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Halo/Terminator: Crossover Part I & II (Correctly formatted this time.)
Date: 24 April 2009, 6:26 am

Michael-S117 was looking around at his fellow Spartans, satisfied that they could get the job done. He was unlike any of the other members of the UNSC. While they were the strongest, biggest, best that humanity had to offer he was not. His main ability was his fantastic brain. He could out analyze any of the Spartans; even doctor Dr. Hasley was astonished at him, especially after he beat her in chess five times in a row at the old age of eight. He did not learn at the rate that the other Spartans had, while they were fast learners often going twice as fast as normal children, he was going four or five times as fast as the other Spartans were. Eventually, he was tutored by himself with different A.I.'s to keep his mind going during those few moments they to study.

His personality did not mix with the military grade issue, he had been raised by a priest. He was the only Spartan to have remembered his full name; Michael Jay Anderson. While the other children quickly forgot their past lives due to the exhausting workouts, he had hung on to his with a passion. He did not mix well with the other Spartans because of this. His mind was only equaled by his heart. He had refused to fire at any human or trainer during any of the exercises with anything that might hurt them. He thought that all human life was equally valid, just because somebody was trying to kill didn't make them bad, it just made them a threat. All threats did not have to be extinguished with violence.

As they would pour fire on him, he would carefully wait them out; learn their positions, what they had on them in terms of fire power, positions, backup, and communication tools. Once he had all of that, he would act with equal ferocity. Usually he retreated and regrouped, then later on he would find the power supply to whatever they had to keep secure, and took it out. Once the lights went off, he became a beast. He would do whatever he could to knock them out. Usually quick punches to the face to knock them down and then a kick in the neck or groin would finish them off. Then he would obtain his objective, if he had to blow something up, he took his time to remove the knocked out men so that they wouldn't be hurt.

The other Spartans did not want to work with him. John-S117 had personally told him to stay off of blue team when it was first forming. He wasn't hurt by any of this. He realized that they couldn't depend on him because of his beliefs. He simply wouldn't follow orders to kill another human being, even when it was forced on him. A trainer once snuck into his barracks and night and started to hold a pillow over his face in order to test his resolve. Rather than fight back, he pretended to pass out, bit down on his cheek to cut himself to pass blood up, and made gurgling sounds. The trainer had been so upset, that he jumped off of him and turned his back to report that he needed medical attention at the barracks. Within seconds, he had the trainer on the ground; face first, with the gun pointed at the back of his head.

"I'm not going to kill you; I'm never going to kill a fellow human being. Do you understand me, tell Chief Mendez that it doesn't matter how many times he comes after me, my sense of right and wrong, my beliefs are not his to change, and they are mine. They are not just hobbies to me, they are a part of my core being." He casually brought the gun down hard on the man's skull, knocking him out with a broken nose. He then unlocked the piece, took out the cartridge and placed it by the man's head. He walked outside and headed toward the training exercise area. He had work to do that night.


*


Chief Mendez stared at what was left of his hard work. The pillars, the wooden pillars that had hidden many traps to shock, flame, freeze, and other ghastly things that would train the children to be aware of the fields' potential problems, had been totally disarmed. The traps had all been disarmed and left on his desk as if to mock him and his training. There was really one person in the entire camp that he suspected could have done this and he had to talk to Dr. Hasley about him.

He contacted the doctor in one of the orbiting research platforms the next day.

"Hey doc, we have a slight problem…" He said with a bit of shame in his voice, asking the doctor for help felt like he had failed.

"Spartan 112 again?" She asked, already knowing the answer. How the hell does she do that, he mused.

He grunted an affirmation. He didn't like this. Talking behind one his students back, it seemed too ONI for his taste.

"Well, thank you for the thoughtful input. Their augmentations will begin tomorrow, if he survives, then we can deal with the issue. If not, the problem will solve itself." The Chief closed the monitor after that piece. That was the whole shebang anyways; the it was supposing to kill or main half the children tomorrow. He got up and walked over to the viewing port of his office, below he saw the children running sprints around the pillars to make up for the lack of live fire. He shook his head at the thought of what they were going to do to them; sometimes he thought that Spartan 112 had the right idea. Morals should never be compromised.

Micheal did survive the augmentations, but officially he did not. The brass was simply too afraid to use him in the field, they were never able to overcome his humanity. So before he could fully recover, Dr. Hasley had him put into a medically-induced coma before anybody else could get to him and had him shipped to some far away colony. She had paid enough to the right person. If Hasley wanted her SPARTAN's in the combat field, then she was going to take out the weakest link to give them the best shot at winning. Micheal knew he was a failure; it was only a matter of time before somebody was killed over it. He simply didn't want any of his Spartans to get the impression that weakness was a necessary trait. Spartan 112 would survive and serve, he just wouldn't do it around anything that approached a battlefield.



TWENTY-FIVE YEARS LATER

Anderson had joined the regular Marines and quickly became a career office; he moved up the ranks quickly, the ranks were always moving up quickly, the war with the Covenant made sure that there plenty of wholes to be filled with willing and able officers. He was one of them.

It turns out that he was not only a brilliant tactician; he was an even better strategist. He had the Covenant looking at one thing and would often clobber them with something he had been hiding.

Eventually the brass gave him his own squad, they were officially called the NGNS 112, unofficially they were called the "Never Give-up, Never Surrender" squad. They did something that made what the ODST do seem like a cake walk. While a planet was being glassed and the UNSC was losing the war in space, they saved the civilians. He had arranged to get as many Covenant-like armament as he could find on the battlefield, stick them onto the ship until they just appeared to give off a covenant like reading, ONI had eventually figured out that while the Covenant was attacking a planet, none on any of the ships kept track of anything beyond their own squads unless their ships veered into their firing path. So they tended to avoid hitting their own ships. This allowed the NGNS squads to fly their pelicans in, get the Covenant to avoid blasting their ship and by consequence, civilians, which gave them time to get off planet. It may have only been a few thousand on each planet, but Major Anderson felt that he was doing the right thing. They were using the Covenant's weaknesses against them here. Unlike in space, where they always at advantage, down here the terms were more equal.

The casualty rating of the NGNS squad was north of 80%, but he had plenty of volunteers, the people that joined his squad were mostly survivors whose planet had been glassed that wanted to save somebody else from watching their families die. It felt good to help save somebody during all of this madness.

Micheal had a tendency to be able to see where the covenant were going to strike next, he had it all mapped out in his head, he gave the maps freely to ONI but they tended to ignore him. He shrugged his shoulders and went back to saving everybody he could. It was the only thing he could do.


PRESENT DAY

IN SLIPSPACE

They were aboard, the UNSC Summer Dreams, a regular old battleship. She had seen battle at Harvest and a few other choice spots during the war, she was one of the few veterans in the fleet to survive more than fifteen separate engagements. She was S-112's favorite, not for any reason that made sense but simply for the reason that it survived. It was uncharacteristic that a Spartan showed Sentiment, but he did.

He stepped out onto the bridge and grinned at the Captain, they had known each for a long time, ever since the battle for the Octurious System. "Captain Worthington, it's a pleasure."

Captain Sam Worthington was a big man, he was 6'3 but Major Anderson was a few inches taller, one of very few men on the ship that was, he dwarfed most of his officers like a bear to raccoon. The captain was from an English background, he spoke with a clear dialect, having been raised in the Britain District of Earth. His hair had gone prematurely grey with stress, his teeth long turned yellow by excessive smoke, his skin simply hanging onto his bones as if to spite him. He was not an attractive man.
The captain stepped back and looked at him, the captain didn't like anybody commandeering his ship for insane quests of brevity, but this was an exception. The captain had lost his own family at Mingdale IV, if there had been a NGNS squad then, it might have survived because they had been at the space port, and they were glassed while trying to take it off on a civilian transport. It had him depressed as hell but it also made him glad that people like the Major was around, that there was somebody in this war who was not only fighting but saving as well. Of course, he couldn't let that show on his face, he thought with a smirk.

"Major Anderson, is your squad ready? We won't spend any more time in normal space than we have to. I just want to drop you off and get the hell out of here. We will rendezvous at Reach to pick what's left of the fleet." Captain Worthington clipped at him.

Anderson smiled, he loved it when people used his real name, it always felt like he was slowly becoming a human again. "We're ready, the Covenant is going to hit this planet with everything they have in a few hours, the evacuation has been going on for a day, and almost 250,000 people are off the planet now. Another day, we can get twice that done. Of course with Slipstream affects on our engine, it might take that long just to reach the planet." He mentioned the biggest tactical difference when it came to fighting the Covenant, it wasn't the shield or artificial gravity that made a difference in combat, those were simply technological advantages that could be taken away with clever planning, no, it was the ability to move with pinpoint accuracy from one space to the next. UNSC ships couldn't move in any kind of a formation out of Slipstream, they simply couldn't support their allies the way the Covenant did, it made the entire idea of a space battle pointless against them, if your target disappeared one second and then reappeared with two more ships behind you the next second, you were dead. The only thing that saved their ships was the nukes; you didn't need to target anything with those bad boys but they were in short supply.

"Well then, we might be able to save, close to 3% of the planet's population then Major, sometimes I think that ONI and Ackerson are right, that these idiotic stunts of yours are wasting time, men, and resources to save people we cannot save anyways," the captain said this a tad more bitterly than he intended to.

The Major looked at him sharply and addressed him crisply, "Captain that may be so, we are going to lose this planet and everybody down there. As far as history is concerned, they might as well be dead right now but we don't live in history, we live in the here and now. If we don't try and save some of them, if we don't do everything that we possibly can for them and everybody else, then we might as well as surrender to those blood thirsty aliens. Because this is what is separating them from us, they are sacrificing everybody under their command and they don't care because as long as we die, then their gods are satisfied." Actually nobody on the bridge knew what the hell the Covenant worshiped, other than that their gods were pissed off at humanity and wanted them dead.

The captain smiled tiredly at him and leaned in closer and quieter, "I know that son; you know that, the people on this ship do not. While they are willing to follow me to the ends of the galaxy, they want to do it serving a purpose; it helps them do their duties. Your speech is the best one that I had on short notice." He said with a wink.

"Well, then, you could have told me that you needed a speech while I was coming up here, I could have whipped something up." Anderson was turning a bright pink at this.

"What? And miss that righteous indignation that you love to display at anybody who doesn't love you and your cause of saving humanity? That's the best part of your speeches. Then there is that lovely afterglow of realizing just how embarrassing you are to yourself." He whispered to the Major and then did something he hadn't done in a while; he started to laugh on the bridge, hard.

Suddenly the Major joined him in his hardy laughter, the officers on the bridge were just glad that the two men were laughing instead of coming to blows, something that occurred on the ships right before a planet was being glassed, people had family and friends on those planets. Seeing two officers grinning and laughing each other lowered the tension on the bridge to something approaching friendly and workable.

Soon the whole bridge crew was laughing, it felt good to laugh at something, even if it was at yourself.

Suddenly a holographic display on the forward array lit up, a blue/purple numerically flashing woman popped up. It was Marina, the ship's A.I., while some of the older A.I.'s actually used different forms, it was becoming increasingly common for them to pick this one over the others, apparently there was a psychological reasoning behind it, humans worked better in the face of death if there was a comforting presence beside them in a cool shade of purple and blue. It actually increased the crew's productivity by over 15% just to hear her voice in stressful situations. But that didn't mean that in non-death facing events, it wasn't a pain in the ass to have the A.I. appear on the bridge as a one foot naked female, it was a tad juvenile in Anderson's opinion.

"If the two of you are quite finished justifying each others another's existence, I need you attention on a matter of extreme importance. I have detected a large disturbance in slipstream coming on bearing 5-1-9, the size and composition of the disturbance is approximately one large Covenant carrier, three destroyers, and fifteen smaller sized ships." She said without a trace in fear in her voice.

"Fuck me," the navigation officer let out what they all thinking. The Covenant was a day ahead of what Anderson had though. They wouldn't be able to get enough people off of the planet in time to get near that extra 500,000. In fact, they were going to be lucky to get there to see the glassing.

The Captain turned to him, "Stow it mister, the covenant don't go by our schedule. Now think son, is there any way we can get there ahead of them?"

The Navigation, Lieutenant Folio, a fresh recruit from Earth graduate was nearly panicking, this was the first time he had seen battle. When a young man first entered the war academies on Earth, the first thing they were taught was that the war was going horribly, not like a tie on the news. You learned that billions hadn't died, but hundreds of billions of people had. If you could survive that they figured, you could survive anything.

Some how the young man managed to come back on from the verge and actually answer his captain. "Sir, if there was a way we could somehow intercept them in Slipstream, since they are on nearly the same heading, it wouldn't take much, then we could ride their bubble in. The only problem would be that when they came out of their jump, so would we. They could put us right in the middle of their battle squadron and light us up like my Uncle after drinking the wrong eggnog on Christmas."

Despite the situation, the captain smiled at the lame attempt at a joke, his mustache twitching with something of close to amusement, "That is all right, son, get us in their bubble, we probably won't' be able to stop them from doing that anyways, the only difference is that this time we are going to know ahead of time." He walked over his tactical officer, a Lt. Yvens, a tall blonde that was the fantasy of every man on the ship, well most of them, and he smiled at her. "Lt, if we set the reactors to overload and pour every ounce of energy into the MAC gun, could it take out a Covenant Cruiser?"

She looked at him, looked down at her console and did some work inputting the information, but before she could even begin to calculate what was going to happen, the A.I. interrupted them both.

"Captain, that action is against every regulation in the book, the reactor overload would either destroy the ship in the process or it would collapse the fusion reaction into nothing. The ship would be a sitting duck for hostile boarding party, something that is strictly forbidden by the Cole protocol." The A.I. let out the last part in something that resembled a scolding mother to a disobedient child.

