Behold A Pale Horse


Tip of the Spear


Lord Hood had hoped that maybe, maybe, nothing would go wrong today.

His private wishes never made it to his lips, or even his face. He knew they were ridiculous. Usually, all you could hope for was that things would keep going wrong at their present rate, rather than go wrong even faster than expected. Hoping for a day free of problems was utterly ridiculous. The universe has reminded him of that when he'd learned about Reach.

"What is it, Cortana?" he asked, turning his head to the nearest terminal. The A.I appeared there, seemingly having tweaked her model a little just for the occasion. Her insistence on being a naked blue woman, however, was constant.

"Another whisper, sir, near Io." Cortana tilted her head. "Not consistent with the signal from a normal slipspace jump, no matter how weak. The UNSC Gumption is going to check it out."

Discussing this in the middle of the open was breaking a dozen protocols, but screw it. ONI would censor it before the public saw it.

"Then we'd better make this quick." Hood turned to the crowd of soldiers, and the three people stood in front of them.

Gunnery Sergeant Avery Johnson had finally put on a proper dress uniform, and even looked to be taking the event seriously. Maybe the events on Halo had finally hazed the maniac—or maybe he'd finally been through enough there that he felt he'd earned the medal. Hood wasn't actually cleared to see Avery's psyche eval. Could've pushed it, but it wasn't any of his business.

The Masterchief, as always, was towering, implacable, inspiring, and more than a little terrifying. The impression hadn't changed the few times Hood had met him outside the armour. He obviously didn't have a pocket to tuck any medals into, but he'd won so many commendations over the course of the war they'd developed a special sticker to put them onto his breastplate. All the little things.

And Miranda Keyes…she didn't look implacable. More like it was taking effort for her to keep standing. She'd manage, he knew she would, but she was grieving and she wasn't afraid to show it. Nobody would begrudge her that. Everyone knew people died in this war, and everyone hoped those deaths would be people far away. Hood just wished the death had been (almost) anyone but Captain Jacob Keyes.

Maybe god was smiling on him after all. He was able to finish the brief ceremony before alarms started blaring.

"Sir, you need to see this!" Cortana called, which relievingly wasn't 'sir, Covenant' but somehow sounded worse.

He turned, looking at the monitor, which was currently showing a live feed to the Gumption's front facing cameras. What they showed…

"Is that a moon?" Johnson asked. "Did the Covenant give us a moon?"

It wasn't. It was too metal, too even, too uncanny—a perfect sphere floating in space, with an indent around the centre and a huge great crater or dish in the upper hemisphere. Anything that looked that circular only made Hood think one thing.

"Cortana," he said. "Is it a Halo?"

"No, sir. Doesn't match anything in my archives." Cortana was staring at the screen as well, annotations popping up around the object. "It's not Forerunner, not Covenant. Closer to our tech, but we don't have the industrial capacity; the thing is a hundred and sixty kilometres in diameter."

Good god, that was big. Covenant supercarriers were only 30 clicks long, and they weren't spheres.

Hood narrowed his eyes. "Another faction entirely?" Intelligence had theorised, of course, that there might be something other than the Covenant out there, but so far no dice. "Tell the Gumption to start with diplomacy, and patch me in."

"Yes, sir, they're already trying." Cortana waved a hand and the screen on his terminal shifted. "The thing isn't broadcasting by known human or Covenant channels. I'm trying to figure it out."

The frigate Gumption continued to move hesitantly closer to the sphere. Showing some common sense, it was well out of the range of Covenant plasma weaponry. It's captain's voice played back into the hall: "This is Captain Michaels of the frigate Gumption, part of the UNSC Home fleet. Please identify yourselves. We do not intend to attack."

"Shouldn't have called it the Home fleet," Masterchief rumbled, and Hood couldn't help but agree. The masses of soldiers in the room with them waited, almost dead silent.

"Anything, Cortana?" Hood asked.

"No reply—I'm picking up some white noise on an unusual band, broadcasting the captain there. Struggling to get any useful readings from the Gumption's sensors—wait!" Cortana's avatar flashed purple. "Energy levels spiking! Gumption—"

"I repeat, please identify yourselves, we are not hostile—"

Lines of green light flashed around the dish, and then one burst out towards the Gumption at an absurd speed.

