilot and co-pilot and asked them, "Maybe dip low when we come out. Less risk of getting hit, I think..." to which the Pilot offered a simple nod. Elster paused as she heard Noble Six and the Colonel give the green light, before she nodded back to the pilot and co-pilot before going to strap herself in. Sitting down and pulling the metallic harness down to hold herself in place, the girl felt a pit in her stomach as the Pelican dropped out of the bottom of the frigate's bay.

She could see through the cockpit the two similarly-sized vessels exchanging cannon fire. The corvette's plasma batteries charged and shot, three wisps of plasma slamming into the side of the warship and cutting through the layers of Titanium alloy like a hot knife through butter. The aircraft veered right, toward the amidships section of the Corvette, with Elster connecting to Six over com and telling him, "Hope those shields are down, Six. We're coming in with the package."

A package that was several hundred megatons' worth of explosives, not to mention reality-defying bullshit, strapped into a neat and terrifying package that tended to rip ships out of realspace, toss them through Hell and then return them to another point with sometimes weird adverse effects like early or late arrivals. Elster needed to remind herself these people had probably discovered the most terrifying way to go Faster-Than-Light so far.

Sure, she'd seen speculative research during her early days at AEON, just prior to being sent to the 512, about producing an FTL drive based on the concept of Warp, but that damn thing would be more expensive than anyone thought and they probably wouldn't waste it on a Penrose ship. More likely to be strapped to a Generation Ship than a Scout Vessel.

She sighed as she felt the vehicle pass through the energy field of the central hangar. A prick of electricity coursed through the hull of the Gunship and through her own body, even through armor, followed by the sensation of equalizing pressures. The aircraft touched down and Elster stood up first, drawing her rifle off her back and dismounting with the Marines.

The UNSC forces formed a perimeter around the Pelican, with Elster stepping off toward Six as the Spartan descended toward them, before the two bumped fists nigh-instinctively. Elster said, "Thanks for the clear road. Was starting to think we'd get sunk with the Savannah..." as she depolarized her visor to offer Noble Six a smirk. She was feeling a little more confident. So far, so good, she thought.

Six shook his head, "Nah. We need our bombmaker alive. Plus, your girlfriend would've probably killed me if I let you die."

Elster snorted, then looked back to the bomb. She radioed, "Colonel Holland, this is Seven. Package is aboard and we're green to go..." as she walked over to the energy shield separating them from the void. She peered through it at the carrier hanging in low orbit several thousand kilometers away from them. The exchange of fire between the frigate continued, with more and more of the Savannah's armor being stripped away by the boiling hot plasma.

"Copy that, Sergeant. That means we're moving on to phase two..." Holland said proudly. Audible was the noise of typing on a keyboard "Six, take a fireteam and move up to the bridge. You'll have to manually initiate the refueling sequence. Once you do that, we're on track for the delivery."

"Copy that, sir," Six racked the bolt of his assault rifle after reloading, then motioned to a trio of Marines. The soldiers hefted their weapons and nodded approvingly, marching up to Six.

Holland then continued, "Seven, you and the rest of the Marines stay with the bomb... And discourage the curious..."

Elster hefted a Jackhammer rocket launcher out of one of the supply boxes brought out by the Marines. She stated, "They'll have a welcome party unlike any other waiting for'em, sir..." as she polarized and opacified her visor again. She turned to the Pelican, then paused and called out, "Six..." causing the Spartan to turn around. She offered a concerned, warm "Stay safe."

"You, too," The man nodded, then motioned for his Marines to follow him. Elster motioned to her Marines to form up and, once they did, she started making various hand signals, pointing out where each of them should move and take cover. Ranging from various outcroppings in the main LZ to the damaged remains of some specialized Covenant equipment and the hull of the Pelican, the Marines spread out evenly, ready to greet any oncoming Covenant troops.

Elster hummed and hefted the launcher properly onto her shoulder, scanning the place as her motion tracker pinged the half-dozen Marines around her and the Techs working on the bomb to ensure the detonator worked on a proper timer. She swallowed empty, feeling her biomechanical heart start to race. She shifted on her feet, making sure her weight remained evenly distributed, before clicking her tongue and licking her lips.

