Author's Note
Yep, back again for what's definitely the last chapter of this month.
I had someone question what a Stiletto Fighter was, and unless I forgot to explain it prior, which is very possible, I'll explain it now. A Stiletto Star Fighter is a two person star fighter most commonly used by the Galactic Federation military for use in combat to fight against the Space Pirates. It's seen it's main use in the battles that took place during the events of Metroid Prime 3, and are seen in loading docks on Federation ships, in battles multiple times in space and on the surface of Norion, as well as the beginning of the game wherein multiple fighters approach Samus's gunship to ask her to identify herself before allowing her access to the flagship of the Federation.
They are notoriously fast and agile for their otherwise large size, and are unparalleled in air and space combat compared to their Space Pirate counterparts, hence their widespread use by the Galactic Federation. As for their presence here on Requiem, when the Tyr tracked Samus down through a wormhole into UNSC space, it was accompanied by four Stiletto fighters in total.
There you go, hope that explains it. Feel free to look up more information for yourself.
I'm glad the ending to the last chapter was well received, I'd been worried people would hate it or think it out of character for either of them. But I felt that the relationship between the two had finally evolved just a bit, what with the fact that it's been 27 chapters...
Felt like that moment was earned despite what some may think.
Uploaded
07/29/2023
LEGEND BELOW
"Chief, that's not a good idea..." = Normal speech.
''You're you, don't let it control you...'' = Normal thoughts/Receiving coms.
Chapter 28
A mad dash for the Didact
Rated-M
M rating for blood, and language.
Music of the day
Halo 4 - Faithless
The engines fired up, not even properly warmed before the Chief cranked the thrusters, launching him and Samus out from the Infinity in a burst of speed. The Stiletto fighter spun around as its gravity drive kicked into action, stabilizing them within the airspace of Requiem.
Samus slid into the seat next to the Spartan, alone on the Galactic Federation star fighter with the man. There'd been no time to go over a battle plan, no time to gather the platoon.
The Captain's two best players were suddenly thrust into the thick of it with little warning, told to go forth and save the world.
But…
By now, this had practically become a regular occurrence. The small amount of warning they did have was more then they usually expected to receive by this point…
Behind them were seen even more ships as they too launched out to join the fight, Pelicans, Wasps, even Hornets too. But none of them were as fast as the Stiletto, not even close.
"You know how to fly this thing?" Samus couldn't help the question as it burst its way free from her jet black lips, glancing at the Spartan from the corner of her visor.
She'd never seen him fly one before…
"Figured I'd learn along the way…" The Spartan responded dryly, providing no further explanation at that moment.
"…" Samus didn't say anything, but her silence was staggering.
"Relax, that was a joke…" The man sighed huskily, tone dry. "Smythe told me how to fly while you were gone, figured I'd end up using one eventually…" He explained lightly, trying to make the situation they were rushing into seem that much less intense.
It allowed him to handle it easier if he pretended like it was a simple job.
"For some reason I find your humor… lacking…" Samus sighed deeply, sinking into her seat.
"You and m-me both, Honey…" Cortana chimed in, amused.
''Chief, Samus, do you copy?'' Palmer's voice came through, patched into their helmet feed.
"Go ahead, Commander." Samus spoke up, allowing John to focus on flying.
''We're going to provide covering fire for you guys, give the Covenant something to shoot at. Meanwhile, you two are going to head to this ping, I've sent the coordinates through, you should see it on your HUD, Chief.''
"Affirmative." Chief responded quickly.
''Good. In that spire is one of the generators that is powering the Didact's forcefield, we're sending another team to the second one. Go there and take it down before the Didact can gain access to his ship, otherwise this whole plan is going to go to hell. Be advised, we're picking up some unidentified aircraft around the spires, stay alert. Palmer out.'' The Spartan Commander stated before vanishing from their coms.
"Looks like it's up to us…" The Chief sighed, glancing at her.
"You say that like it hasn't always ended up being up to us…" She sighed, almost playfully.
The man raised an eyebrow, but didn't comment further. His hands cranked the controls, spinning the entire ship around as he instead made his way towards the Infinity.
Or more precisely, underneath it wherein he planned to hide within the shadows of the ship until the attention had been drawn to the Infinity and her small fleet.
No sooner had he done so, the Covenant force took notice of their presence and began an attack of their own, Phantoms, Banshees, coming to retaliate as they were backed by the far larger Corvettes.
"Hang onto your teeth…" Chief grunted.
No sooner had he said such a thing, the entire world shook as the Infinity fired her Mac Rounds in atmosphere, ripping the Corvette that dared to oppose her in half. The resulting shockwave shook the foundations of the ship, but they were otherwise unaffected.
''Chief, go now!'' Palmer's voice rang out. No sooner had she said so, the Spartan cranked the throttle, throwing the fighter forward at max speeds. It launched across the skies, staying hidden in the shadows of the clouds, flying straight for the spire.