"EVASIVE—"

The video feed for a split second was nothing but white—then static. Cortana swapped to a feed from a probe around the other side of Jupiter. Heavily zoomed, they could see the fireball marking the annihilated Gumption, and the green beam streaking through its wreckage and into distant space. Hood wasn't a scientist, but he was an admiral, and he knew what the speed of light looked like.

"Ah, son of a bitch…" Johnson muttered, over cries of consternation from the soldiers.

"…Cortana," Hood said, quietly. "What happens if that hits Earth?"

Light got from the sun to the Earth in seven minutes. He couldn't evacuate a turd in that time.

"Can't hit us yet, sir, Sol's in the way." Cortana's tone was solemn. "If they could…conservative estimates, we could say goodbye to Texas, sir."

Well. That was that, then.

"Mobilise the fleet!" he boomed, and the marines exploded into motion. "I want everything with engines and a MAC cannon on its way to engage that thing, STAT. Captain Keyes, get to your ship. Chief, Sergeant, with her."

"Yes, sir!" the trio chorused.

"Cortana, go with the Chief, stay on comms." Hood turned back to the screen, crossing his arms. "They can outrange the ODPs?"

Earth's massive grid of orbital defence platforms was the only thing that made it safer than Reach, which wasn't safe enough.

"Almost certainly, sir," came Cortana's voice from the monitor, Chief having already swept her into his suit.

"Then we attack that station with everything we have before it gets the chance to attack us back." Hood closed his eyes. "And begin the evacuation of Earth."

"Lord Hood, they have nowhere to go."

"…I know."


Miranda Keyes had been ready to fight the Covenant. She had been ready to fight the Flood. She'd been ready to go to one of the Halo rings (Cortana had warned them there would be more) and blow it up, and do it without dying as well.

She hadn't been particularly ready for this, but the thinking generalised.

"Get the MAC warmed up, swords ready to launch, ODSTs ready to drop and marines at battle stations!" Miranda called from the captain's chair, fiddling with her displays. "We've got a while to contact but that's only if nothing unexpected happens, so be ready!"

Lord Hood's voice came in over the comms. "All captains, I have operational command. In absence of my orders, defer to Captain Keyes.

The current plan is for the fleet to slingshot close to the sun in order to build speed, and be ready to engage the moment you have line of sight on the hostile station. Cortana is providing your flight paths. Estimated time to engagement: two hours."

"Hope you're all ready to get toasty!" called Johnson along the In Amber Clad's comms.

"We do not know the firing speed of the station's main weapon, but we do believe it only has one," Hood continued. "Our battle grouping will prioritise spreading out to prevent collaterals, and providing as many active targets as possible. The dish the beam originated from will be the primary target. Current orders are to remain at extreme range and launch repeated MAC barrages—it doesn't look fast enough to manoeuvre away even from minute-long projectile travel times. Be prepared for this to change as we learn more about the target."

The plan sounded mostly solid to Miranda—and Hood would already have thought of the obvious problems she saw with it.

Cortana's voice came in over a special channel, linking in Miranda and a select few others, her troubled face appearing on a screen. "Chief, Johnson, as we approach engagement, you'll be moving to a retrofitted high-speed Pelican. You're only here in case a boarding action becomes necessary, and we do not want you targeted by that laser weapon. We'd expect it to go for the biggest ships first."

"Do we have estimates on its firing speed?" asked the Chief, already in the hangar bays.

"No idea," Cortana said. "Anywhere from a few seconds to once a week—but it probably wouldn't have fired so readily on the Gumption if it was that slow. And hey, maybe it can shoot fifty ships at once."

"If we slingshot towards it, we won't have the thrust to turn back around," Miranda said.

"You're saying, maybe it can kill us all in minutes, and if it can, tough luck?" Johnson, as always, said the obvious.

"If it can kill us all in minutes, it wouldn't matter where we put the fleet." Cortana sounded as frustrated about that as Miranda felt. "When it's back in sight and the combat starts, I'll have more data."