She felt as if she was sweating, but Replikas didn't have sweat glands. They only had the really important, major organs like hearts, stomachs and lungs, plus a large circulatory system meant to keep their Oxidant pumping through their bodies to allow them to operate properly. Still, that, too, felt like it was moving much faster. To the point a small warning displayed in her own eyes, the HUD of her OS telling her of various minor issues and overlapping with the UNSC suit's HUD...

She blinked away her own body's warnings as she saw a scarlet dot appear. She hefted the launcher and aimed toward the door it was coming from and activated the weapon's SmartScope. She squinted and heard the Marines shift their aim. The door pinged, then slid apart in its own, alien way, revealing two Platoons of grunts, a squad of Jackal marksmen and a trio of Elite Ultras, the white-armored, well-trained menaces of the common Covenant armies.

Elster wasted no time. The two rockets of the launcher left the tubes, trailing plumes of smoke as they danced through the air toward the formation of Aliens. Two of the Elites and a good chunk of Grunts managed to dodge the hit, but the first strike was devastating. The Elite Ultra in the middle and his retinue of Grunts caught the brunt of the blast, the Elite itself vaporizing as its dwarf troops died to the shockwave.

The Replika dropped the launcher, drew her assault rifle and sprinted toward the nearest point of cover as the first of the Jackals' shots rang out by her head, digging into the floor of the ship. Plasma rounds struck around them, hitting the same alien alloy they had as armor and heating, but not quite melting it. Elster poked out alongside a Marine and opened up on the Covvies as their DMR-wielding comrades focused on thinning out the Sniper Jackals.

A bolt of green plasma struck Elster head-on, causing her shields to flare and dip. She slid back into cover and let them recharge, before poking only the slimmest of her visor out to scope out the Grunt that'd nailed her. A black-wearing Special-Ops grunt. She huffed, drew her pistol and used the smartscope to pop the little bugger's head clean open, much to the surprise of two of its siblings that screamed aloud and threw their hands up in the air to run.

One of the Ultras had noticed Elster poking out. It fired its concussion rifle toward her, sending her piece of cover flying off the rails and slamming into the gunship. Elster rolled forward, then turned about and opened up on the Elite. Short, controlled bursts struck the creature's shields, causing the blue blanket of protection to flare twice. One of the Marines beside her got his body split in half by a bolt of plasma, while another with a DMR lost one of her eyes to the sharpened projectiles of a needle rifle.

Elster scoffed, then gasped as the second Ultra, one armed with a launcher that fired self-locking guided plasma charges, appeared behind her in a flanking maneuver. The weapon itself had been charged. She ducked as the Sangheili let go of the trigger, firing all four projectiles. Each banked to track Elster, with the girl being forced to move out of the way as the Elite itself chased her with the weapon.

She swore to herself, rolled, then turned and banked hard right, shaking her internal stabilizers to the point she nearly felt dizzy. The plasma rounds banked, two of them hitting the ground and detonating in a flash. The Replika charged toward the Elite, slamming with her shoulder into it as it tried to aim again, before pushing herself off of him and letting the plasma balls stick to him.

The two detonated, taking its shields out and enraging it. It growled and turned toward Elster, tossing the launcher aside and charging her back, before slamming into her and lifting her up. It powered its energy dagger and stabbed at the girl's abdomen, but she kicked off of him and nearly off the goddamn ship with just how close she'd gotten to the shield.

Its second charge was interrupted by a Marine that sniped its hat clean off its head, sending it crumpling to the floor like a stack of wet paper. He gave a thumbs up, but had his own head taken off by the Jackal snipers. Elster glared at the monsters, before watching one of them take the head off another Marine. She scoffed, grabbed a fragmentation grenade off her belt and threw it.

She then charged the last remaining Elite as it drew its energy sword. Firing the entire remaining ammunition load of her rifle, Elster tossed the weapon aside once it clicked empty and drew her machete. She ducked under the swing of the Elite's energy sword. A slight shift in the gravity of the ship threw the blade off just enough for it to luckily miss the intrepid Replika, who swung her own bladed weapon and cut across the Elite's belly, before spinning about, pouncing on its back and slamming the tip of her machete into the beast's head.

