Ajay Devgn

Breath in, breath out.

"Careful, if we fuck this up this stuff will kill us all."

We called him Doc, or The Doc, probably one of the scariest people in the Front. Man always had a nasty trick, or a plan, or some idea. Front owed him a lot, but this... Yeah this shit was dangerous. I put on my suit and we went out. Complete radio and message silence, no transmissions period. We went to the hole we had drilled into the asteroid and carefully put the large container inside and then we carefully buried it. Only when we were finished did we go back into the ship, all drenched in cold sweat.

We had the shitty job, the one that would kill us all and fuck the entire plan if we screwed up. We became completely silent as we waited and then used our rockets to get to the next location, the next 'roid. It was nervous work, horrible work, and it required steady nerves. If we got caught we were dead. The enemy had presence in Harvest and we were deeply outnumbered. We had thirty ships with the best stealth systems available and cargos full of something so dangerous and hard to make and handle that even the UNSC had decided it was a bad idea to mess with it.

Then again Doc was crazy. Then again we didn't have a choice. Dear God, we didn't have a choice. The clock was ticking and we had to do this. We shivered as we went to the next system in the belt, praying in silence. We landed and went out, and started digging. We couldn't use power tools, couldn't risk getting caught. Just shovels and the void of space. We dug until the hole was deep enough and pulled out another barrel and buried it.

I looked at the star in the distance and felt trepidation, the enemy mostly stuck close to the world they had glassed. They ignored the asteroid belt, I could only pray they would keep ignoring it.

Admiral Preston Cole

The news are bad, because of course they are. The Covenant is getting ready with an operation so serious that the Front told us just how bad we were fucked.

They didn't just use words, they sent photos to show us all the gory details about where the enemy's industrial bases were, explained just how vast that was, and showed us that they were creating quite possibly the largest fleet in their history to wipe out the human race. Between the terror and night sweats, I pushed through.

The Front had a plan. Or rather Doctor Mark Monk, their resident mad scientist, had a solution but they needed our help. If we pulled this off it would be the single biggest victory of the war, if we failed we were fucked. When the dark day came our fleet rendezvoused with the Front's fleet and then we waited.

The waiting was the worst part, the most horrible part.

"Jump."

Our ships entered slipstream together. Most of them had been upgraded in haphazard methods, buying forcefields from the Front or salvaging ones from enemy ships because the ones we made were still shit still garbage. It would have to do, we got in Harvest's system and I saw white light.

"What?"

The com's lit up and I saw an image of the doctor.

"What was that?"

"Antimatter traps."

"That's..."

"Don't tell me it's impossible to make it, people have been making it on a small scale for centuries."

"But containing it-"

"Is the dangerous part and it requires a lot of energy to make it, like the energy output of a star for example. Even then this was my entire supply 5 years of work right down the shitter."

He sounded exhausted.

"The interdiction field is now up and their capital ships should be broken. Don't let anyone survive if you can."

"We will do our best."

He looked at me.

"Your best? Losers whine about their best, winners go home and fuck the prom queen."

I felt a flash of anger.

"I would like to remind you that I am an admiral of an allied nation, not your minion."

"Good, you're angry. Use that to kick some ass."

The conversation ended.

"Well, people... we can't let these Front assholes show us up."

We were outnumbered, severely outnumbered, but their ships, the ones that were not already destroyed, were badly damaged. Ships flashed and vanished kicked into the sun as they panicked. We unleashed our nukes, the Front used their weapons. We targeted the big ships, the capital ones, first and with their shields destroyed, with everything damaged, they were sitting ducks. The combined Front and UNSC fleet ripped into anything large that was semi-intact.

"Send out more nukes."

We sent them into the clouds of fighters that were starting to regain power, and watched them blow up. Ships continue to attempt to flee, trying to get into slipspace and only dooming themselves in their panic. After feeling so weak, so impotent, so fearful, for so long I felt grim satisfaction as our combined fleets ripped into them with everything we had.

Humanity was united, at that moment and in that goal. The allied fleet moved as one, cutting through the enemy ships like butter. for half an hour they were defenseless, then they fled. Their leadership was gone, cut down by antimatter explosions set off in such a way as to turn an entire system white, destroyed by us hitting their damaged or destroyed ships. None of them knowing about the interdiction field, all of them retreating without knowing that they were just sending themselves right into the star.

If they had rallied we would have lost then and there. The sheer mass of their military would have been enough but blind panic won us the day. With that over I looked around at the ruins, at so many ships that littered the system. The coms turned on.

"Well... Since by treaty this is your system I would say you have quite a bit of salvage to go through. Feel free to keep the interdiction fields."

"I will keep that in mind."

"So what's your plan now, admiral?"

I looked at the doctor and I frowned.

"I do believe that I have a prom queen to fuck."

The doc looked at me then smiled.

"Wish you luck with that then."

I relaxed as the front left, Harvest was ours again. I stared at the ruins and smiled. With this much salvage, with this much tech, I think we had the tools we needed to win.