Her avatar rolled its eyes. "Who knows; maybe they're friendly and it was a misfire."

"Cortana, where's the rest of Blue Team?" Chief asked.

"Fred-104, Linda-058, and William-043 are here, spread around a couple other ships. No reason for them to be anywhere else. No other active Spartans are available, but we do have a lot of ODSTs."

"We'll make do." was the Chief's only response.

(Miranda was less easily overawed than some of her fellow officers, but damn the Masterchief was cool.)

Lord Hood came back over the comms to the captains. "We intend to re-attempt diplomacy, but it's likely that the station will target the first ship to enter its firing arc.

…I'll need a volunteer."

A volunteer for them and their ship to be the first target for an unstoppable laser attack, from a station that had done it once before and would probably do it again.

There was about two seconds of silence as they all digested that. Then dozens of callsigns all lit up the channel as captains started offering themselves up. Miranda slammed her own finger on the call button, only to find herself muted as Cortana said, "Don't even think about it, Keyes. This ship's too valuable to lose first."

"Coward." Miranda sat back and tried not to smile. God, she loved the UNSC.

In short order, the clamour were all muted save just a few, who repeated themselves one at a time.

"This is Captain Vargas of the frigate Why Not. We broke protocol and limped out of our repair station to be here. We have no slipspace drive, our hull's so ruined we're only 32% pressurised, and we've fixed our MAC with spit and duct tape—it can probably only fire once. But our engines and comms work just fine!"

Miranda laughed.

"Affirmative, Vargas, you're the tip of the spear." Hood's voice was as unruffled as ever. "Cortana, adjust the flight plans. All ships fall in behind the Why Not. Good luck, Captain."

"Make it worth it, sir."

The call ended, and Miranda breathed out.

Her personal motto, from even before her father had left for Reach, was 'die another day'. Some day, another day, she was going to die for her people. But every day she lived instead, she was buying the chance to die for something more important.

"Give me those flight plans, Cortana," she said, preparing to ping the ship-wide comms. "Let's smash this moon to pieces."


All the physical view-screens of the Why Not were covered in fire. To get ahead without slowing down the fleet, they'd taken a riskier slingshot around the sun, bringing them close enough that the heat was rapidly scorching one side of the ship. Their air con was broken, which wasn't a priority at all but was kinda funny. If they stayed at this radius for another fifteen minutes, the ship would probably start to melt apart. But they only had five minutes before the moon-station-thing came within sight, so they were fine.

"Last checks, everyone!" Carlos Vargas called. "Any nonessential personnel, get your stupid asses off the ship. And make sure to use the starboard escape pods, eh amigos?"

Some laughter, from the five people left of the bridge, all scrambling to manage twelve consoles between them. "Think we're about a hundred people below essential personnel, Captain!" one shouted.

It was true. The ships the UNSC had started churning out once the war started were already designed with as little fat as was physically possible. They were basically just MACs with engines, a slipspace drive, and breathable atmosphere if you were lucky. That also meant they were meant to operate with a skeleton crew—and since the Why Not regularly did, more of those men than Carlos would like were still here.

It hurt. But they had all made the same choice he had.

"Four minutes to contact," Carlos said, swiping on his monitors. He hesitated. "Hermanos, can I—"

"Do what you gotta do, cap."

"Gracias."

He swapped to a recording channel. That AI, the blue one, probably knew what he was doing, because the recording instantly started to broadcast privately back towards Earth.

"Hey, chica!" he said, grinning at the camera. He knew he looked like a mess; half-dressed and sweating like a pig even before you counted the wounds from previous engagements. "Hope you and Jackie are doing good, eh? Listen, I, uh—your husband's about to do something real stupid. He's got permission from the brass this time! But there's—there's a good chance I'm gonna miss our meeting tonight. And after I finally manage to get a week's leave too, huh? Ain't life a nightmare?"

Something nearby exploded. Carlos winced, and continued. "So, look. Hopefully I come back soon, and you can beat my ass for being such a moron. But if not, tell—tell Jackie that his padre died saving his home. And that—"

He sucked in a deep breath, eyes stinging.