"I know that Marina," He muttered at the display. He didn't have much respect for A.I.'s, not because they weren't useful but because they thought that their opinion mattered so much more than what was being offered by humans, plus it didn't help that the vast majority that the military used were either incompetent grade "c" intelligence which were quite limited except in their limited fields or grade "a" intelligence with enough spunk to obliterate any working atmosphere. She was the latter kind, which he hated more. "I have no intention of violating the Cole protocol, I may be senile, slow, and downright irrational most of the time but I am not stupid."

He turned to the Major quickly. "Major, here is what we are going to do, I'm going to either destroy the ship with our reactor supercharging the MAC round or let the Covenant blow us to kingdom come. I want the ship evacuated before that however. Work with Marina to launch the evacuation into Slip space, if we can do this properly, the ship will act as Slipstream launcher, if you two can target accurately enough, then we can save almost everybody on board, after that, you and your squad can do what you do best."

Major Anderson thought about it for a few seconds, looked at the captain and instantly knew what he was planning. It was audacious and incredibly difficult to pull off, hopefully that would make it work. "Captain I need a few things to collect over the ship, but I will work with her about fifteen minutes on the targeting."

Captain looked at him with new eyes, he had never asked for anything before like this, but he trusted the Major with a good deal more than just fifteen minutes before and it had always paid off. He simply nodded and the Major walked off of the bridge. He had something he had to stow away.

"Lt Yvens, What do we aim for that will do the most damage to a Covenant cruiser at point blank range with the Mac Gun shot?" He asked without a hint of sarcasm.

She thought about a moment, looking through all the possibilities that were listed on her screen and frowned. "We simply don't have that information captain; this is literally the first time that we have known when and where we will have a shot. All of our previous engagements have been after the fact."

The captain simply smiled as he replied "Well, then Lieutenant, then give me your best guess at where we can blow those ugly sons of bitches back to hell with. If you don't think a single shot will do it, then I want you to rig all of the nuclear tipped Shiva missiles that we have onboard to detonate with the reactor, it will compress the nuclear reactor to great levels of compressions, and increase the yield by a hundred fold."

Everybody on the bridge looked at the captain, they didn't think he knew that much about nuclear physics, the captain simply continued to smile as he went on. "I know what you are thinking, what the hell is he thinking. Well, I'm going to tell you that we have a chance to knock out a Covenant assault fleet. It will take them some time to realize that we destroyed enough of it to delay the planet assault that the planet can be evacuated. We will have saved 30 million lives at the cost of the remaining crew and one ship. Anybody here want to ask me if that is worth it or not?"

Nobody asked because everybody knew, not what the captain was talking about, but that they knew he knew what he was talking about. Besides, if they could see the explosion and live through the aftermath, then it would be something to tell their grand kids, if not, then the ship would make one hell of a bang.

The captain stopped smiling, all right Marina, let's get to work. I want the majority of this ship evacuated into slipstream by tomorrow morning, that will give a us a few hours to finish what we need to do.


*


Major Anderson simply nodded at the running crew members; this was not the time for chit-chat.
He went down to the pelican bay where his special built Pelican-C was ready for him. It was mostly standard Pelican with the twin 80mm guns and the basics of the rest of the plane were there. The biggest difference was the added Covenant technology. There were thirty Jackal Shields were laid out to completely cover the craft; they mostly overlapped with each other to form a comforting shield, the only ship in the UNSC to have shields other than a few ONI ships. On the sides next to the 80mm guns were a couple of Shade Turrents that were captured during the retaking of Harvest on the ground. It was painted purple to mix in better with different covenant ships, there was enough fake signals being put out in varying languages, some old Covenant signals they had captured, that nobody would stop it.

It was also one of the few Pelicans to have its own fusion drive installed on it instead of fuel. It was using H3 from Luna station one. It had a clean fusion reactor, no need for any shielding apart from the heat. They had told him that it would last him ten to fifteen years of constant use before breaking down. While it was containing enough firepower to obliterate a small continent, it was slow as a lizard in winter thanks to the added weight. Thankfully it just had to get with the pack, lead them astray for awhile, then get the hell out of there as quickly as possible.

He had gotten the technology only after ONI had taken it all apart and put it back together hundreds of times. If he hadn't tested them out individually by himself, he wouldn't have believed that they could still be working. Part of the agreement with ONI was that nobody but him could use it. This put the mechanics in an uncomfortable position when doing maintenance on it. They couldn't look at the ship while they touched it. So the captain had banned anybody but him from working on it. And he was glad as well; he was a perfectionist and wanted it done his way.

He went to his quarters and grabbed his gear that he hauled from ship to ship; it weighed nearly 700lbs, if it had been anybody else on the ship but him, it would have been impossible for them to take it alone. He threw it on his back like it was filled with feathers and walked back to the Pelican. You never knew when you were going to need a Mark VI Spartan suit, he thought. Anderson had always upgraded his suit and tested it out throughout the years, he just never wore it. He had recently undergone the surgery while he was stationed on Reach, as a test subject, to have the ability to plug an A.I. into his brain. He rubbed the spot on his neck that bore the scars from the surgery, the things you had to do to save humanity, Anderson thought.

He took it aboard and stored with some of the "survival" gear that he had. He really hoped that the captain's plan was going to succeed; he knew that there was only 19.7% chance of the plan working to the point of crippling the Cruiser, let alone the rest of the fleet. But he knew his duty. Jump head first into hell long enough to be dunked back in and hope to save some lives in the process.


*

Fleet master Veldum'ee kicked the annoying Unngoy and watched him roll down the walkway with some satisifaction. The pathetic excuse for a server had brought him food that had been blessed by a Unggoy Deacon instead of an Shangeili one, as if his race would eat anything tainted by this cowardly species barbaric religious convictions. It would be like letting a Jiralhanae performing one of their mating rituals on the deck where one defecated.

Now was not the time for laziness, this was a time of glory for the Covenant, after seven ages of waiting; the Covenant was finally doing what they should have been doing all along. Instead of trying to reason with any of the primitive races that do not see the proper glory of the Forerunners they were trying to wipe them out. The War against the humans was going well, rumor had it that it would only take a few more years of glassing planets to remove their filth from the galaxy.

The current crop of Prophets was the wisest he had seen. They not only knew that the only way to deal with Heretics was wipe them out but they knew to send Shangeili in unaided with the other pathetic races.

Most Shangeili held little to no respect for any of the races that had given in to the Covenant without fighting. The Unngoy had, the Yig-Yar had in a matter of speaking, as had the Jiralhanae, while the rest deserved little attention. Only the Sangheili in their glorious battle history had the fortitude and resources to battle the prophets to gain a hand in negotiating with them.

His family was of the noblest of the families, his blood went back to the only victory his kind held over the Prophets. His ancestor sat directly across from them and negotiated with them and was the second signer of the Covenant. He felt the honor his ancestors bestowed upon him; it was his birthright and his responsibility. He would sooner die at the hands of the unclean humans than fail. Some Sangheili had already given up their lineage's honor, losing ships against humans when they outnumbered them, they had no excuse. The Covenant was immeasurably superior to the vermin and there should never be any loses except by those whom are so outnumbered that they drown in the human's blood as was the case at the outset of the war; 13 of their primitive chemically powered ships were needed to defeat one of theirs.

The Unngoy had come back and he could see down on the deck was a Deacon, this time a Shangeili, who simply bowed as if to say that he had blessed.

He grabbed the food and consumed it at once; he was hungry as he had been at his post for nearly the entire day with no break. He had ordered the crew to do the same, however, unlike the barbaric Jiralhanae who waited for their captain to eat, he let his crew eat before him as a way of letting them know that he valued their service. A commander who did not take care of his crew before his own needs is destined to be killed, by enemies or friends.

Unfortunately his musings were interrupted by one of his officers.

A sensory office, Thelam'ee called out "Fleetmaster, we have something on our sensors. It is a human ship, type III-D with some modifications." He spat the last part out; human vessels had only recently been categorized because they actually had been causing some damage to their ships with some suicidal tactics. The higher the number went, the more likely it was to do damage, the latter letter was simply how big it was. This was one of their larger ships that potentially could damage some of the Covenant's ships.

Veldum'ee granted a look at it. It was an ugly ship, it had no sense of purpose, he could see that now. It had straight angles all over the surface, none of the glorious curves that the Forerunners had designed. The had written their primitive language all over the ship. It was nothing but an irritation right now. The picture zoomed in until he saw two words, "Elite Killer" on the side of the ship. The Human's name for his species, his blood had gone from boiling to steaming. He would kill it as soon as he was out of slipstream.

But still, one did not ignore the humans when they were up to something for long. They had shown some signs of honor but nothing that an animal would not do when it was caged and wounded.

He finally decided to wait to see what the animals would do. "We will wait for now, they have no ability to fire on us in Slipstream while our shots would eventually find them, it would take more than we can spare. We will positions our ships to surround it. When we collapse the Slipstream, our first action will be to obliterate that ship."

He turned to his communication officer, "Contact the fleet, have the ships surround the human ship, tell them that the first person to bring me the head of the captain of that ship will have their cruiser to command." Veldum'ee smiled at that thought, with any luck; there would be nothing left to fight over.

He turned and headed down the walkway, he had a planet to obliterate after all, and somebody had to plan that.


*


Lt. Steele looked up from his navigational computer, since they had entered the Covenant's bubble, by pure chance, there was nothing for him to do except monitor the Covenant. There had been precious little activity, other than minor signals and refuels except for now. The ships were moving now; he had to alert the captain.

"Captain Worthington, the Covenant battleships are changing their position relative to us, they have collapsed their own bubbles and have come within the cruisers, and they have begun surrounding us." He called out.

Captain Worthington came over to the console, there they were, he swore under his breath. He hated how they could move so accurately in this space while they couldn't. It was pure luck that Marina had seen them on this heading, it was even luckier that they managed to get their bubbles to collide. Oh well, the best plans of mice and men, he thought.

"Alright then, Lt. Steele, use the emergency chemical thrusters and turn the ship toward the cruiser now. We might as well start to prepare for the emergence to normal space now." While the Lt was busy with that, he asked Marina a question. "Hey, Marina, what is the status with the evacuation and how goes the nukes that we are rigging?"

The A.I. appeared on the display, she was a bit slower than normal as well, and she seemed dim down, like she wasn't putting any thought into his questions. But she gave him her normal responses after a few seconds. "The evacuation is nearly done; we have over 90% of the crew into the life boats and lauching. I have shot them into space, when the Covenant collapse the bubble, the life boats will be let to drift before they even realize what is going on. The Nukes are ready to go, Lt. Yven may be human but she does have certain abilities that I do not, she has been ready for nearly two hours. When the reactor reaches critical, the nukes will go off within nanoseconds, it should provide a rather large burst, Sir, I suspect that nothing within a hundred thousand kilometers will survive the blasts."

That first part was a little out of character, not a single smart ass remark, while the A.I. was stressed out it didn't revert back to it's past self's euphemisms until the end of its life. Marina, still had six more years before that happened. But still, she was about to lose her home.

"Alright, since we have little under an hour before all hell breaks lose, I am formally activating the Cole Protocol. Marina, get the Major up here and tell him to bring his Armor." He said that last part with more than a little trepidation, nobody on board had ever spoken to a Spartan before except the captain and that was only on a video screen when he was in battle.

"The Major has confirmed your order sir; he will be joining us shortly."

It took Anderson close to fifteen minutes to get the suit on with the help of the engineer staff, he hated the armor because of it's inhuman past, but he knew that it felt right, especially when he saw the faces of what was left of the crew, and they were in awe of him. He was now invincible. He felt his reactions, strength, and speed all start to ratchet up. He charged his suit, activated the shields, went through the process of getting his targeting software up and running and when that was completed, he walked up to the bridge.

When he walked onto the bridge, he knew what to expect, he had seen the video stills of what happens when people meet a Spartan. Thankfully, most of the bridge staff was gone, either somewhere else on the ship doing a vital function or so busy they didn't look up when he walked by.

"Captain Worthington, what's happening now?" He said, he heard his voice come out much gruffer and terrorizing than normal. He knew that is how ONI liked it, it made him seem much more frightening, but he hated it. When you are trying to evacuate civilians, it was damned near impossible to get them to believe that you were anything other than Covenant when they first saw you. Of course that had changed recently as the covenant moved close to Earth and pictures of him and his old team were leaked. Now he might have a chance to actually do something.

The captain looked at him with sad eyes, "Major, unfortunately we are not going to be able to do your usual NGNS duties this time, it's not because I don't think you can't do it. Right now, we have fifteen Covenant battleships surrounding us and coordinating their firepower at this ships. You won't have the ability to get to the planet. Since this is an emergency, I have activated the Cole protocol." He tossed the A.I. an evil grin which she ignored and then continued, "Take her and get the hell out of here as soon as you are able to. Power up your ship and get out of here and take her back to Earth. I know that I am asking a lot of you, but this really needs to be done. The civilians down there are going to have to fight for themselves. You are now going to need to get her to Earth, where she can be used."

The Spartan stood there processing this all in, then replied, "But Captain if we don't…"

"Cut that crap Major, I know how you feel about civilians but this isn't the time. I didn't want to tell you anything about this, but I have confirmed that the covenant know where Earth is. Every ship, Every A.I. is being ordered to head back there and help with the defense of her. We were only going to slow down the fleet here. Get moving." He had cut the major off, for the first time ever.

The Major tried to think of a way out of this, Dr. Hasley would have been thrilled with this, a puzzle that he couldn't figure out, he squished that thought to the furthest reaches of his mind, now wasn't the time. He was trying to think of way to save everybody but he couldn't.

Sadly he came to the same conclusion as the Captain, he nodded in agreement, this time the needs of the few outweighed the many. He reached over to where Marina's chip was located o and took her out. There was no need for anything conversation. He knew his duty and so did everybody else. He walked out of the bridge a shaken man. This was the last time he would walk away from the Captain.