"Hang on!" He grunted as the ship shook from the extreme force placed upon it. Samus's claws clenched around the handle to her seat, accidentally turning it to dust.
She'd remind herself to apologize to Smythe later for ruining his chair.
The sounds of a massive firefight in the background faded out as they approached the unguarded entrance to the spire, cranking the ship to slow as he brought the fighter around. The landing gear flared out as it slowed to a crawl, landing with a thud.
The engine slowed to a stop as he shut it down.
"Let's go." He quickly hopped out of his seat, rushing to the back of the ship as he disembarked, Samus right behind him. He hit the ground running, drawing his Assault Rifle as he went.
The massive doors to the spire opened upon their approach, allowing them access.
They hadn't made it too far into the building before automated sentry turrets appeared above the stale endless hallway, immediately firing upon them deadly lasers. Chief was able to sidestep most of the attacks, while Samus pulled no punches, firing off Super Missiles that blew away the heavy weapon's armor.
"Crawlers ahead." Samus spoke up, having detected them with her X-Ray visor before they'd even been seen.
"I'll take care of them, push through the door." The Spartan responded, pushing into the second room, blowing the heads off of the small dog-like Prometheans with his magnum.
Samus blew down the next door that had been locked, a relentless volley of missiles turned the hefty doorway into a scrap heap, crushing the Promethean's that had been hidden behind it underneath tons of metal debris.
With the way cleared out, they stepped into the next room. It was a massive open expanse that stretched on for about a mile. At the end of the room stood a control tower, likely responsible for gaining access to the forcefield.
If they were lucky, that was.
"Chief, wait, that's it." Cortana said, marking a ping on the other end of the chasm. "T-That's the carrier wave generator that's s-s-sending power to the Didact's shield."
"How do we stop it?" He asked. It looked far too large and imposing to destroy with any conventional weapons he had on hand, and even if he did damage it, sentinels would simply appear to repair the damage if physically possible.
The damage would need to be lasting, at least enough.
"I've got an idea. I'm going t-to take a point from our old playbook. If I attune your shields right, I can send a signal that will disable the generator entirely from the i-inside o-o-o-out." Cortana explained, voice glitching out. The Spartan's visor overlay vanished for a moment, systems shutting down.
"Cortana?" The man asked in worry.
"S-Sorry. I-I-I think something about this t-tower is increasing the l-load on my s-systems…" She explained, voice now glitched.
"Are you going to be alright?" He found himself asking.
"J-Just… Focus on the mission…" She paused, before continuing. "Once we're done, w-we can return to earth a-and fix me…" She said, trying to sound convincing.
"Chief, I can fly us across, take you to the carrier wave generator." Samus offered, turning to glance at the man, seeing as he was having some sort of inner conversation.
He seemed to contemplate it for a moment, before looking around their surroundings. There was a gondola that would take them across if Cortana hacked it, but they'd be out in the open and exposed the entire ride across.
They didn't have that kind of time to waste, not with the Didact on the verge of gaining access to his ship.
"Okay. Let's go with that plan." He relented, turning to her. She grinned lightly behind her visor, glad he'd decided to let her plan this one.
"I-I don't like this plan…" Cortana muttered in the back of his head.
"We'll be fine." The Chief muttered.
"For some reason I don't find that comforting…" The blue woman sighed.
"Hold on, I'll try and make this quick." She said, stepping behind him. She wrapped her arms underneath his own, flaring her wings out wide. He took a few steps forward, before launching off of the gondola.
They fell a good ways, before her thrusters propelled her forward as she flapped her wings, taking to the air.
A moment later saw them soaring across the expanse, making it to their destination in record time. They landed on the other side, Samus dropping the man as he ran to the carrier wave generator.
As he stepped inside, his shields flared and destroyed the entire system from the inside out, shutting it down permanently.
Or at least long enough for them to do what they'd come there to do.
"Master Chief to Infinity, we've taken the first generator offline." The Spartan confirmed over coms.
''Copy that, Chief. Good work down there you two.'' Palmer sighed over the coms.
The second Samus had confirmation it was down, she swooped in from behind, flying off with the Spartan in tow. As she took off, the couldn't help but notice that they had a couple stranglers.
"What the hell are those?" Samus questioned aloud, Forerunner colored ships rapidly approaching them from multiple sides.
"No idea. No ship I've ever seen…" The man responded lowly.
"Could it be the aircraft Palmer was speaking of?" Samus thought to asked, feeling a sense of danger wash over her.
"T-They could be some advanced form of sentinels? Perhaps they're h-here to try and repair the generator?" Cortana mused hopefully.
That thought was immediately dashed when the ships began firing at them in waves.