"—and that there's no way I'd rather go. I just wish I didn't have to do it so soon. I love you both so, so much. Good luck."

He cut the feed, squeezing his eyes shut.

"One minute to contact, Captain!"

"Aye; aye!" He shook his head, and grinned. "Spin up the MAC, aim at its lower hemisphere, I want you ready to fire at my mark! Prep the comms!"

"Yes, Captain!"

The ship's thrusters burned. The fire over the windows started to lessen. The Why Not dragged itself up against gravity, powering through space at a magnificent rate of knots.

The station loomed into view from behind the sun.

"And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat upon him was Death, and Hell followed with him…" Carlos narrowed his eyes. He waited until just before the dish was visible before stabbing his finger into the comms button.

"This is Captain Vargas of the UNSC Why Not, in humanity's Home Fleet. Despite what you pendejos did to the Gumption, we still wanna talk, so this is me repeating the request for peace: do not attack. If you do, you will be fired upon by the full weight of the—"

Green light flashed around the dish.

"FIRE!"

The Why Not's MAC cannon fired half a second later, tearing apart half its internal mechanisms and launching a slug at incredible speed.

Two seconds after that, a beam of green light lanced out of the station, completely filling the view screens.

Carlos closed his eyes and thought of home.


In a physical sense, Cortana was in a terminal on the In Amber Clad, a short distance from the Chief's waiting hand.

In a much more meaningful sense, she was the Home Fleet.

Over and past the debris left by the remnants of the Why Not (Cortana sent the captain's final video on to his family), flew one ship, then another, then another, then more, as the rest of the Home Fleet moved into battle. Supercarriers and carriers and heavy and light cruisers and battleships and frigates and troop carriers and gunboats and tugs and broadswords and longswords and repair platforms and two dozen variants of Pelicans and one civilian ship manned by volunteers that didn't have a MAC but did somehow have two nuclear missiles.

All constantly moving, they arrayed themselves in a pattern where it was impossible for a line to be drawn through any two of them from the station. Only a supergenius A.I could have done it, and so Cortana did. Something that she didn't need to be a supergenius A.I to do was start counting the moment the station fired its beam, and watch closely at what happened to the MAC round fired by the Why Not.

Time passed slowly for her. It gave her plenty of time for analysis.

"First MAC contact!" she called along the channel that linked all the captains, Hood, a few ONI spooks, and the Chief.

"Shielded?" Hood asked.

"Yes—No—Yes!" Cortana widened the eyes on some of her avatars, running the numbers on what a much more extensive array of sensors was now telling her.

"It has some kind of shielding—I've never seen it before, it's fascinating—but it's not capable of blocking physical objects! It would stop covenant plasma fire, I think, but not the MACs!"

Sure enough, a tiny plume of fire was barely visible on the lower half of the station.

Lord Hood, back on Cairo station, nodded. "Then it's time we show them their mistake."

Three minutes and fourteen seconds after the Why Not had been destroyed, all the remaining ships had rounded the sun and were pointed at the station. It had not fired another shot.

Cortana's game began.

Out of one hundred and sixty three ships, one hundred and seventeen magnetic accelerator cannons opened fire in a staggered fashion to account for their different travel times. Rounds of depleted uranium between a hundred and six hundred tons were fired at thirty kilometres per second (relative to the already impressive speeds the ships themselves had built up). A rough calculation put the kinetic energy of each shot upwards of two hundred terajoules, or fifty kilotons of TNT.

MACs were often claimed to have an effective range of ten thousand miles, but that was only because it was the range at which Covenant ships could start to dodge. The space station did not dodge.

Five minutes almost to the second after the station's first shot, it fired its laser again, and shortly after that the UNSC Punic, their largest surviving supercarrier, was obliterated.

At five minutes and thirty two seconds, the Home Fleet fired its second volley.

At five minutes and fifty seven seconds, the first barrage of MAC rounds finally made it to their target.

Puncture wounds opened up all over the dish the beams were coming from, great gouts of flame and debris bursting outwards into space. Most of the shots, Cortana had aimed right down that central hole—more she had targeted at the points around the side where the auxiliary lasers shot from, more still she had vaguely pointed at anywhere within the dish. It was enough damage that the hits were visible, unzoomed, to people in the fleet.