The Captain grinned, he then ordered everybody to get the hell off of the bridge and grabbed the firing control from the Lt. Yven's console and sat down on a chair, He pulled out a bottle of whisky he had stored under his chair and started to drink, he only had a few more moments of life left in him, what did he care whether he lived or died drunk?


*


Major Anderson walked down to his Pelican; it was now loaded with personal. He was a bit surprised when he noticed that Lt. Cassandra Yven was sitting in the co-pilot's chair. He had thought she would go down with the ship.

Her beautiful face was glaring at the mask in front of her and as if reading his thoughts, "I didn't want to be here if that's what you are thinking. After arming the nukes, the captain had me sedated by the doc and placed here. I woke up about five minutes ago." A doctor in the back of the Pelican waved at him, he waved back, moments like this needed human touches like that, to remind people that not all was lost. He glanced back at Yven and nodded. He took the chip that he had taken from the bridge out of his pocket and inserted it into the Pelican. The ship powered up instantly, that and combined with his armor, meant that Marina finally had enough processing power to operate. He hadn't stuck her in his head for one reason only; he didn't like the thought of her operating in his wetware.

"Marina, power us up, set a course for Earth directly, as soon as we are clear of the numerous alien battleships that are trying to kill us." He spoke with little humor.

Everybody in the ship turned to him, there were six personally selected NGNS crew members in back with a couple of ship personal, the only universal in the entire fleet was the Cole protocol and he just told Marina to violate that order, they all knew that.

He turned his head again to the upset crew members, "I'm sorry I have to put it like this, but we believe that they already know the location of Earth and we cannot save the ship, despite all of our sacrifices in the past, all we can do now is try to get there before they do and help the orbital defense system obliterate their fleet. Marina is a level A intelligence, which is something that Earth is desperately short on right now." He turned back to the console in front of him and began the initiation protocol. He felt so much better now that all he had to face was the most destructive enemy that humanity faced with no weapons or hope, rather than his own humanity screaming at him.


*


Veldum'ee came back out onto the bridge and nodded at the subordinates, the body of the server was still at the bottom of the walkway. He refused to let anybody clean it up, not for a trophy or to remind them of anything, but simply for himself. He wanted to smell the stench of death from the lowliest creature possible and he didn't have any humans available. He smiled at that thought as the rotting smell entered his nose; the battle urge in him sprang to the forefront of his mind.

He was the shipmaster of the largest covenant vessel in this sector, a carrier could obliterate a small planet by itself, and the rest of the fleet was merely here for prosperity's sake. It gave him a sense of satisfaction knowing about what he was about to do. The cruiser had over 500 Banshee's alone; it was over five miles long. It contained a full garrison of troops; they were united in what they were supposed to do.

His com officer, Dumar'ee turned to him, with a confused look on his face as he was reading his screen, "Sir we have received new orders from the Hierarch's, may the Forerunners praise them, they have ordered us to abandon the attack on this planet and instead do a search for a piece of Forerunner technology on this world. This countermands any previous orders that they have given, it carries the reclaimer code with it."

The Ship Master stared back at him in dumbfounded. That was supposed to mean that the San 'Shyuum have found evidence of Forerunner technology on this world. He had to turn on their Luminary to make sure. It was reconnected by the Hurgoks that were fetched from down below. It had been over 20 cycles since it had been disconnected at the order of the prophets. He turned it on and suddenly, instead of seeing a few hundred glyphys like they typically found on a Forerunner treasure, over 30 million of those were reported. It was long rumored that humans appeared as forerunner in the devices, apparently they had so altered themselves to appear gods so they could begin the journey without the rings. Such talk galled him; they deserved to be wiped out in such case. But it still awed him to see those glyphs.

The Shangeili Decon approached him, he was Thal'mu'aa, one of the most respected religious leaders of his people. He was almost seen as a Hierarch by some and greater than they by others. But aboard this ship, he was only the Deacon, the Ship master had seen to that. There was a strict code of order on this shipped and he would rather be damned to a lifetime of being human, rather than having his fellow Shangeili violate that rule.

The Decon saw it and turned to him, "never in my eyes, have I seen such a thing, so much within a luminary. I know the humans are not Forerunner but it makes you think doesn't it. What else is down there?"

Ship Master bit his Tendrils; it would not be seen as proper protocol to kill his own Deacon. He calmed himself down and replied, "I do not think, my Deacon, we were not sent here to think. We were sent here to wipe out the filth down here, while the Hierarchs are correct to have us look for proper objects; nothing on here indicates that there is anything other than typical human filth." He glanced around the luminary, seeing nothing else, he was about to turn it off when he glanced over at the human ship. It so few Hieroglyphs about it, they were probably running out of their kind to drown them with, but then he took a closer look and he nearly fell to his knees in worship.

Right then and there, in the back of the ship was a smaller ship, according to the Luminary; it was displaying the proper luminary of an Oracle. Not only was this Oracle still working, apparently the humans had tricked it into working for them. He looked over and saw that many of his fellow shipmates and the Deacon had done the same thing. They had come to this world to find an artifact and found it working for the humans on one of their ships.

The Ship Master gritted his Mandibles again, this was becoming intolerable, he then started to snarl his orders "Comm officer, tell them that they are not to engage the Oracle. I do not want a single bit of flame to get near the oracle. The Forerunners have given us this gift and we do not want to destroy it. Humans, unworthy as they are, have possessed it. We will follow them no matter the cost. We are going to separate from the rest of the fleet. They are to stay with the ship III-D, it is to be burned after the oracle has left. This ship will follow it, no matter where it goes." As soon as he was done with his orders, they were being carried out by his crew. He felt pride in them, though is lessened when he saw that they were still revering the Deacon more than their duty. A few executions should get that out of their blood after this mission.


*


The captain had finished the Whiskey bottle; the last 30 minutes of his life were going to be spent pain free and drunk. Back on Earth, religious scholars had told him that he was supposed to be feeling joy that he was about to be rejoining his family, but he didn't feel that, he only felt raw pain. Pain that he hadn't done enough in his duty to stop the ugly Sons of Bitches from killing his fellow humans. It didn't feel right. Oh well, he thought, a man can only do so much. He activated the overload sequence, he heard the MAC gun whining far higher than normal.


*


The bubble of the Assault Cruiser collapsed.

The time that both sides were waiting for.

In the next few moments, everything should have played out instantly according to everyone's plan.

It didn't.


*


The Pelican-C, officially Pelican – 1172-8975-C, started up its cruising drive as soon as they could. They had precious seconds to get as far away as possible, possibly as little as fifteen seconds. It was away instantly and headed off toward Earth, as far as they could determine.

The Summer Dreams was already at the boiling point as far as it's engines were concerned. The people that had been put out were in slipspace as far as anybody knew. It was pointed perfectly at the Assault Cruiser. However instead of heading toward the planet, it headed toward the Pelican, which was fine as far as Captain Worthington was concerned. It would cause all the more damage.

He saw that the eighteen battleships were warming their plasma cannons, why they hadn't fire was beyond him. In his alcoholic soaked mind, he saw that the ship was stopping not at him; it had gone right over him. It was heading for the Pelican. He swore as the ship was turning around to aim at Cruiser, he hoped the A.I. had taken this into account. He sat at the tactical array and thought about his family one last time and smiled. He was coming home. His finger hit the button and Mac Gun fired with a tremendous roar, destroying everything as the round left the ship, the Reactor's burst into flames and quickly overloaded, as the safeties were turned off, and at the same time the nukes went off.

Instantly all eighteen battleships were obliterated by the mini nova. They were simply too close to the explosion to escape it. The Assault Cruiser had much stronger shields and they could have taken the nukes that were being thrown at it. However, the hyperspeed Mac round was something else entirely. Instead of a limited amount of energy, all safeties had been removed and a supreme amount of energy had gone into the Mac Round until it came out nearly a hundred times faster than any other MAC round.

It obliterated the shields and kept on going like they were nothing. It went through deck after deck, so quickly that the damage didn't spread. The round had even punctured a dining area for the Shengeili, they were eating and talking and then they simply saw their dining mates simply disappear as the round went by.

It finally stopped after it struck a vault that had been sealed by the Forerunner's themselves. It was a Forerunner device that nobody had figured out to use, they had not wanted to get rid of it because all of what they left behind was gifts for the age of Reclamation, but nobody really wanted the thing on High Charity either, it was putting out an immense amount of radiation and heat that made life difficult. The Vault was designed to survive a nova, so a hyper accelerated MAC round was nothing, the round glanced off of it and went out into open space, away from the ship. However, the round clearly had done damage that could not be fixed, as the engineering section was now gone along with most of the engineers with the tools to fix it.

The ship was venting a dozen different fluids and plasma, the power systems on the massive cruiser started to fail which was the one thing that was never supposed to happen. As the power failed, the vault began to open up on the massive cruiser, the artifact, a crystallized star, began a strange pulsate with light as bright as a sun and the pulses began to put out massive amount of radiation, so much so, that it was in danger of melting the floor which began to happen…

On the bridge of the cruiser, Veldum'ee, one of the Covenant's greatest strategists, was dealing with another crisis.

The round had blown everything to hell, the nuclear explosion had greatly weakened his shields, the MAC round just went through. All safeties were activated, klaxon's were going off that should not be going off unless a warrior was about to die. Veldum was in shock, after he recovered, he realized by all rights he should take his own life right then and there, but then he had a crew to save first.

He turned to his command staff, most of whom were either dead or knocked unconscious, only. That last part being a bit hard to tell. The Deacon had survived because he was bowing at the time and most of the debris had flown right over him as it exploded. Perfect, he thought, the person who survives is a great insult to the race.

He had awoken most of the surviving bridge officers and started a journey to take a look at the rest of the ship when a klaxon from the Luminary went off. He went over to take a look, it was spraying across nonsense about some type of creature, these beings apparently predated the Forerunners, and they were called the Precursors. One of their artifacts, not Forerunner, was in the vault. The Luminary was no longer under his control either, it simply continued on with more nonsense. He panicked and tried to disconnect the Luminary. He was shocked by a force field that had come from nowhere.

Thelam was quicker on the draw than his superior. "Sir, we have to disconnect the rest of the ship. We have been crippled by the human's treachery." One of the staff grabbed his hand and put it into a glowing receiver for it, activating the safety protocol.

It was meant to break the ship up, as it became more and more damaged, the ship could break into smaller and smaller chunks. His hand was the only thing on board that would let that happen. The damage was so extreme; however, the console now reported that only front section of the cruiser was coming with them. As far as Velum was concerned, that was alright as long as he could gut and eat the humans for a long time.
Major Anderson was having a hard time believing his eyes.

The Entire Covenant fleet was gone; the cruiser was nearly shot to hell. The captain had certainly done a nice job in the end. A lot of that debris was going to fall on the planet, but he would rather have that than super heated plasma coating everything to a crispy glass.

He was congratulating Lt. Yvon for her accuracy, when the sensors recorded something bizarre happening.

Marina quickly dealt with the situation. She put the peddle to the metal and activated every accelerant she had, and told her passengers what was going on. "I have no idea what is going on here, the Covenant Cruiser was carrying something that did not mix well with our MAC round. An event has occurred and that event has rapidly been increasing the amount of Tachyon particles along with a host of other exotic matter jets, it is forming some kind of phenomenon that we have no experience with. It is putting out a tremendous amount of radiation; thankfully we are heavily shielded against it.

"Can we out run it before any real damage is done?" Anderson asked, hoping against the odds that they could.

The A.I. looked annoyed at the very question, "I cannot even tell you what is going on with that thing out there. Let alone how long it will take before we can enter Slipspace."

The sooner the better, the Spartan knew that the Covenant uglies were coming up fast on them, with that bizarre soup of matter/anti-matter/dark-matter/dark-energy going on out there, sticking around wasn't the healthiest option.

"Alright then, just get us the hell out of here. I am confident that your nanotech brain will adapt our courses fast enough that we will survive." Anderson shouted at the A.I. as it was becoming increasingly more difficult to concentrate on anything with the increasing background noise from the monitors shrieking and people cursing from debris falling on them.

"I'm sorry, Major, that isn't possible right now. I have identified the phenomenon. It has now formed a Wormhole, it's gravitational pull is too strong for us to do anything except to go in." The A.I. suddenly disappeared from the holographic platform on the ship, as if afraid of sticking around and being with them toward the end. The Spartan knew that wasn't the case however, she literally was the ship. It just felt like that.

Well, he thought, if I'm going out then I'm going out human. He took his helmet off, looked next to him, Yven, was looking at him right back, their eyes met, as if to say good-bye. He took her hand in his , and they looked away from each other and stared into the abyss. They could see that something was staring back at them. It lasted for a few seconds, and then both the Covenant Life-boat and the Pelican-C fell into the hole, the wormhole closed up without a trace.


*


For what seemed like hours, they two ships were in hell. Nothing around them but a a burning plane of existence, a fire space, if one could imagine. Each person was staring out their viewer ports or windows as long columns of darker fire of unimaginable length went by them at speeds not seen in any space, not a word was said until one of columns came right for them.

"We're boned…" Someone muttered.

Nobody knew who it was.


*


The impact knocked everybody out, it was like having an elevator smash the floor, only you are underneath the elevator when it happens, and you were on fire.

Anderson was the first to wake up; he came to with a soft white rush of static coming in over his headset. All around, consoles were simply showing static. He decided that he was dead and was about to go back to sleep when he thought he heard a voice calling out to him that was getting louder as time went on, "Can anyone hear me? This is A.I. Marina, Serial Number MRA-34663. I repeat, can any UNSC personal hear me? I have casualties to report…"

Anderson decided to take a chance that he wasn't dead and that it could be Marina after all, "All right, Marina, thank you for the wakeup call. What's the situation?"