"Nope! D-Definitely hostile!" Cortana quipped.
"Hold on!" Samus exclaimed as she dove down out of harms way, her backside taking the brunt of the damage. She bit back a shout of pain as her unshielded wings were razed by the hard light bullets, tattering them.
Just because they were made from the dna of Ridley, did not necessarily mean that they were invulnerable. More than that, her shields didn't seem to carry over to them.
That would have to be rectified as soon as possible, as proof by the fact that she'd been able to shoot off Raven Beak's wings in their battle.
"Samus?!" Chief shouted in worry, having heard her pained sounds.
"I'm fine!" She bit back quickly, banking hard as more of the ships came their way, spraying hard light bullets at them.
It was hell.
She soared across the divide, making a rush for the entrance to the spire, flapping her wings hard.
However, the ships seemed to pick up on her course of action, as they moved to intercept her.
"They're cutting us off." The Spartan called out.
"I can see that!" She exclaimed, swerving out of the way as a slurry of bullets came flying at her, some of them nicking her visor.
She was useless in battle now, unable to retaliate while holding the Spartan. But, she was not going to simply stand there and take it either.
"Throw me at one." The Spartan suddenly called out.
"What?!" She hissed, glancing down at him in bewilderment. Was he insane?
"Just do it." He said again, voice brimming with well placed confidence.
She thought he was insane, but decided against questioning him again as she instead banked hard, flapping her wings as she launched forward towards the closest ship.
It immediately began shooting at them, his shields temporarily blocking some of the damage. But with the speed she was flying, the attacks mostly missed.
"Do it now!" He called out. No sooner had he said so, she'd tossed him right at the ship, continuing her course right past it as it continued to try and swat her out of the sky ruthlessly.
The Spartan hit it hard, bouncing off of it and nearly falling into the chasm below. Thinking quickly, he whipped out his knife, stabbing it into the crook of the ship to gain something to hold onto.
Having presumed that it had lost the armored super soldier, the Promethean piloting the ship wasn't prepared for the Spartan to rip it out of the controls as he instead took over the vessel.
He took a brief moment to familiarize himself with the ship, his suit diagnostics translating the Forerunner glyphs to the English word Phaeton.
Realizing that the controls weren't that difficult to understand, he quickly turned the ship back around to face the rest of them. Apparently, none of the other Phaetons had noticed that he was not a friendly.
After having dropped the Spartan, Samus soared ahead and had begun fighting back against the Phaetons via use of her missiles.
Unfortunately for her, she quickly learned of the ships secondary ability to teleport a short distance away in a flash.
Which meant that most of her missiles missed entirely.
If she decided to stay back and fire homing missiles from a safe distance, her attacks would continue to miss.
So she was left with only one option, a head on assault. That way she could prevent them from escaping her attacks, but she was likely to take damage in the process.
It was a risk she was willing to take, and at this point, she just wanted the damn ships out of the air.
She launched herself forward with a mighty flap of her wings, thrusters on her back propelling her forward as she activated her Speed Booster. The ships took aim at her, launching a barrage of missiles her way.
She tanked a few of the attacks, before razing the remaining ships with missiles, blowing them out of the sky. Her shields flared to absorb the damage, but she didn't want to have a repeat of that situation happening again.
"I hate flying…" She grumbled bitterly, wondering how the hell Raven Beak had managed to fight her while flying around in the air.
It wasn't easy.
Half the time she felt like she was so focused on flying that she never had enough time to properly dodge the attacks coming her way, having been clipped multiple times by heavy artillery rounds.
She felt she was doing good enough, having perhaps a single days worth of flying experience under her belt, while Raven Beak had a multitude of decades under his. She could be doing a whole lot worse…
That being said, she was starting to hurt a bit.
She spun around, launching herself at the last Phaeton in the area. As she came in for a pass, she charged up a volley of missiles once more. As she neared, she took aim, and fired.
…
Only for her to realize that she'd spent her supply of Super Missiles on the last mission, and the rest of them against the Phaetons just moments ago. She'd not given herself any time to create more, and now she'd run out.
And in the worst time too.
Without missing a beat, she swapped to her Plasma Beam, razing the ship with a multi-tiered beam of hyper powered green plasma. But that moment of weakness had given the Phaeton time to raze her with an attack of its own, a thick powerful cleansing beam shooting up past her. She'd instinctively ducked out of the way, allowing the attack to soar over her shoulder.
The Phaeton was destroyed by her attack, but she realized a moment later with a terrible pain that it had shot right through her wing. She'd rolled to get out of the way, but now she couldn't stop, her balance thrown off as one of her wings was rendered practically useless by the gaping hole in it.
Green blood sprayed the air from the giant hole, the pain terrible, but certainly not the worst thing she'd experienced in her long life as a Bounty Hunter.
That being said, she was now spiraling down into the chasm with little in way of stopping herself.