At seven minutes and fifty seconds, the MAC cannons fired their third volley, after which Cortana simply started firing each individual MAC as soon as it charged.

At seven minutes and fifty two seconds, the second volley hit the space station's dish.

At ten minutes, the station fired back with its laser, punching straight through the repair station Cortana had put in its way (that trick sometimes worked to stop Covenant attacks, but it had been a long shot). Behind that repair station, reduced to dust and fire, was the UNSC Killer Queen, the only other supercarrier left in the fleet—and in fact in the entire UNSC navy The only other supercarrier, except of course for [REDACTED].

But the station didn't fire again at fifteen minutes.

The next beam came at seventeen minutes, light visibly less coherent than the last but still shredding the UNSC Hoochie Mama into space dust. But after that, the ceaseless MAC barrage had turned the dish into a crater made of craters containing more craters besides. There was no following shot at 23, nor 25 minutes. But at that point they had other problems.

"I'm going to tentatively declare that their laser is inoperable, or else they're saving it to trick us," Cortana said over comms at 27 minutes. "But we're not 'winning'. Problem one: that thing is too big and its armour is too thick. If we fire every MAC round we have we can gently warm its surface, but that's about it. Problem two: the max-zoom cameras are picking up what may be gun emplacements on its surface, and we're picking them up because we're rapidly approaching them. We need to decide if we're staying at long range or not. Problem three—"

She showed everyone who needed to know a map with a rapidly increasing number of little red dots on it.

"—we have incoming fighter craft."

"How many?" Hood asked.

"Eight hundred—make that nine hundred, and rising fast."

Various people cursed.

"HAVOK nukes?" one captain suggested.

"NOVA bombs?" offered another.

Cortana discretely flagged that second one for ONI investigation because how the hell did he know about NOVA bombs. "The only NOVAs successfully produced were lost on Reach. Nukes on the station's surface won't do much better than the MAC impacts, but it's possible that targeted nuclear strikes in the station's internals could cause critical damage. I won't know until I have better data."

"Lord Hood!" Miranda called. "We should push for the surface and attempt a boarding operation!"

"Too risky, Keyes," Hood said. "For all we know they have a thousand weapons like the big one only limited by shorter range—and we have no idea what the station's internals even look like."

"A small attack group, then," Miranda offered. "Three or four frigates approach covered by fire from the fleet, and drop ODSTs carrying nuclear payloads. Even if it fails we can get close enough to reveal any other weapon emplacements for a ranged MAC bombardment. We can't afford to have all our eggs in one basket, not with those fighters approaching, not with that station approaching Earth."

Hood narrowed his eyes. "Cortana?" he asked.

Well, if she was being asked.

"Put me and Chief on the station, sir," Cortana said. "We'll win. We always do."

One of the reasons Hood was such a good admiral was because he didn't wait after making up his mind.

"Go. Take the Gerrymander, the Righteous Hand, and the Ugly Duckling. And the Spartans."

"Sir!"

"You hear that, Chief?" Cortana said, into the Pelican that held him and Johnson. "Ready to take a girl for a ride?"


Caroline 'Hotshot' Storm waited in the cockpit of her Broadsword, it's twin engines thrumming underneath her. She flew right above the UNSC Tomorrow, holding course with it, and staring out at the…thing. It kept getting bigger. That was how distance worked.

"People are saying this ain't Covenant." Dillon pinged across their wing's comms. "Something we've never seen before. Scared, hotshot?"

Caroline glanced to where he was flying, about three miles to her right, and flipped him off.

"It's just another big-ass alien spaceship, Dillon," she said. "I've flown nukes into covenant carriers, I'll do it for this thing too."

"Ooh-rah. But I doubt that's gonna be our job this time."

"Right? Lucky In Amber Clad." Caroline watched as the four frigates burned off ahead of the fleet, MAC rounds occasionally streaking past them to slam into the station. Being deployed so far from a planet was frankly a little disconcerting—there was no down, unless she counted towards the sun, which instead felt like sideways—but being surrounded by such a mass of her own ships was comforting. To her never-ending fury, she'd not been there to fight at Reach, so she'd never seen a fleet this big.