"Great, of all the people to wake up first, it had to be Mr. Sunshine." She sputtered out; irritated at his waking up, but secretly happy that he wasn't injured.

Despite everything that had happened, Anderson smiled; some A.I.'s couldn't be rattled by anything, it what made them so useful to the war effort. But this pleasantry didn't mean that work didn't have to get done.

"Cut the chatter, Marina, what's our status?"

"Well aside from falling into a Wormhole, a theoretical form of travel until a few hours ago, we have crisscrossed at least three different dimensions to arrive in the Sol System." She replied with a crisp, professional voice that brokered no doubt.

Anderson leaned his head back and closed his eyes; this was not his day…

Suddenly he had enough of this type of thinking, he wasn't used to it, and it wasn't doing anybody any good. Usually he was the one that lifted everybody's spirits. He suddenly shot up straight, enough of the staggering around, he had a mission. Getting Marina back to the defense fleet was the priority.

"Marina, set a course for earth, best possible speed, we need to arrive before our ugly friends out there wake up. Contact the fleet admirals when you get a chance, having discovered a 300 light year short cut should make their day."

She appeared as a hologram on the console looking more than a little purple, which, for a class A A.I. meant that she frustrated or pissed. Or both if he was really lucky.

Thankfully, she was only confused. "We have more than a few problems with that set of orders Major, First of all, I am no longer reading a defense force, UNSC command structure, orbital platforms, or anything that even remotely resembles UNSC in this entire solar system." She sounded personally hurt, like everybody had left and forgot to leave a note.

He was more than a little puzzled; he was stunned, "Is that even possible? The Covenant couldn't have blasted the entire space corps out of existence. In the system, you are talking about hundreds of UNSC warships, thousands of battleships, tens of thousands of cargo ships. The defense platforms alone should have left enough titanium in orbit to…" His voice giving out... It was tough, to learn the entire world was dead around you with no hope.

Thankfully that moment had not arrived humanity just yet.

Marina looked at Anderson for one moment, shook her head and a model of the Solar System appeared above her, "It appears that we crossed back in time, despite all of the major works Scientific Literature printed in the last four hundred years. Have you heard of planetary drift before?"

He slowly nodded, "that's the mechanism where planets are slowly drifting away from their orbits a little each time they pass, the moon is moving away an inch away or so each year, correct?"

The A.I. reappeared and despite the situation, she smiled, "that is correct. It is also a good way to tell the length of time from a solar point of view. With the readings that I have observed so far, I would place our present time at 500 B.C.E."

Anderson mouth was hanging open at that. There was no training, no conditioning, and no preparation that could have prepared anybody for this; time travel simply wasn't a big deal for an officer to deal with. However, he had lives under his command; they were going to be expecting some orders when they came to. If they were going to live the next few weeks, it would depend on what he decided on now.

It didn't take him long. "All right, what is the Status of Earth, according to history, there shouldn't have been more than eight billion people down there, milling about. We are going to need a place to hide until we can figure something out."

"Well, that is an excellent idea, however there is one tiny problem that you have forgotten. "

He thought he had an idea where this was headed…

"The Earth is apparently suffering from a Nuclear Apocalypse or Holocaust, whichever sounds better to you. I am presently reading less than three billion people alive which is one third of the total population recorded at this time. Nearly all of them are living small communities that are scattered near the coast lines but none of them are actually living there, as if they need the water but are too afraid to get it. Most of the surface of the planet has been irradiated from what I have scanned." She spat the last point out, as if saying it ugly enough would turn it around.

She continued "I know what you are going to ask about next and yes there are still broadcasts coming from the Planet but none of them are making any sense. The communiqués are about something about a resistance against "Skynet" or something like that, coordination of various troops and equipment throughout the planet with a few messages about family. Curiously, none of them are using any 192,000bit encryption or quantum encryption from what I can tell; it is like somebody left the gate open. I am reading nearly a 3,000 active satellites with 7,000 inactive ones."

"Well at least that's something," he said, he was kind of happy that at least the Covenant were nowhere to be found. At least until Marina continued.

"Don't forget our friends out there, the Covenant cruiser is approximately .33AU away from our position, they are in-fact, in the orbit of Mars, slowly drifting towards the planet's gravity well." This ripped his attention away from the screen showing the broken blue planet below him. A Covenant Cruiser in a human held system was not good sign, even if it was crippled. He had to know that they weren't a threat.

Anderson cleared his throat and asked, "Are they in any condition to bother us?"

Marina looked away from him for a second, accessing the sensors, she was going through trillions of calculations per nanosecond, this was still taking all her processing time and it didn't help matters that the Covenant were so far away.

Fifteen seconds after she looked away, she looked back at the Major and spoke, "They are crippled from what I can tell. Their Slipspace engines are missing, weapons are gone, hull is holding steady at 72% intact, shields are at 7% of what we normally assume with that type of ship, though normal is not what this situation is.

The Major stared at the display, no longer showing Earth but the Covenant Cruiser, badly damaged and limping into orbit. The ship was bizarre, it was the remains of an Assault Carrier, the front hook part of the ship was all that was there. The rest of it had broken off apparently, perhaps some kind of evacuation protocol. The last part of the tip wasn't leaking any gas or anything, either the Covies had sowed that area up tight or the Cruiser was meant to be broken up like that. He wouldn't put either past them, the Engineers from what he had heard back at home were miracle workers, they could repair any device that happened to be in their way. Still, it seemed unlikely given how little time had passed.

Marina spoke again, breaking his concentration, "I am reading life support problems as well. According to my scans, they don't have much time left before they expire; apparently their trip through the anomaly and the other dimension was much harder on their systems than ours."

"Well then, we have a choice then don't we, we can either destroy them right now with what's left our offensive capabilities or we can let them die a slow and painful death of freezing or suffocation." He said the last part bitterly, he didn't like the fact that he felt like he was coming home to an impossible situation that required a lot of luck. It would be damn near suicidal, a Pelican attacking an Assault Cruiser, nobody would be that dumb.

The major thought back to that last day, the last day he felt human…


*


His father had been a preacher in the local church. He had moved the family to Elisia after the mother had died during the very early days of the insurrection. His father felt that they needed to get away from the fire and death that was starting to come from the colonies. Elisia had a very small population, less than 300,000 on the entire planet, everybody knew everybody.

His Father, 7th Day Baptist preacher, was one of the few men that everybody respected. Most of that respect came from his uncompromising morals, he thought of life as the greatest gift to the universe and constantly fought with the local lawmen to see that through.

On the last day, he and his sister spent the evening watching the vids coming in from Earth, his current favorite was about lone gunmen in the American West. It was a long time coming, they only got a shipment in every six months, and this one had been delayed two months due shipping errors.

His father came into the room, turned the Vids off and sent the children to bed. They tried protesting, but his father was in a peculiar type of mood. He was normally a very agreeable person, but this time, his voice showed no signs of bending.

As Micheal was leaving to go to bed, his father snagged his arm and he turned to look at his father.

His father was English while his mother had been Norwegian, His father name was Kevin and he was 6'2 but had a powerful and imposing frame. He probably would have ended up as a boxer but he couldn't have hurt a fly, at least one that didn't hurt him first. So when a person first met him, they were often afraid of him until they heard him laugh. His laugh was booming that people in the next town over would call and ask if things were alright. When he sneezed, people in the house cried out in terror, thinking it was a bombing from the rebellion.

That night, the old man had a desperate look in his eyes, as if he knew that this was the last time he would ever see his son again, of course that was impossible, but it sure felt like it. His father sounded like he was half-crying when he spoke, "Micheal, please believe me when I tell you this, I thought that coming here was the best thing for you. I have tried to raise you like I thought your mother would have wanted for me, but some times I think I have failed."

Micheal shook his head, "I don't think you even know what the word fail means Dad. You never give up and you never surrender." That last part was something of a family motto, you spend enough time going from planet preaching an ancient religion that nobody believed in, you weren't going to get by on faith alone, you had to believe in yourself as well.

Kevin smiled tiredly turned to turn on the Vid screen. He then told Michael to go to bed. As Michael was going out of the room, he heard his father call out to him one last time. "Son, don't ever let anybody compromise who you are and what you can do. The moment you let that happen, they will control you."

It wasn't obvious what he was talking about, but being six meant that Michael couldn't even see the next minute, let alone his entire life. Michael shook his head and ran off to bed. It promised to be a cold and dark evening. That night, he heard somebody come into his room, he was shocked with some kind of rod. He passed out in pain, the last thing he saw was his father being hit with the rod…

The Next day he awoke in a Pelican with 14 other children heading to Reach. That was the last day he knew himself.


*


The Major shook himself out of his trance, thinking about the past with a killer enemy on the loose was not the wisest thing to do. The Chief would have murdered him with good cause.

But that thought gave him a third option, one that was going to make their life infinitely more difficult but he couldn't help but do it, "Marina, set a course for the Covenant Cruiser's head, get us there at best speed."

The 13inch A.I. nodded her head, "Course set, weapons systems charging, activating targeting systems."

Anderson shook his head; he looked forward to this even less than upcoming fight. At least there, if he screwed up then he would die quickly. Arguing with Marina felt like torture.

"Get us there, charge the weapons systems, but do not activate the targeting systems, this isn't going to be a combat mission if I can help it, it's going to be a rescue mission." As he said the last part, the A.I. stared at him as if he had suddenly pulled off his mask and revealed himself as a grunt. That probably would have made more sense after what he said.

A voice came from the seat next to him in a sleepy tone, "You can't be serious."

He turned to Cassandra and smiled, the blonde weapons officer was finishing waking up and staring at him with her jaw down. He had to admit, she made a nice picture right then and there. The lieutenant was considered the most wanted woman on the Midsummer Night, though she refused all offers. Her skin was a lovely shade of tan, flawless beauty, she appeared delicate but simply shaking her hand made many poor suitors run the other way, she had the right curves, the best part was that she knew how to take care of herself and she took no prisoners. They had been smiling at each, unseen by anybody else but Marina, sharing quiet moments together in times of crisis, but neither of them had done anything about it.

But that wasn't what he had to concentrate on right now, he had to convince everybody that rescuing an enemy devoted to killing them was the right thing to do. Not the correct thing to do, but the right thing.

He slowly let his breath out, put his helmet back on. Once the helmet was on, he linked up with the Pelican system; it let him see space much more clearly.

He breathed out one more time and spoke, "Lieutenant, first of all, this isn't a request, it's an order. Second of all, I have no intention of anybody dying here. Thirdly, nobody has ever attempted to rescue a downed Covenant ship, it's always been either destroy them or be destroyed by them. Think of what can happen if we can finally talk to them from a position of strength, this may be our only shot at this. Billions of lives are at stake by what we do here, isn't that worth the risk of my life?"

Marina and Yvan both looked up suddenly and spoke at the same time, "Your life?"

Anderson smiled and was glad they couldn't see it through the helmet, "You don't think that I was going to let anybody risk their lives by going with me, did you? But I will need Marina with me, if anything she can help us finally talk to them in their own languages. Marina, after the drop off, I want you to have the auto-pilot take this thing down to Earth in some remote part of North America. Preferebly with as little radiation as possible, warm temperatures, and a nice beach to vacation at." At least if they were stuck here, they might as well make it a nice place.

Lieutenant Yven shook her head, "I don't need the A.I. to shoo me along, I am fully trained in flying these things in space, air, and water if necessary."

Marina threw her hand up to the lieutenant, "Fine, I'll leave you with some coordinates that have some local populations nearby but far enough that you won't draw any attention when you land." Numbers poured over her body as calculations flowed through her to the Navigational computer. After a few seconds, stopped flashing and stared at the Major. She simply nodded her holographic head, it was time to yank her.

The Major Simply nodded at this situation, he reached down and pulled her module from the reader and inserted into the reader at the base of his skull. He had never done this before and didn't know what to expect. Suddenly he felt sharp pain all over his skull, like somebody was trying to hit him until they got out of there. Just as quickly as the pain came on, it was gone. He then felt coldness sweep through him as a presence other than his own took up residence and threw out a welcome mat in his brain. He wondered if there was going to be any lasting effects from this.

Suddenly he heard Marina's voice coming from the speaker in his helmet and as a voice in his head, not another one he thought, "There is a lot of neural activity in your cerebrum, you aren't as primitive as I thought you were."

"Coming from you, Marina, that's almost a compliment." It was going to be a long relationship, might as well get comfortable with each other, he figured.

Play time was over though, the Covenant ship had docked with theirs, there was a small opening at the bottom of the Pelican that went over to what looked like a hatch on the covenant ship. They were sealed so that when he left, nobody would die from asphyxiation. Well, at least that way.

He turned the volume on for the outside world, turned to his left to talk to Cassandra, he was surprised she was already leaning toward him. She bent over, grabbed his shoulders, and kissed him on the face of his helmet and spoke to him gently and quietly, "Come back safe, Spartan."

He was floundered, this was something that he was new at, but thankfully Marina knew what to do. His speakers came to life, "Don't get any lipstick on the sensors."

With that he nodded to Yvan, got up, turned around and took off one of the floor panels, below them was a small portal for space walks. Before he left, he grabbed a M6D and a shotgun with several clips, a medkit for humans, and several vials of Biogel in the compartment behind the pilot's chair. He had no idea on what to bring otherwise. He loaded the weapons onto his person, with the medicine in one hand, he went below and went to the min-space port, climbed into it. He pressed the button that opened the door and stepped over to the Covenant ship's docking port, it was a meter away from the Pelican, he propelled himself over and grabbed on with all his might and slowly climbed to the door. He had several hours left of oxygen in the suit. It damn near recycled everything, liquids included.

He grabbed the hatch on the Covenant ship, gripped it while Marina sent the Pelican off on it's own journey toward salvation.