It collapsed to the floor just as Six entered the place with what remained of his own unit of Marines. Bullets struck the Jackals and grunts from the flank, with Elster now noticing that her own team was dead, pretty much. The Techs themselves were dead and the Pelican also had a massive hole in one of the thruster gimbals. Sighing, Elster yanked the machete out of the beast's back, cleaned it and slung it back into its sheath, before running toward their makeshift bomb.

She swore in clear-cut Eusan Basic and Advanced(Or German and Chinese, according to the UNSC's databanks?) as she undid the device's frame and started looking. Two wires had fused and multiple important components had been damaged, but were still repairable. She swore to herself again and pulled out her repair kit, going to town on the device as Six approached. He said, "Something wrong?"

"Flash-fried components..." She replied quietly, "Working on bypass... Processing power focused."

"Right." He nodded. He sighed and turned around, letting the girl work her magic on the device. And work her magic, she was trying to. The fused wires were burnt and their tips probably wouldn't deliver the current necessary to ignite the bomb's makeshift detonation sequence. She sighed and cut them, then started looking for replacements in her tool set. Luckily for her, she did keep some. Spot-welding them together, the girl continued looking through and noting a set of components that she could...

Easily...

Fix...

She looked down at her tools and noted only one more polyurethane repair spray. She grit her teeth and sighed, shaking her head, before murmuring to herself "... Going to have to find a way to make more..." before sticking the spray up. She squeezed the trigger, letting the polyurethane foam build up and watching it immediately harden. She pulled out a device to test the voltage, then connected it parallel to the wires and thumbed the command.

"Thirty seconds to endpoint..." Dot said.

"Dot... Quiet, please... Display timer on my HUD..." Elster replied, slightly annoyed. The AI's confirmation came in the form of the ticking digital clock appearing below her shield and health counter. Biting her upper lip as the counter ticked down below twenty-five seconds, the girl hummed, lifted up the cover and looked at its insides, then at the damaged components as well. She hummed and quickly fixed up a jury-rig.

"Almost..." She spoke as the counter ticked down to sub-twenty seconds. As something clicked and the voltmeter read the necessary power surge, the girl grinned and said, "Got it..." before sliding the cover back on. She called out to Six, "Good news and bad news..." before thumbing the activation and setting the counter to about fifteen seconds. She turned to Six and said, "Bad news is the bird's taken fire. Her gimbals are toast and that means our only way off this heap of junk is a nice dive..."

"And the good news?" Six quirked a brow. Elster nodded.

"I got the timer working... And it's down to ten seconds..." She stated. The two paused, looked to their sole exit, that being the edge of the shield, then nodded to each-other. Elster's suit immediately went into a hermetic seal mode to keep the oxygen inside before she and Six charged toward the exit. Jumping, the two grabbed onto each-other as they initiated their dive toward Reach itself.

The two looked back as they descended, watching the Covenant Corvette go into the maw of the Long Night of Solace. First, it was a flicker to them. A dark-blue bolt of lightning flashing in the dark. Then, it was the corona of a blue giant that suddenly expanded. Then, the detonation came as the slipspace portal ignited, a massive ball-shaped portal that tore through realspace splitting the void and engulfing the neck of the Supercarrier.

Then, it collapsed in on itself with a flareout of electromagnetic energy, a shockwave rattling both the Spartan and the Replika and knocking out their communication systems save for close range. They watched with muted awe as the Covenant Supercarrier, a 29 kilometer long behemoth, missed a good portion of its body now as its two remaining hull sections entered atmosphere, burning up...

... They'd done it...! Ariane ought to know they did it...!

CASTLE Base

Ariane was once again laying in bed, alone, with her thoughts. Castle was starting to feel more like a goddamn prison than anything. She sighed deeply, arranging her clothes, then stood to her feet and walked out of the room and into the lab. Cortana was sat there with Kalmiya, her seeming sibling AI, both of them running through various programs together. The two noticed her, with Kalmiya, who was a faint emerald instead of Cortana's azure-purple combo, waving.