Maybe this was her chance to get back some kudos.

She watched as the four frigates (the ones that got all the fun) pressed towards the fortress, while the rest of the fleet sat back like idiots. More importantly, she watched the screens that showed the swarm of enemy fighter ships approaching. The final, eye-popping count sat close to four thousand identical ships.

"They look like a H to you?" Caroline asked, glancing over the guesstimated model for the ships that an AI had cooked up.

"Definitely a H," Dillon said. "But with an eyeball in the middle."

"Cockpit, I'm guessing."

"Mm. How do you think we'd do against four thousand seraphs?"

Caroline let out a deep breath. They still had over a hundred big ships, and hundreds of ships capable of 'dogfighting' (as complicated as dogfighting was, in a vacuum, far from any gravitational body other than the damn sun). But fighting seraphs at a five to one disadvantage?

"We don't need to win," she said, rechecking her controls. "We need to last long enough that the Spartans can blow that thing up, and then it won't matter. Four thousand seraphs can't take Earth."

Silence for a few seconds from Dillon. Then, "Well, when you put it like that. Betcha I can take more?"

"Hah! You're on, slowpoke."

Ahead of them, the shrinking shapes of the adventurous frigates started flashing, yellow and green, as the enemy fighters engaged them. Caroline drummed her fingers on her sticks, staring at the tac-map.

"Most of them are just going round," Dillon said. "Coming for us."

"They're as organised as my sister's hen night. If I knew what admiral was in charge, I'd fire them." Caroline squinted. "At least they didn't destroy all the frigates immediately, so they aren't all packing mini-death-lasers…"

There was a flash, and then a naked blue lady was on Caroline's screen, making her flinch backwards in surprise.

"What the f—"

"Hello, all pilots. Computing analysis of the hostiles now." The blue lady looked at the model of the enemy fighter, certain portions of it flashing. After a moment, she widened her eyes. "Interesting! Pilots, the enemy fighters are unshielded, I repeat, hostile ships are not shielded against energy or kinetic weapons. Their armaments are comparable to Covenant fighters, looks like line of sight only. Their speed is comparable to you, their manoeuvrability is better, but they shred like tissue paper, and are targetable by tracking rockets. Let's play rough with them, kiddos!"

The woman vanished, and Caroline stared wide-eyed at where she'd left.

"Did she say unshielded?" Dillon asked.

"Right?" Caroline said. "Am I fighting a fleet of banshees right now?"

"Goddamn, they got a big gun but their fighters are garbage!"

"Why they got so many little ships if they're all terrible?" Caroline laughed, adjusting some of her thrust settings and spinning up the Broadsword's chainguns. "Suddenly, I don't wanna heroically sacrifice myself anymore."

"Hell no, we can straight up win this! Coordinate with our point defence, target anything shooting green."

"When I find whoever these people are, imma thank them for giving us a holiday from the covvies." Caroline swapped her channel. "Alright, everyone in Red Wing, this is Red Leader, standing by. Engagement in thirty. Get ready to break formation—let's show these sons of bitches a proper Sol system welcome!"

"Ooh-rah!"

Ahead of them, an enormous swarm of well over three thousand H-shaped fighters tore in.

And then the nuclear missile that someone had sent a bit ahead of the fleet went off, causing a blast that wiped out hundreds of the bastards and forced the rest to fly through the wasteland of their smashed allies.

Then the fight really started, and Caroline lost herself in the roaring of engines, the thunder of high-caliber machine guns, and the shrieks of green plasma and alien wings.


Miranda did sometimes feel, when she was captaining a ship she knew well, like there was some of herself in the hull. As if, sat in her chair, surrounded by readouts and cameras and flashing lights, her flesh became one with the steel and titanium, and she could know what the ship knew, feel what the ship felt.

The attack from the enemy fighters felt like being stung, constantly but superficially, by a swarm of angry wasps. But she could swat the wasps, and though warnings were popping up around parts of the hull and accompanying ships were falling, she wasn't worried about survival.