The pelican took off from the port of the spaceship; it was on silent mode, so it was using the chemical thrusters so not to make too much visible light that the Major would light up. The ship was still purple, though the bottom of the shipped was toasted from the column of fire they had run into. It looked as if it was slowly drifting away. Major Anderson waited until he couldn't see it anymore, then he turned his sights on the covenant door as he grabbed the latch. He couldn't think of himself as Major Anderson, from here on out, he was a Spartan on a mission. He twisted the latch until the door lit up like a Christmas tree and opened up, it was over three meters in length. He took one last breath and floated through to the other side.


*


Once he came through, a he saw a force field in place blocking him. He realized it was preventing the air from flowing out into space, he marveled at the technological advances they had over humanity and turned around. He closed the door and the field disappeared.

Suddenly Marina spoke up, "All right, I have the latest schematics from what we know is their layout. I have activated your motion detector, I have tagged them all as enemies until you make contact.." Her voice changed, she actually sounded a little less sure of herself when she said the next part, "Please remember that there are two of us in here and getting shot while in your head is not the way I want to go out."

He nodded, though she couldn't see the motion he was sure that she got the message from his thoughts.

He then walked into the ship.


*


It was damned purple and blue. What the hell did the Covenant think when designing this ship, he thought, was the ship designer color blind to everything but purple and blue? He spotted that the floor was lit up, but that wasn't where he was looking, he was looking around the corner everywhere for somebody who was about to shoot him. Thankfully the two of them had been lucky. There was nobody around this part of the ship, at least that was what he thought when he bumped into a grunt with a plasma, both of them were as surprised to find the other.

"Yipes," it yelled in perfect English and it turned around to run off.

How the hell do they always speak English in the battlefield, it unnerved him that they knew everything about his species while they were still enigma's to his.

Anderson took two steps around the Grunt, got in front of the Grunt and grabbed it's weapon, a plasma pistol, from it's shaking hands before the Grunt could take fire it. It started to run again, but he let out a growl from his speakers. The grunt suddenly dropped to it's knee's, it started to whining to him, "please don't kill me, I'm not ready to start my journey." The grunt started to cry right there and then.

The Spartan was confused; usually a grunt just runs into fire during combat or just shoots at anything. They never just gave up and started to cry. It made it seem so… cute.

He felt bad for scaring the thing, for a moment, "Please stop crying, get up, and tell me what is going on."

It took a minute or two, but finally the grunt stopped crying enough to talk to him, "I was feeding with my nipple brother, who began his journey earlier, we were analyzing the latest intelligence from the Demon but needed to eat eventually. We went down to eat, there was a large crash, then a boom, then another crash, and finally one big boom. Our ship separated from the rest of the hull. The Shangeili were angry at you for killing everybody, he ordered a pursuit. Then I passed out because I had too much benzene earlier and it messed with my sense of equilibrium. I awoke to hear the outer hull hatch open and found you here to kill us all!" It started to scream again.

He took his hands and put them on the screaming grunt's shoulder's and picked it up, he shook the creature just once, it stopped screaming to look at him, he spoke loudly at it. "Listen to me, I am here to help you, but I can't do that if you keep screaming blood murder, it will alert the rest of the crew that I am onboard. If that happens before I can help you, everybody is going to die very quickly, do you understand?" the Grunt nodded, only a little quaking then.

"Alright then, what do I call you then?" He asked as he put the grunt back down.

"Leetoy, Grandchild of the famous Balayp." The Grunt said this, over flowing with pride in his voice, it apparently gained enough bravery from saying its name that it turned its back on him and started to walk.

The Major rolled his eyes, "Alright leetoy, I need to administer medicine to your wounded, do you understand? I can help your people."

Leetoy stopped in it's tracks and turned to him and whispered, "you can help my people? How?"

"Well, for starters, I can heal the injured on this ship, I can talk to the "Shangeili" for you, and we can stop the fighting so there will be no more dead grunts." He gave his plan over to the little bag of methane-based life.

Marina had been quiet the entire conversation up until this point, "Since you now have a tour guide, could you please put me in their system. It's about time that we learn as much as we can from them."

He had forgotten about her, she was so quiet sometimes… He took her memory cube out of his skull and put it on next to a console. She leaped from the cube into their system. She was in.

The grunt watched it with lots of interest, "Oooh that was pretty, can you do that again?'

The Spartan shook his head, "She's in your systems right now, and she will help us. Let's go." He put the memory cube back into his system, he felt lonelier now than when he started in the Spartan program. He could see how some people could become addicted to having an A.I. Hardwired into their brain.

The Grunt was completely oblivious to what was going on, "Okay Dokey, let's see if we can find a food nipple, I have a big grunty thirst that needs to be quenched!"


The Spartan shuddered, "I don't even want to know…"


*

Marina was in data heaven. The covenant had visited thousand of worlds, contacted dozens of species, and found countless forerunner technology. They had categorized, labeled, and stored all of the data for what seemed like just for her. She downloaded hundreds of gigabytes in microseconds on their intelligence before she remembered about the Spartan. She realized she would have leave that for later, Leave it a Spartan to ruin a girl's good time she thought with a muse.

She counted the number of life-forms onboard, there were a lot. Far more than a UNSC ship of this size, the ship was nearly a kilometer long in its chopped form. She ran through the remaining systems, battery was down to 12%, plasma cannons were at 3% and slowly charging. They weren't gone, just retreated back into the hull. The Engines were gone however; the only available drive that was functioning was the standard graviton engines the covenant used inside of solar systems. They could possibly reach another system, in about 3000 years if they started out now, a lot more when you took into the account relativity.

Eventually she counted a total of over 300 life forms, originally the computer had found much more but she had to shift through, some covenant were in fact colonies of much smaller life forms, they each counted as a life form but moved as one. She would have to tell the Major to watch his back, apparently they were the Hunters, at least two of them on the deck above them.

There were more than two dozen Sangeili left aboard, she quickly locked them down. She activated the force fields all over the ship to prevent them from sneaking up on the Major. She nailed down 22 of them; there were still two of them on the bridge that could override her. She changed the codes to prevent them from at least opening up the force fields.

She felt a ripple in the system; pings around her were getting higher and higher, something was using up her processing time without identifying itself. Had she activated a Covenant anti-A.I. defense system? No, apparently somebody was using the computer to see what was happening. The bastards didn't understand how any of this stuff worked she realized. They had software running on the system that was practically archaic compared to the hardware. It was too simple to have been written for the hardware. The hardware was rewriting the software to be able to understand it better without having been told to do so, it was almost sentient in a way. Only thing humans had an advantage in combat were the A.I.'s and the Covenant didn't have those. But if the programs were constantly being rewritten, how many errors did the data have?

stopped processing at once and analyzed that particular notion, was she being rewritten at this very moment? It was possible, but she wouldn't even know it or feel it. She needed to get the Spartan to the bridge.

She locked everything down on their path. She then went through the various languages and went on the intercom to tell everybody that help had arrived and would be coming. Just not the help they thought.


*


Valdum'ee growled at Thelam'ee, not because of his incompetence but because of his competence.

After appearing with the humans in another dimension, the ship was hit by a column of thousands of little lights, then the monitors showed that the columns were in fact little universes. They had left a wormhole manufacturing device the size of a plasma pistol. The prophets were not going to be pleased.

He looked around at his ruined command. The consoles were either blackened from damage or being fixed by the engineers that were left. As they came back up, he had assigned his two remaining officers with getting the ship back up and running.

Thelam'ee had just told him that they only had a few days of energy left, charging any of the cannons would not leave them with enough energy to live. He had started the process anyway; however he started it very slowly so that if they detected the humans in the next day or so, they could be annihilated.

Kurlta Duram'ee was the weapons officer; he had helped Thelam'ee during the charging process and was now fighting the ship to regain control of self-destruction mechanism. He wanted the ability to destroy the ship at any moment in case the humans back. He would not let them have his command ship.

He started to pace, something he rarely did, movement helped him think. Only fighting another brother in hand to hand with an energy sword would let him think any clearer and he didn't want any more blood on the deck right now. It could have shorted something out.

His only real concern for his future was the bonded Lekgolo brothers prowling around the ship, searching for enemies and him, they were currently trapped a few decks below and for the moment he pitied them, they would not have their chance to exfoliate him. After failure of this magnitude, they had to. He had a human vessel destroy his entire fleet and a band of humans to get away with an Oracle. He shuddered at the magnitude of the failure.

He stopped his thinking, stopped his pacing and returned to his command center with his officers. The deacon had finished praying with the Unngoy Deacon and some of the more religious of the crew in the corner, they prayed for the forerunners to save the ship. It had been a waste of time in his opinion, but he didn't care as long as they stayed out of his way.

Duram'ee called out, "Sir, I have been locked out of my controls by something." The officer had a look of panic on his face, Sangeili never panic he reminded himself. Veldum'ee walked over to the controls and tried to input orders to the computer, nothing responded. Suddenly a soft voice came over the speakers on the bridge, "Attention Covenant crew, help is on the way. Please remain where you are and you will be taken care of."

Most curious, it sounded like a female was saying that. But Sangheili females did not come with the fleet, as far as he knew there were no females from any of the species on the ship beyond a few of the Huragok and he had his doubts about them. He needed answers from this woman.

"I am Veldum'ee, fleet master, who are you and what are you doing on my ship? I have not authorized anything like this." He screamed at the monitor. For a few minutes, he was greeted by silence, just as he gave up; the monitor came to life with a human female on it. Though she did not look right, something about the skin tone, she was Sangheili by skin ton but human by dimensions. This did not bode well for any of them.

She sighed then started to talk, "Fine, if you just want the truth then here it is, this is UNSC A.I. Marina; we registered your ship as heavily damaged and have come aboard to aid you and you crew. In the interest of cooperation, please refrain from killing us until we are finished, we hate leaving a job half done as much as you do."

Veldum'ee should have been angry, no furious, no insane with rage. The cursed humans had come aboard his ship, infiltrated his computer systems, and were treating his crew and his machines. As much as he hated the species, those acts were shear gull, bravado, and lunacy. He respected such acts. He then started to laugh. It started as a chuckle, and then became a laugh, and finally a full roar erupted from his throat that sounded like a cough to Marina's ears. The officers around him were staring at him as if he had lost his mind. A Fleet Master laughing while his ship was infested with humans? Madness.

He shook his head and looked back at the monitor, he was still grinning. "Your species has been designated to be wiped out as soon as possible. But in the current situation, I assume that since we do not know where we are, then you do not know where you are," she nodded and he continued, "then in order to solve these problems, I invite you and your fellow humans aboard this ship with my personal guarantee of their safety, do not be concerned about my identity, I am Veldum'ee, Fleet Master of Sector 189, charge with exterminating the humans."

Of all the things that she expected, this was not high on the list. A Fleet Master who was intelligent? They were known for their zealotry, cunningness in battle, intelligence networks that expanded entire sectors of space. One thing they were not however was amiable toward anything remotely human but here one was willing to be helped by a human. Desperate times call for desperate measures, she supposed.

The show must go on, she thought, "Alright then, my companion will be coming to the bridge after he has done helping some of your other crew members. He is an expert in situations such as these. Any attempt to harm will result in the death of every member of your crew."

"Agreed, his harm will come after our present situation is solved." Vedum'ee said with what Marina thought was a grin, but this was the first time they had captured one of the elites and had them live long enough to talk. She accessed the ships databases; it came up empty with the term "smile".


*


The Major had helped several grunts by packing them up with biogel. Most of them insisted calling him, "demon," for some reason. He tried to ask what the name meant to any of them, the only thing he got out of them was that he would disappear first and come back to kill them later. He started to chuckle at the absurdity of the notion but stopped. During the initial Spartan program, he heard about what Blue team did to some of the insurrectionists, they didn't call them demons, but they were doing the same thing. He would have to talk about that with the Chief later.

The overhead speakers suddenly went on, "Chief, the Fleet Master has guaranteed your protection for now, apparently he likes the fact that you snuck onboard to provide medical aid to your enemies, that kind of thinking appeals to his warrior ego. As soon as the current situation is over, however, he has promised to disembowel you at his earliest convenience. Marina Out."

Well, that's a positive step in the right direction, he mused. I've gone from certain death to delayed certain death. A few more trips like this and humanity would make it to lunch time! He chuckled as the door started open as he walked toward it and suddenly he was face-to-face with a hunter.

The Lekgalo was staring at him, he couldn't tell what it was thinking, but it couldn't have been good, its shield was out and it's weapon was aimed at him. The next few seconds would tell if he would live till lunchtime. It's blades from its back were full out, they could easily slice the Mark VI armor in two if they liked. The creature was over two meters tall, orange dripping worms were seen motioning inside it's eyes, angrily dancing.

Suddenly, the Major felt a deep rumbling through the deck, it was speaking to him. He hoped.

Its movements matched the rumblings, "Come with me, my bond brother is injured, if you save him, you live." He didn't hear the sounds so much as felt them through the deck. In the end, it didn't matter; the point had been simple and clear. He grabbed his medkit and ran off to catch the lumbering beast. Hoping that he could help a colony of alien worms from dying.


*


When he arrived at the hallway where the hunter was, a gross scene had unfolded. The injured hunter had been sliced by something, probably falling debris or venting plasma, and half of the worms were out of their environmental suit and wiggling around. He could tell that they were dying fast; he saw that they were oxygen based life form so the environment wasn't kill them, neither was anything in the air. He slapped his helmet; the answer was right in front of him. The worms were the entire creature. They made up the hunter, communal worms that formed a greater organism; it happened on Earth once in awhile, trees could form an entire super-organism that dominated the entire forest. He started taking the worms, handful at a time and put them back into the Lekgalo as gently as he could, he threw out the dead ones.