Thankfully, before she could go very far, a familiar looking ship teleported into view underneath her. She hit the ship roughly, slamming her claws into it to hold herself still as she mounted herself to it via her Spider Grapple.
"Hey there, I've got you." The Chief's voice echoed out from the Phaeton.
"Chief?" Samus breathed, glancing down at the Forerunner vehicle. She sighed once she realized it was him, situating herself so as not to fall off. "Took you long enough…" She muttered dryly, glancing over her shoulder tentatively.
"How's the wing?" He asked, having already begun moving for the exit.
"…I'll survive." Samus grunted, eyes twitching as she tried to ignore the sharp pain emanating from behind her.
Thankfully, her wings weren't her only source of advanced mobility. Her Space Jump was crafted to simulate flight after all, what with its ability to allow her to jump indefinitely.
It just meant that she was going to have far less mobility in the air, at least until it healed…
If it could, that was.
Questions for later she supposed.
Eventually, the two arrived at the entrance, and ditched the Phaeton entirely as they made their way back to the Stiletto fighter.
As they ran out to the ship, flipping the engine on as they hightailed it out of there, the Master Chief brought the fighter around to catch a glance of the Didact's Cryptum. They'd gone after the spire that had been farther away, harder to reach, while another fireteam had been issued with handling the second one.
Any moment now the Didact's shield would fall, and the Infinity would swoop in and take him out once and for all…
At least, that was the plan.
''Fireteam leader Ernst to Infinity, the second generator is down. We've gone up against heavy resistance, but we're going to make it out.'' The voice of Castle's leader called out over coms.
''Good work soldiers, get out of there.'' Palmer's voice faded into the background.
The shield around the Didact fluctuated, ready to collapse at any moment.
But…
''You humans tinker with events far beyond your comprehension. Your very presence here on this planet is a blight against me, and for that, you will meet your end.'' A voice echoed out across all communication systems, a voice that the Chief recognized anywhere.
"What's that?" Samus asked, confused.
"That's the Didact…" John muttered.
''You think your efforts here today have stopped me, but you are disillusioned in your efforts, as ever.'' The Didact mocked, voice echoing like a ghostly entity.
"Wait, something's happening…" Cortana spoke up.
True to her word, something was happening. As the shields began to fall around the Didact, his Cryptum was inserted into the massive underground ship. By the time the forcefield was down, he'd already gained access to the mighty vessel.
But…
The Infinity was right there, and Andrew Del Rio was not one to be mocked lightly.
As the ship rose into the skies, it was seemingly unprepared for the twin Mac rounds that piled into its side with unbridled devastation.
But even then, the ship seemed relatively unfazed by the attack, the damage done to it not preventing its departure, only slowing it.
It was as if the outer hull was, if not impervious, highly resistant to attack.
Then, to the absolute horror of everyone witnessing it, the Didact's ship tore open a hole in slip-space, something previously deemed impossible with the gravity well having so far prevented anyone else from doing so.
''You have failed, for, I am already beyond you.'' Was the Didact's scathing response as his ship began its slow motion into the wormhole.
"He's going to escape! I thought slip-space travel was impossible?!" Samus exclaimed in shock, turning to the Spartan as if hoping he could provide answers.
He could not.
"Chief to Infinity, the Didact is leaving! Awaiting orders." Chief called out quickly, hand hovering over the throttle.
This was not how it was going to end.
''Chief! We're still grounded! If he escapes now, there's no following him!'' Palmer's suddenly panicked voice echoed through.
"Permission to engage?" He asked suddenly, watching as the ship began entering slip-space. He turned to Samus, catching the corner of her gaze.
She had a pretty clear idea of what his intentions were, and she wasn't going to back out now.
''Negative! It's far too dangerous on your-'' Palmer barked out, but she was cut off.
''Permission granted! Get after him now, otherwise we'll have no chance!'' Del Rio jumped in, overriding her orders. Without missing a beat, the Chief cranked the throttle, launching the Stiletto forward at breakneck speeds. ''I don't know what you're thinking Chief, but you may be our only hope… We'll try and rally the fleet, formulate a plan of action.'' The aged man grunted. ''If we don't hear from you again…'' He started, trailing off.
The slip-space portal was almost closed, only a few seconds away now. The Stiletto fighter's hull shook from entering the portal, the vessel not rated for such travel. "It's been an honor, sir…" Chief stated gruffly, before he and Samus vanished into the tear in slip-space.
''Understood… Godspeed, soldier.'' Del Rio said deeply, before the line went dead.
The portal closed a moment later, leaving the Infinity stranded on Requiem until they destroyed the last gravity well.
And the Master Chief and Samus were on their own once more…
The Didact had escaped Requiem, and there was nothing the Infinity could do. Not soon enough.
Chapter
28
End