And then the moon-station's close range defences activated, and it was like being hit in the face with a gravity hammer.

The whole ship rocked as the first volley hit it, but then the fire just kept going, hefty bolts of green plasma slamming into their hulls.

"Cortana!" Miranda cried.

"I could four thousand—five thousand active defence batteries!" Cortana said. "Most likely there's more, they just don't have a good firing angle—damn, this thing's built to fend off capital ships alright!"

"Mark them for MAC targeting!"

"I am!" and the firing of the In Amber Clad's MAC punctuated her words, "Recommending low power shots for maximum firing speed, but the fleet's too far, it'll take a minute for the rounds to land—damn it! Gerrymander is down!"

The Gerrymander, which had taken point by virtue of putting more power than was prudent to its engines, crumpled like a disposable can under the plasma fire.

"We should abort!" called the captain of the Ugly Ducking

"Negative, we're too fast! By the time we stop and turn we're dead!" Miranda glared at the station, which was now so close it was an enormous grey circle taking up most of her viewscreens. "This isn't a drop-off operation anymore; I'm not showing those bastards my broadside. I'm landing in that trench."

"The trench is the most densely defended part!" Cortana warned.

"Good. That means it's valuable."

"Damnit—roger! Going to—AAGH!" the feed from the Ugly Duckling cut out as the frigate split entirely in two.

"Our MAC is down, red along a dozen systems," Cortana said. "Keyes, Chief is pulling me, we're taking a drop pod to the surface. The cannons can't target anything that small. I'll still be in contact but bandwidth is down—landing is up to you."

Miranda would have liked to keep the AI aid, but Cortana was more valuable than this ship and also about half the fleet. "Roger, good luck. I'm not planning to need many calculations."

"You're crashing?"

"I'm crash-landing."

"Well, any landing you can walk away from. Pod away!"

Miranda didn't even see the launch of the Chief's pod, and even the flurry of forty drop pods firing was hard to see under all the 'warning, things are broken' alerts. One of their main sensor arrays got shot to slag as she swiped through the alarms.

"This is the Righteous Hand!" another voice chimed in. "Our Spartans are away! I'm tasking our remaining fighters to cover their descent. Our engines are mostly down—In Amber Clad, we'll shield you as much as we can, then split off so our impact doesn't inconvenience you."

Miranda grit her teeth. "Roger, Righteous Hand. Give 'em hell."

With the few sensors that still worked, the station was all Miranda could see. She waited until the point Cortana had highlighted as the last safe pull-up point—

—waited a little bit more—

Then slammed the engines into reverse, firing every in-atmosphere booster and dragging up the bloodied nose of the ship. The Righteous Hand tore off ahead of her, tilting a few clicks away before slamming into the trench and bursting into flame, tearing a great furrow through the metal. The In Amber Clad shook, deceleration dragging Miranda down into her seat, and at least at this range most of the plasma cannons couldn't shoot at her anymore but her altitude reading was getting real damn low—

"Everyone on the ship!" Miranda yelled into the comms. "Brace for impact! This is gonna be a bumpy one!"


SO ON THE MAC CANNONS THING:

Sources on the shielding of the DS1 are sketchy. Star Wars has maaany shield types, but they basically come down to energy (stops blaster weapons, lightsabers) and particle (stops physical objects). We know that the DS1's shields don't stop starfighters, that's why the trench run in A New Hope can even happen, so for the MACs to fail, it'd have to have shields that stopped extremely high energy projectiles and not just very high ones like ships. Why would that...exist? Why would you not choose for it to do all physical objects? Well hey, that shield exists - its the one that they use on the DS2. And not the DS1.

If you believe they shouldn't work, here's the alt battle: the entire fleet just bumrushes the Death Star to board it, much more of them die to turbolaser fire, and then the plot continues.

ANYWAY! How are we all, huh? It's been a while. I'm not currently in the state of 'writing fanfiction' (you'd know if I was, the wordcount would be much bigger) but I put this together in my off-time and figured I'd share. Less than 20k words all told, simple premise, but a lot of fun.

And also my first foray into the 'crossover' archives! I'll have to figure out how that works!