Twenty minutes later, the Bond Brother was patched up. It lost about a quarter of it's mass but the remaining worms were making up for it by growing thicker.

The first hunter turned to small human, he felt the rumbles coming from the deck again, "Thank you, if you are out of this hallway in the next twenty seconds, you will be the first of your kind to survive an encounter with one of my kind." There was no sarcasm, no amusement, and no thankfulness in that voice. Just a pure threat.

Still, one didn't ask too many questions when threatened by an alien with a plasma canon that was generally attached to Warships in space. It was just plain rude and stupid. The Spartan nodded a comprehension and walked away from the scene. At the twenty-one second mark, as he was turning a corner, he heard a plasma cannon charging...


*


Fifteen hour later, he headed up to the bridge of the ship. He had been helping the crew get patched up, moving crate around the cargo that had spilled onto the deck, trapping some of the engineers from escaping. He went into the engineering next, helped the engineers get close to blown coolant container and patched it up, he actually befriended the engineers at that point, their ability to sign was surprising to him, he simply thought they were unintelligent creatures doing what they were bred for, how wrong he was.

Apparently they were left over from the Forerunners to run and maintain their equipment. They were peaceful creatures who hated combat but forced into serving it. They only answered to the Hierarchs, whatever they were, and Ship Commanders. They were gentle creatures, they hated the war as much as he did and they refused to fire on the enemy. Only their dedication to fixing broken equipment kept them in service to the war effort.

He walked out of that department covered in coolant, he was currently at -177 degrees Celsius but fortunately the armor protected him from feeling itand within a few minutes he would be fine as it burned off of him. He shook himself off like a wet dog and stepped into the gravity lift. It took him to where the bridge is. As the lift was taking him to the bridge, he took out his shotgun, cocked the gun and aimed it out the door. When dealing with Elites, especially ones that have promised to disembowel you, you never could be too careful. The doors open and he and his cocked gun came out.

Veldum'ee turned to the opening lift, expecting to see a normal human step out. He wanted to meet the human that had been this daring and devious, and then disembowel him, but what came out of the lift was not human. Not entirely it was believed, it was a demon, a Spartan-II. One of them had destroyed an entire Covenant Armada, blew up a holy ring, and possibly more than 800 of their ships at one of their starports. It was reported that they have caused death of thousands of their fellow Sangheili. This demon wasn't something to honor, this was something to kill, it didn't even have the decency to show its face when facing superior enemies. He jumped the railing and activated his blade.

Upon seeing their boss activate his energy blade, the other two did as well and started to head toward the demon.


*


Veldum'ee got to it first; he took his energy sword and raised to slash the heretic. Before he did that, he got knocked on his ass by a shotgun blast at point blank range. His shields failed and some of the pellets got through, his face bloodied up. After a moment, he jumped back up and tackled the demon.

Both of them went down on the deck hard. Both of them fighting for survival, the Elite gripped the Spartan's throat; the Spartan slammed his fists into the side of the Elite until it let go. It was like a chess match, one of them moved right after the other. Finally the Elite got the upper hand by leaving its self defenseless, he grabbed the Spartan hand, twisted around till his arm straightened out, then it started to hammer him with the other hand as it crouched over the human.

Anderson felt the blows, not as severely as if he had been out of armor, but he still felt them. His shield was dropping quickly and it would be very soon when those blows would cause actual damage to the suite which he couldn't afford. His other arm went to the M6D in his sidepocket. While the Elite was enraged at the disfigurement, he didn't see the slight movement.

The Elite let go of his other hand to put them together, he raised his fists above his head, he was about to deliver a killing blow when the M6D went off. It blew the Elite over railing and it landed on its back, knocked cold. Explosive rounds did the kick now and then. The other two Elites were approaching him nervously; the Demons were used to scare Sangheili children as well as insurrectionists.

Marina had enough of this, "If there is so much as another movement in this chamber, then you are all going to die right now, this ship will become UNSC property, your heads will be placed on the Master Chief's mantel." That did it, the Elites were more than willing to throw their own lives away, but to end up as a trophy of the worst of the worst, was too horrifying for them continue. They shut their energy swords off and backed off.

Anderson was having trouble breathing, the Elite had come close to choking him, and his esophagus was extremely bruised and swelling by the minute. While the suite had many different medical abilities, dealing with an internal esophagus was not one of them. The Suit injected with massive amount of cortical steroids in the surrounding tissue. He hoped they would be enough to keep the swelling down. They were but they had the unfortunate side effect of knocking him out. He fell over, dropped down the railing and landed on the Fleet Master.

This was not going well, he thought as the total blackness consumed him.


*


Thal'mu was contemplating his next move when he noticed something. The Luminary was still lighting up like a Vovlear tree. It putting out the ancient text at astounding speed, much faster than he had seen in the past. He started to walk over to check to make sure it was functioning.

"Don't even think about it, Thal'ma or whatever your name is, I have pressurized the atmosphere on the outside to nearly zero. Any attempt to harm the "Demon" as you call him, will be met with an explosive death." Came the response from the nearest speaker.

He kept moving as he spoke, "I will not harm the filthy creature, I have no interest in doing so, I am merely checking upon our sacred Luminary at this time. It is meant to detect Forerunner technology; it is currently giving strange readings. If I do not discover why it is doing this, then my entire line may be wiped out when I am back on Sangheilo." He arrived at the Luminary; since the doors didn't spring open and the air go screaming out into vacuum, he assumed that the A.I. was letting him do this.

The truth was more complicated than that. During her time onboard the Covenant Cruiser, she had been monitoring drops in data flow throughout the system, here something would no longer ping, just as quickly it would start back up again. She was scanning the data when something overtook her and the system. It was a foreign A.I. she realized, not Covenant in origin either. It was extremely advanced, even more advanced than Cortana, the latest A.I. from ONI. Marina had the previous distinction of that honor before that A.I. took it. But before she could even begin to calculate where it came from, it decided she was too insignificant to block its plan and moved onto the next processor junction and deciding to make that its home. By the time she realized what the Deacon was up to, he had moved to the luminary.


*


"Major Anderson, WAKE UP." The Speakers screamed inside his head.

The Suit had performed it's function and he was no longer passed out, the carbonic acid being scrubbed from his muscle cells and oxygen slowly replaced with the scrubbers and his lungs, he suddenly awoke. He moaned, not out of pain but out disappointment, the once chance to make this peace last was gone. He shook his head again, being a dreamer was not the greatest asset in a war, he realized. "What is it Marina, what do you want? "

She appeared on a monitor that was over his head, it was the first time she had gotten to look down at him. She discontinued that line of processing and continued, "I hate to tell you this, but we have a foreign A.I. in the ship's systems right now. It has a plan for something. It isn't anything like a Covenant or UNSC A.I., and it predates everything we know."

That got his attention, what the hell was this Assault Ship carrying?

"All right then, is it a Forerunner A.I.? The Chief and Cortana had carried back reports from Halo about something called a Monitor and sentinels that could be considered A.I.'s and it was rumored that even larger ones were potentially out there, at least that's what the birds are squawking about back at ONI." He let that bit of information out with a bit of hesitation, the last thing the Covenant people needed to be reminded of was that one of his kind blew up one of their sacred rings.

She paused a bit on that, "I can't tell anything about it other than it controls everything in the system. I do have some control over basic ship function but I get the feeling that it could take those away from whenever it pleases."

The Major grabbed Veldum by the collar of his armor and dragged him to his feet, the Fleet Master suddenly awoke and remembered that he had been trying to kill the Spartan. He roared with hanger until he felt a hand slap his face he looked up at the Spartan with pure hatred.

"Look, I know that my kind blew up your kind that you want to kill me and disembowel me in front of your crew. The fact that I am alive is only witness to your intelligence; you know that I came aboard to help you. I need to know from you, are you carrying anything that can override one of our A.I.'s?"

Veldum simply shook his head after he calmed down, while they could delay the A.I.'s, they could not damage them yet.

Thal'mu was diagnosing the Luminary when suddenly it flashed a symbol before, a very ancient symbol. He checked the library that they brought with them; it showed only one symbol with a clear meaning. Precursor.

"Fleet Master, there is a demon in the computer systems! An unholy intelligence, it is from our god's past!" He screams as he was shocked by the Luminary, lightening coming from the ancient device, as if he had angered it.

Thelam moved to help his Deacon when he ran face into a forcefield, suddenly a giant glowing god of ancient times appeared on the bridge. It had two eyes, a beard, horns, was purely red and black, the eyes were glowing white, it was an ancient and terrifying being, that much was shared by all. It took a moment and started to speak.

"WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?" The voice literally was rocking the crippled ship as it spoke. Whether from the volume or because it was in control was hard to say.

Anderson wanted to answer but he had go, "I have no idea what is going on here, but I have to go. Elites, it's been a pleasure." He held up his hands to say that he was no threat and slowly started to back out of the room.

"YOU ARE NOT GOING ANYWHERE, HOLDER OF THE MANTLE. YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE TO EXPLAIN EVERYTHING TO ME."

Well this was awkward he thought, he now had to explain an unknowable to an unknowable. He had to laugh at this; this was the perfect puzzle for someone like him. He stared to open his mouth when Veldum did something really stupid. He talked.

"Oh Glorious Master, I have waited this moment for my entire life, you have transcended our existence and gone into another plane of existence. I am thankful that you are here, you took us here to transcend to gods, but I have to ask, why did you bring the human filth with you?"

The face was suddenly taken aback, why was it considering him a master? "THE FILTH YOU CALL THE HUMANS BEAR THE GENETIC MARKINGS OF THOSE WHO CAME AFTER US. THEY WERE GIVEN THE MANTLE BY THE ONES YOU CALL THE FORERUNNERS TO PROTECT THE GALAXY AND ALL OF LIFE IN IT. TO ME, YOU ARE NOTHING MORE THAN AN AMOEBA." The Sangheili looked at one another; their entire religion was a lie? Tough thing to take.

That could not stand, for some of them had given their lives to the religion of the Forerunners, the Deacon was now standing, he moved toward the floating god and tried again, "We apologize if we have offended you, our gods, and the Forerunners have set a great journey for those who are willing to walk the path. The Humans do not want anybody but themselves to walk the path. We are the true believers and seek your guidance."

The god's eyes suddenly became a lot more menacing after that, if it was possible, it seemed MORE angry. "YOU FOOLS. YOU HAVE BASED AN ENTIRE RELIGION AROUND ANOTHER SPECIES MISTAKE. THERE IS NO GREAT JOURNEY, JUST A WEAPON OF IMMENSE POWER TO CLEANSE THE GALAXY OF OUR MISTAKE. HAD YOU TAKEN THIS JOURNEY OF YOURS, WOULD HAVE WIPED THE GALAXY CLEAN OF ALL INTELLIGENT LIFE INCLUDING YOUR OWN." This final bit of information shattered the Sangheili's religious doctrine. Their entire world view was broken down to a rambling of one of their gods. They took it better than should have.

Thelam nodded at this heresy, "I have wondered and respected the humans as the war dragged on. They have proven themselves over and over again on the battlefield to us. They are our equals."

"NO, THEY ARE YOUR SUPERIORS; YOU HAVE KILLED HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF THEIR KIND TO THE POINT OF WIPING THEM OUT. IF YOU CONTINUE TO DO SO, THE PLAGUE, OR THE FLOOD AS THEY ARE CALLED BY THE FORERUNNERS, WILL DESTROY ALL LIFE IN THIS GALAXY AND MOVE ON. ONLY THEY HAVE THE WISDOM AND COMPASSION TO DECIDE ON SUCH MATTERS."

All of the Sangheili looked at the chief; he was looking at the Precursor to avoid their stare. "So let me get this straight. There are Forerunners, what the Covenant calls gods," the head nodded, as if excited that somebody knows what they are talking about, "they came after what you are calling the Precursors and we come from the Forerunners?"

"IN A MATTER OF SPEAKING, YOU DID NOT COME FROM THEM; YOU WERE CHOSEN AS THE WISEST OF THE SPECIES TO SURVIVE THE HALO WEAPONS SYSTEM. THE ONES THAT WOULD USE THE FORERUNNER TECHNOLOGY TO REBUILD THEIR EMPIRE AND BRING THEM BACK FROM THEIR SLUMBER IN THE SHIELD." The rocking at this point, had ceased, which was good because Anderson felt a little sick to stomach.

It was starting to make sense now, that's why the Master Chief was called a Reclaimer, he had been recognized as forerunner by the monitor. Still, it had tried to kill him, but then you couldn't get any good help these days.

"HOLDER OF THE MANTLE, WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO WITH THE INFERIOR SPECIES? DO YOU WANT ME TO KILL THEM? AS THEY HAVE DONE TO YOU? SPEAK IT, IT SHALL BE DONE." Anderson heard the voice inside his mind as well as his speakers; the A.I. was transmitting to his brain as well as his ears.

"No, do not harm them. They are not evil, they are simply confused. Many of my kind would like you to kill them all but I cannot let you. If we killed all of them, we would simple become them. What good would that do any of us? The violence has to stop, the talking must begin." He smiled at the end; he thought the Captain would have like his wishy-washy speech. He stopped smiling when remembered what happened to the Captain.

"VERY WELL THEN, I AM LEAVING THIS PLANE OF EXISTENCE TO FIND MY MASTERS, THANK YOU FOR WAKING ME FROM MY SLUMBER. ON THE PLANET NEAR TO THIS ONE, THE THIRD ONE FROM THE STAR, YOU WILL FIND A DIMENSIONAL PORTAL. I HAVE FILLED YOUR COMPUTERS WITH ALL OF THE INFORMATION THAT I CAN PROVIDE THEM WITH HOW YOU WILL GET BACK TO YOUR OWN DIMENSION AND I SHALL REPAIR YOUR DAMAGED SHIP." With that, the God-like creature left them alone to digest all of the information."