She waved awkwardly, before a voice whispered in her ear, "And yet again, machines..." which caused her to look to her left. Cortana quirked a brow up at her and Ariane waved it off quickly. She walked past the two AI while they were working, then looked around the lab, trying to see where Doctor Halsey was. She turned to them, then hummed and wanted to ask.

"Doc's gone over to HQ. Some big meeting of the top brass," Cortana said, watching as Ariane took a seat ahead of them. She smiled and added, "IF you wanna watch Kalmiya teach me a couple more infiltration programs, be my guest. We've got a lot of work ahead of us. And I do mean a hell of a lot." And, as if to accentuate her point, she lifted a holographic screen out of nowhere and started parsing through its code.

"Eh, why not," Ariane shrugged and crossed her arms on the table, "Might as well see how AIs do hacking, right?"

The boredom that settled in moments later told Ariane that maybe she shouldn't have asked that stupid question. The girl was half-asleep as Cortana and Kalmiya talked about some boolean or other pertaining to one of the harder targets to hack. She sighed, craned her neck left and right to hear the muscles and articulations pop back into place, then stood up and walked toward the lab.

The devices used to measure her bioresonance capabilities lay still on the table, next to a bunch of documentation written in Halsey's hand-writing. She picked up the notes and read some of the data, including the bits about making progress. The words on the progress were uplifting, at least, because it meant Ariane was doing something with her mind beside worrying about Elster.

She sighed and looked at the devices, wondering just what Doctor Halsey had in mind. She also noticed an unfinished item on one of the tables. A crown of sorts, full of wiring and sensors and the likes. Walking up to it, the girl picked it up and looked at it, before pausing as she saw the three Eusan stars. She hummed, running a finger over the device, before gently putting it on her head.

It seemed mostly all there, sans the cover she presumed would be a helmet of some kind. Thumbing the switch on the side to 'on', the girl paused as she felt a surge through her mind, an energy-based surge that shook her to her very core and seemed to awaken something within her. Deep within. That voice from before, the voice of that strange mural, spoke softly, "It is here, but... Incomplete..."

She blanked, then felt the device heat on top of her head. Letting out a scream, the girl turned it off and threw it back onto the table, staggering back. She breathed heavily, surprised as she saw some of the exposed wiring glow. She breathed a sigh of relief, then tried to wipe the sweat off her forehead, then paused and screamed as she saw her hand was on fire.

Well, it wasn't on fire per se, but it was certainly holding a flame. The girl stared, bug-eyed, at the orange flame dancing in her palm, before slowly clenching her fist and watching it extinguish. All the while, she felt no pain from it, oddly enough. Clenching her fist, she saw the energy pulse back into her hand. Blinking, the red-eyed, white-haired beauty blanked for a moment as she tried to register what the hell she'd just done.

"Holy shit..." Ariane murmured to herself.

"Impressive display of pyrokinesis, miss Yeong..." Halsey spoke from the doorway, scaring Ariane enough to make her yelp. She turned to the Doctor and was about to speak, but paused as she saw the look in her eyes. Pure, unadulterated and complete fear emanated from Doctor Halsey's otherwise calm demeanor, her eyes wider than footballs as she approached.

"Doc... You okay...?" She asked, the worry in her chest welling as she felt Halsey's uneasiness. The Doctor shook her head and opened her tablet. She thumbed it and showed Ariane to come closer, before pulling up an hour-old video from one of their orbital buoys. From the satellite, multiple Slipspace ruptures appeared... Tens. Hundreds. Ariane's breath caught in her throat as she saw the familiar, organic-like shapes of Covenant warships

The image cut as Halsey said, straight-laced and in a deadpan, "We are accelerating all programs and preparing for the worst... I will recall Elster to us whenever I can, miss Ariane, but we need to be prepared with the project. If you are going to become part of Humanity's hope for survival, Ariane, I'm afraid we will be intensifying our training..." and she set her tablet aside.

Determination seemed to fill Ariane as the girl gazed upon Doctor Halsey. She looked at the device on the table and at the still of a hundreds-strong Covenant fleet still emerging out of Slipspace and decided. Giving a nod to the Doctor, she said, "Whatever it takes, Doc. Even if I won't sleep in the next few days, I don't care... Let's get it working."

For mankind... And Elster...