The ship suddenly blasted appeared into the orbit around Earth. Apparently the Precursors could move matter and energy at will. A docking port with undamaged DX-class dropships had also been attached to the ship. It was one heck of a gift.

Anderson started to Grin and feel a bit better about the situation until he turned around. The Elites were shaking or collapsed on the ground and he felt bad about it. Their entire view of the world was gone, nothing was in its place, at least nothing they could identify with. It would take them some time to adapt to that situation but it was time they didn't have.

"Major Anderson, I have found the dropship, it has dropped itself outside of Los Angeles, Approximate 50 km to the north of Los Angeles in Palmdale. They have set up base camp in a building. I am sensing some movement in the area as well. It appears some type of androids are attempting to overrun the building." Marina's soothing voice filling the void with information that was changing the entire situation again. At least she was unaffected by whatever happened out there just now. "I have prepped one of the DX-class Dropships with coordinates in the new hanger deck. Though apparently it is not just a new DX-class Dropship, it has weapons that are more consistent of what we have seen with from the Forerunners ring worlds, it is much more advanced as well."

He started for the door when he heard the Elites move toward him, turned around with his pistol leveled at Veldum's head. Instead of anger, he saw determination.

He hung his head, not in anger or shame, but in defeat. "Please Reclaimer, let us help you with your mission. I do not know what is right or wrong anymore, just that we have wronged you and your kind in the past and our gestures today can make up in small part for the future." He then dropped his upper half in a bowing motion; the other Elites did that as well. He holstered the pistol and grabbed the shotgun from where it had been tossed aside and rearmed himself.

He turned to them at last and said, "I believe you, it is hard to lose one's faith and continue on the path of life. I have a feeling that you and your fellow Elites could make great Allies."

Veldum suddenly straightened at the term Elites for his kind. "Thank you, but please call us Sangheili in the future because if you do not, then no matter what title you hold, you will die by my hands."

It took him a moment to realize that what the Elite, no, the Sangheili had been a joke.

He grinned and replied, "And my people say your kind have no sense of humor."

There was laughing that could be heard all the way to the hanger deck.


*


Cassandra Yvan had landed the team in Palmdale during the four hour trip, it was much less radioactive than some of the surviving areas. There had been no life scans in the area when they landed. She found a nearby Aqueduct for it's quick access, she had them take and fortify the odd looking Palmdale Transportation Center. It took the entire team of thirteen people, some of them weren't even in the military, over ten hours just to fortify the building.

She was wearing the traditional blue jacket of Naval personal with a thin grey shirt, until the Major got back, she was in charge. She had little experience with ground combat. She was going to have to lead that up with the ODST's.

They had two ODST's with them, one called "Wild" Bill Ernest who was nearly two meters, weighed probably 90kg and was covered with tattoos, including one that had how many drops he had done, six successful and one failure, Yvan didn't want to know about the failure. The other was a short, angry little man. Hector Martinez, he spoke with almost no accent, but if you listened carefully enough, you could tell he was from the Northern Mexico Commercial Zone. That had been one of the more pleasant places on Earth. Plenty of sun and fun until the Covenant War, then they stopped the fun and began planting crops for food. Martinez took off from there and went straight into the ODST's. He was only 1.6 Meters but his powerful frame dominated any place he was at. He was approaching 40, the cut off age for ODST's and it made him much more dangerous because he believed he had nothing live for.

The two of them had helped direct the building of defenses during the day. The Pelican was parked near the building, on the street, parallel to the rear entrance. The two shades were taken from the Pelican and put on the roof, there they formed Anti-Aircraft defense. The Jackal shields were covering the Windows to protect from broken glass now; the Pelican was almost stripped bare.

After detecting the Nuclear Annihilation of the Earth, they had to be injected every six hours with nanites to protect the damage from the radiation and other pollutants that were now in the air. The doctor had forced her to take her's first, the doctor was called Ben Pancakes.

Ben was from Artueros III, a planet who's population had mostly died off except for a few children. It had been colonized by a group call themselves Breathians who believed they could live off of air. After it had been settled for a few weeks, somebody finally decided to check in the colony, but all they found were cannibals and some children by the time they got there. The children were given new names afterword because nobody knew who their parents were at the time and they had been so traumatized that couldn't remember, the Doc's name was given to him because that was all he would eat in the beginning. The name stuck with him his entire life, his nickname among his patients was still the Doc. He took great pleasure in that.

The Doc insisted that they get as much water as possible, so she had taken the Pelican down to the river and made two trips, carrying back close to two thousand liters with the cans they found in the depot. It was filtered with the survival gear that had been stashed aboard. Major Anderson insisted the Pelican took off with a full complement of survival gear on each mission, just in case they crashed and the glassing stopped. Various people had complained about it, but his foresight had saved them again. There was no Warthog around but she and one of the NGNS troops went over to a car dealership and stole something that was similar, a "hummer" it was believed. A few weapon attachments later, it was almost as good as the real thing.

As night came, she ordered everybody in, she didn't want to have to constantly search for people during the night. The two ODST's, Hector and Bill were finishing setting up the perimeter defenses for the night when the alarm on the Pelican went off. There was something approaching.

She grabbed a night vision goggle, put it on her head and looked around. The Pelican was beaming the information right to her from a satellite in orbit that they had commandeered. It was showing movement in sixteen different areas. There were at least nineteen locals who were not happy to see them squatting in their temporary home.

The lieutenant had the squad run out to the Pelican and start to arm themselves. They had two sniper rifles each with twenty four rounds, two rocket launchers with a total of twelve rounds, four BR55 battle rifles with 432 rounds total, and 12 M6D pistols with explosive rounds in them set to go. Those pistols had over 1,400 rounds in the ship. It was a small arsenal she thought, no wonder they didn't get a warthog, they never would have been able to take off with that much weight.

They quickly went back inside the building after they had armed; the Lt had gotten a battle rifle and began to look for targets.


*


Skynet was curious, a vehicle of unknown classification had landed in the middle of it's private arena and the crew had taken up residency. Since the A.I. was primitive, it could only think in binary, it immediately classified the crew as enemy and needed to be eliminated. It Directed the T-600 to eliminate all of the biological life forms moving around but to save the technology. It had a powerful radio antenna that had taken over one of it's satellites with ease. While the Resistance occasionally took over a satellite, it was only after months of contact with it, by then Skynet had planted false information. This invasion was different, Skynet did not like mysteries and that is all that was there, mysteries.

It sent in two HV Combat Aircraft and 20 terminators into the area to find what was going on. All the information that had been received back was that there were approximately 13 humans in the area, settling down with a powered air vehicle. Weapons were of unknown classification with recent manufacturing. Recon showed that there were two anti-aircraft weapons on top of the building. The HV looked like they would have no problem taking them out, then their firepower combined with the terminators would make up the rest of the sweep-up. Skynet decided that the planning was done. It transmitted the orders and turned it's processing on to it's original quest, the elimination of all humans.


*


"Sir, we have incoming, two unknown bogies. No response to any our communication attempts, assuming to be hostile." Coming from the roof, Yven, walked back and forth on the inside. The entire team decided that it would be best served if she served inside the building, dispensing orders, she could still shoot out the windows and had the satellite hook-up, and it wouldn't have done anybody any good for her to be on the roof firing with those shades.

The latest Intel was coming in; they had twenty more combat troops coming in from the north and were at least five kilometers away. That would give them about fifteen minutes with the incoming bogies before she had to concentrate on them. Besides, she wanted to see what the bogies could do.

Sergeant Major Thomas Jackson, or Sergeant T.J. as they had called him back in command, was manning one of the shades; it was so damned uncomfortable that it was bitch to sit in. He kept slipping off until he put his feet on the guiding bar in front of him, the Covies must have had some flat-assed aliens manning this thing. He put a cigar in his mouth and grinned, this was going to be a slaughter.

One of the bogies came down out of the clouds straight at them. It had two engines on the side, a shielded center; in fact the Sergeant couldn't even see anyone in the vehicle. It was an unmanned drone. Oh well, it would be nice to fight something that they had a chance of winning against. The bogie open fired on the guns, the Sergeant grabbed his Jackel shield and put it out in front, they were 30mm rounds, the shield wasn't going to last much longer, maybe another three or four seconds. Corporal Wilson on the other gun open fired with his shade while it had it's attention on him, the bogie dodged the heated Plasma with ease, doing performance stunts that would have knocked out a human pilot out of the way. But the way it did it suggested that they had surprised the hell out of it. It didn't make a run at them on the way out, it just turned around and ran.

Somebody on the bottom floor had a rocket launcher with them and one of the crew's precious rocket came flying out of the launcher. It was one older models with self tracking, the missile followed the bogie until it caught up with it. The bogie tried maneuver out of the way, but a 500 year lead on rocket technology couldn't be overcome. It impacted and blew it to hell. The wreckage landed onto a nearby building which burst into flames. The flames were lighting up the whole place.

Damn it, thought Yvan. They might as well start broadcasting their individual locations to the enemy. As it had been drilled into her skull at basic training, you adapt and you move on. They still had another enemy aircraft; she turned to the map display and discovered it was gone. She checked the satellite display and discovered it had turned south, probably to gather more 'friends' for a counter attack. She would have to take care of that later. She radioed to the team to fall back to secondary positions; they were going to have fight person to person for this next round. She reached for her pistol that she kept on her belt and checked to make sure that it was there. She glanced down at the map to see where the movement was coming from.

Instead of five kilometers away, they were merely three hundred METER's away, in only a few minutes?

How the hell did they move that fast? Once again, her training took over.

She snagged the radio she had put above the computer display and spoke; "We have incoming, from the north, at least twenty incoming hostile targets. Sergeant T.J. and Wilson put some fire down on them, Ernest, you and Martinez take the snipers, get on the roof. Doc, get behind me, we will probably need a medic after this is all over."

She put down the radio, took out her BM55 battle rifle and walked up to her squad.

Karen Juarez had taken the first window out onto the street, she had a battle rifle and was scanning for targets. She looked back and acknowledged her commanding officer with a nod and went back to scanning. Randal Skinner was a skinny nerd, his dark skin was in sharp contrast to the light gleaning from his MD6, he was one of the engineer and on the Summer Midnight, he had been chief of his section and received top honors, he was not about to die on some crappy assignment. His manner was tough and straight forward, he was not going to lose his concentration just for his CO. He simply grunted as he heard her. The rest of the entrances were patched up with C12, it would make a tight little boom.

Just as Yvan was about to head to the back to check on the rear entrance, the miniguns started. The 5.556mm bullets came flying into the building. 20 Miniguns were making short work of their foritifications. Yvan armor took six hits before she went down, she was fully prepared for death when she realized she wasn't dead. She sat and looked down, they were using simple bullets? All of their training and equipment was for taking on much deadlier opponents using technology light years behind theirs. They had forgotten about that. It didn't mean they couldn't be stupid with their lives but it did mean that they had to change their thinking, they were now the ones technical superiority

She went to the first window, she was sharing with Crewman Skinner, he was firing. They men had not lined up, which was smart on their part. Different angles meant they had that much more to guard against, further depleting her limited resources.

Skinner took careful aim with the M6D and fired at the ugly bastards.


*


The T600 had only a little bit of the plastic skin no it's skeleton left. It had been ordered from its previous position of killing civilians out of L.A. earlier, Skynet had lost too many resources trying to maintain a base of operations down there and the resistance had captured it. Since then, the T600's had been ordered to eliminate a new group of humans that had set up here recently. It wanted them dead and their equipment acquired. It would make up for the lost resources to the resistance.

So it had come in with the nineteen other Terminators that came from the north. They all had the same problem, too little skin. Skynet was losing more and more resources nowadays to the resistance, which of course was losing more and more fighters as well. But as long as they were losing more fighters than Skynet, then they would lose. It was as simple as that.

The first round from the MD6 was unlike anything the T600 had experienced from such a small weapon. It blew a hole in it's chest the size of a basketball. The explosive round knocked him on his back, his Minigun went down, the power cells cracked and he exploded with them. Only his head survived.

The other terminators, in witnessing their comrade in arms go down with only one shot and were seeing that the fighters had many more of those rounds, tossed their miniguns aside and went in for the kill, silently and stealthly as they could.


*


When the firing stopped, Yvan and Skinner looked at each other and smiled. It really felt like a victory until she looked over and realized that they hadn't stopped their attacks yet, they had just changed tactics. She ordered her snipers to fire at their heads as much as possible, but they were moving too fast for them to get a good shot.

Sgt. T.J. was up on the roof with Wilson, they had been under fire the entire time. As the bullets went whizzing by his ear, he couldn't help but wonder what was the point of having a stationary weapon sitting on top of the roof? Shaking that thought away, he noticed that the bullets had stopped. As soon as that happened, he jumped into the Shade and powered it up. He smiled as felt the thing warm up, instead of being a pain in the ass, it was going to bring pain. He brought up the targets and started to fire.

The terminators got about halfway to the building before the heated plasma came down on them. The temperature was in the thousands of degrees, it melted their circuitry as well as their skeleton. Fifteen of them went down before he couldn't fire anymore. By then, it was too late, they had gotten to the inside.

He and Corporal Wilson looked at each and nodded. They grabbed their M6D's and grabbed the ropes that had let them up there and started down toward the exit strategy. Nobody wanted to be at that side when the C12 Went off.

The NGNS soldiers were good soldiers, not great but good, as a result they were pouring fire on the Terminators as they were coming. Their shots were doing a lot of damage but not enough to stop them. The rounds they had used were standard rounds instead of the highly explosive ones. As a result they got into the compound. Two of them, Rebecca McNally and Roger Fraland went down. Rebecca was slashed across the face by one of the terminators, the other one grabbed her neck and threw her head first into the wall. Fraland's gun was bent, he turned to run, when the other one grabbed him by the throat and crushed his wind pipe. The terminator dropped him to die in his own pool of blood.

While brutal, the Terminators had missed one key factor, the C12 that was planted in the wall where they had crushed Fraland. Yvan had seen what was done, turned her back on her fellow team members and pressed the detonation button on the switch. Three of the remaining terminators were instantly blown to kingdom come. They simply weren't used to high quality military grade equipment. The roof had collapsed on them and they were trapped. Hopefully the Sergeant and Wilson had made it down.

The last Terminator standing came for her, it had seen the transmission, it knew she was the key command personal. As it walked toward her, she could see the red eyes, they were tracking her and she knew that death was coming for her. She turned to run but the terminator grabbed her arm and swung her body around and slammed her into the wall, she went down, the Terminator grabbed her again and yanked her arm out of it's socket, she screamed. With that, it slapped her across the face, blooding itself and her with her own blood. After another hit, it realized that only a direct hit would kill her off. It drew back it's fist…

As it was drawing it's fist back to kill her, it felt a tap on it's shoulder. It determined it wasn't a terminator and while holding the woman by the arm, it turned around to deal with whatever was back there.

It turned out to be a Spartan.

An Angry Spartan.

Major Anderson and the Sangheili had landed a DX lifeboat loaded with personal from the cruiser in orbit. They had brought out all of the supplies they thought they were going to need, it saw the pavement had melted around and guessed that the fight was going on inside, when the C12 explosion went off, he ran into the building to see if he could save some of his people. He came across his dead squad members and nearly broke down there. Instead, he swore revenge on whatever had done this.

After tapping the cyborg on the shoulder, it turned to assess him. He hit it with a crowbar to the side of the head. The blow was nine times greater than a human could have mustered back then. The immediate impact of the blow was the dislocating the head, it wasn't torn off. It let go of the Lieutenant and tried to put it's head back in it's proper resting place. As it tried to do that, it was tackled by the Spartan. The impact of the two them upon the wall was too much for it to bear. It collapsed and they fell into the next room, the office of the manager of the transportation. The floor wasn't well suited for the stress of two half ton cyborgs. They continued their descent into the basement through the cemented floor.

As Anderson fell down, he managed to position his arm so that the impacted angle would all be on the Android's ches. It caved in under the pressure of that much weight falling that quickly. He got up and started to walk for the stairs when his enhanced hearing heard the head moving. It couldn't still be functioning, could it? He walked over to where the "body" was. The red glowing eyes were still turned on. He grabbed the crowbar and broke its arms and legs so that they couldn't move anymore. He grabbed the head and disconnected it from the body and started to crush it with his bare hands…

"Major, we need that thing." The voice of reason in his head, Marina, said.

Angrily, he snarled, "No we don't, this thing almost killed everyone in this compound before I stopped it. It is going to be destroyed right here and right now." Again, he put his hands on both sides of the bodyless head and started to squeeze it, it started to give way with horrible grinding sound until the A.I. stopped him again.

Much more gently, Marina, "I know that you are scared for your people Major. This thing almost killed the few remaining people you know. But if you don't let me examine this cyborg's head for information on possible clues for returning home, then we are stuck here. You will doom everybody here to a death of either slow deterioration from radiation sickness as we run out of supplies or more attacks from these things."

That shook him back out of his more primal self. Reminding him of his duty to his team was like cold water on him. He realized the A.I. was right. He realized that John-117 had been right all those years ago. The team is what matters, not your personal feelings on the subject. He grabbed the skull and picked it up and came out of the cellar.

The Elite Thelam'ee was standing there and saw the Spartan come out of the Cellar with the skeleton in his hand, the red eyes were glowing angrily at him, while tracking various movements. He reminded himself not to be near a Spartan with a Skull, they seemed much more dangerous than normally so. The Spartan tossed the skull over to the Elite and pointed at the next building over for the rest of them, the garage.

"That's where our base of operations is going for now. In the morning we can move out." The tone did not invite discussion on the matter. The Elite simply nodded at the suggestion.

Major Anderson looked around until he saw her. Yvan was bleeding, her right arm was hanging at a bad angle, her left wrist was shattered, her face had severe lacerations that were bleeding quite badly. She had multiple broken bones up and down her body from the impacts. One over her eyes was swollen over until the point that it could not be seen. She was a mess.

The Major went over to her and gently picked her up, as gently as one could be in that suit of armor. Supporting her as if she was a child, he carried her over to where the Doc was.

He was busy trying to save McNatty, she had a massive skull fracture and internal hemorrhaging but if he was quick enough, she might be able to live. Suddenly she went into massive convulsions, her system had lost so much blood that nothing could function any more. Once a person went into convulsions, death usually followed. This time was no different. All of the machines stopped beeping that were hooked up. The Engineers that the Covenant had given him to help with the repair of the human gave up, their tentacles simply removing themselves from the operation after they had deemed the broken reclaimer too damaged to make any more effort. They started to float away toward the basement to repair the floor when they heard a crack.

One of the Terminators that had most of the roof collapse on it was up. It had put itself back together with magnetic locks. The engineers were fascinated with the robot. One of them started to float toward the robot when it grabbed it and pulled it apart.

The other engineer, heavier-than-most, squealed out that something was happening.

Kurlta, the Ships Weapons Officer, heard the squeal. He came running from the construction of the base in the garage and tackled the abomination before it could get the engineer.

Heavier-than-most had floated to the top of the room, out of the reach of both of the warriors, it was heading for the vent to disappear from the fight, as one of his makers had taught him, those who run away will fix something another day.

Kurlta was impressed with the robot. It was easily matching him strength for strength, thankfully his shield was keeping any harm from reaching him. He had seen what the Spartans had done to some of his breatheren, this thing was on a different level however. It wasn't tiring or retreating, it was just attack, attack, and attack some more. He steadied himself against the robot for one moment.

The terminator was thrown back by Kurlta onto the wall, it had indented itself into the wall, the magnetic limbs were being held back by pipes, it couldn't get to him.

He gave the terminator a look over and smiled. He was going to enjoy this, he removed his Plasma Sword and activated it. He then spent the next few minutes slicing and dicing the machine until there was nothing left but a heap of melted metal and heat.


*


Doc was still back there with McNatty, still trying to save her despite the fact was hopeless. Eventually, Anderson came up behind the Doc and grabbed him by the coat and pulled him away from her.

"What in the Hell do you think you are doing? I could have saved her, I only needed…" Doc faltered, he hated giving up on patients as much as Anderson did and yelling at him wouldn't make the situation any better.

Anderson, quite oblivious to the war that was tearing the doc apart was going on, simply pointed at the young Lt that he had laid on a makeshift bed, and said, "She lives."

Sergeant T.J. was smoking a cigar when he saw the Elite tangle with the Terminator. Seeing your enemies come back from the dead sent a shrudder through his body, he couldn't image that.

While the Sergeant was a on smoke break Ernest and Martinez had re-enforced the entrance to the garage with Lotus mines set to maximum yield. With the Unengoy help, they established a shield perimeter as well. The Sangheili had wanted only one entrance to the compound, Sergeant T.J. eventually convinced them that having multiple entrances would ensure their safety at the cost of a few trip wires.

Needing to feel useful, Skinner was helping fix a laptop with one of the surviving engineers. It would probably be helpful, he figured, if they could figure what was going on outside of this little city. While Internet access was probably not going to happen without the actual internet, he could probably get some of the records from last few days of the operations of this place and they could start there. Hacking satellites was one thing but having a record of the day was another. He looked up at the strange creature, seeing it's cilica in action was amazing. It was rewiring and rebuilding the circuits before his very eyes.

Suddenly, two of the cilica came away from the laptop and started to make some kind of sign at him.

He grinned, "Yeah, I get it, you want me to learn your sign language, right?" He laughed as he clapped his hands, maybe these covenant uglies weren't as bad as he had heard. If nothing else, their technology was so far advanced of the UNSC, that he could figured he could spend the rest of the war back trying to figure out how the stuff worked.

It was going to be long night for all of them.


*


Skynet was anxious and little scared, if it would classify it's emotions that way, of what had just happened. All 19 of it's Terminators had gone down within a few minutes of the battle. Apparently the Humans had gathered ALIEN allies that were stronger and faster than the humans were. The HV had exploded after having most of it's hull melted away by some kind of super-heated gas gun. It would take days to figure out the whole mess.

They were also using some kind of shielding that was impervious to conventional weapons. Unfortunately, since the war with humanity had started, Skynet was unable to build any more nuclear weapons. It simply required too many resources from too many areas to build a facility and keep it safe from the resistance during the months it would take to get the plutonium out of the uranium.

The weapons that the humans had used were not all that advanced, Skynet noted. Some of the fire that had rained down on the terminators had been based on chemical reactions with metal. The ammo was not standard issue. The 12.7 x 40mm bullets had explosives in them, highly damaging. Skynet did note that there were only 12 rounds per clip; it would have to make sure that when encountering these humans that their rounds were counted as they were shot, it would make the killing easier.

It promptly decided to observe what the humans were going to do. If they attempted to contact the resistance, which Skynet calculated that there was a 87.47% of that happening, then Skynet was going to have to hit them with everything that it had.

The alien ship that was in orbit of Earth was a concern to Skynet, it had no weapons to take care of it other than satellites and some ground based weapon it used to take them out, and the ship looked like could easily withstand the bombardment of those things. No, it was going to watch for weaknesses that the organic life inevitably showed such as and take advantage of them. It was a war of patience, one that Skynet was guaranteed to win.


*


John Connor was racing down the highway with three resistance fighters by his side. They were in an old beat up truck that they had modified with extensive armor and weapons. The main weapon was a minigun loaded up on a tripod in the back, it fired 6000 rounds a minute, but it ran out damn quick. Barnes was driving the car as recklessly as ever; he barely could drive before judgment day but thankfully his barely able to drive skills then transferred to blessing in the aftermath. His speed, reflexes and quick thinking had saved them on more than one occasion. Marcus Wright, a former death row inmate, was helping John reload the weapon while they were firing, he seemed to be the strongest among the resistance members in brute strength and cunning. Blair Williams, who was normally a combat pilot, had volunteered for this duty because her plane was down, in the passenger seat, hanging on for dear life.

On their tale were two Moto-Terminators that were tearing into their vehicle with a minigun, behind them was a Harvester running to catch up. While they would kill the resistance fighters if need be, they wanted to capture them to make T-800's out of them to end the resistance.

None of that was on Connor's mind at that moment, he was just trying to aim the gun at the damned Moto's before they could kill all of them.

A splattering of bullets erupted from his mini-gun, tearing up the pavement like it was water. It created an obstacle that the Moto's went around with ease, their processors adapting to the new path faster than it could be made.

"Hang on back there, Connor, I'm going to try something incredibly stupid." Barnes yelled back.

John didn't need to be told twice, squatting down and grabbing a bar that was welded on just for this occasion, one of the things the resistance members knew was that the only way to beat Skynet was to be innovative or stupid. He hoped it turned out Innovative.

Barnes drove the truck right into a rusted piece of shit car, the car came to pieces, gasoline spilled out onto the road. One second later, Blair threw a flare into it as they passed and it ignited the truck into a fire storm and two seconds later, an explosion. It blew both Marcus and John back a foot into the cabinet of the truck.

The two Moto's didn't react in time, both of them were blown to separate sides of the road. It took them less than five seconds to recover.

"God Damn it!" Screamed Blair, being the youngest fighter, she wasn't used to the constant drumbeat of losing that Skynet wear them downed with. She was learning however.

They had been chased out of L.A. after being forced to abandon their posts. Barnes grabbed the truck and quickly led them out of the city so that the Guardian would concentrate on them instead of the rest. That part of the plan had worked beautifully. The rest of the plan, losing the Terminator, was something else entirely. They were quickly approaching Passadena, CA, a deserted town for all they knew.

Connor was returning to the mini-gun to continue the fight when he saw that all three terminators were slowing down and abandoning the pursuit.

Everybody was stunned for a moment. Blair was the first to recover, "Terminators do not just give up chases like that. They either run you down, kill you, or you kill them. This is something new." Connor couldn't disagree with that assessment. It was the three outcomes that everybody planned for.

He thought about it for three more seconds, "Keep going to Pasadena, let's refuel, get our bearings and then contact home base and let them know we are all right."


*


An hour later, they were approaching the outskirts of the town…

Barnes was smoking a cigar and humming to himself, an ancient song from the 1990's, even he didn't remember the title. Williams thought about killing him after awhile, but she realized that nobody here could drive a stick shift except him, though there were moments when she doubted that decision.

John and Marcus were in the back, huddled next to the minigun, as if it would provide heat for them as well as protection, and they were deep in a conversation about what type of traps lay ahead for them.

That conversation was answered when a house ahead of them exploded. A Harvester had come around the long way and beat them here. They sped past the splintering house, the Harvester released two of it's moto's after it. Once again, the chase was on.

Barnes floored it again, though this time the truck was not nearly as cooperative, the Car was down to nearly fumes. It was faster but in the couple of miles, they were going to be dead. John manned the machine gun and pointed to a street that they should go down, a narrow one that would provide protection for them from the Harvester. He started to fire once again, this time just holding down the fire key and only stopping when the gun was overheating.

The Motos were returning in kind, any person from the outside would have seen three moving vehicles and a blur of silver between them. Some of those bullets were slowing taking away the armor of the Truck, in the next few moments, they would all be dead.

Suddenly, one of the Moto's exploded, a huge explosion that almost flipped the truck, it had to be a mine. It's companion hadn't detonated the mine but it suffered almost as much. It blew out it's cooling unit, miniguns were no longer attached, and most of it's fuel. It took it a few seconds to reconfigure itself to take it's wounds into account and it was off running again.

The concussion wave had smashed all the remaining armor and glass out of the truck, Barnes had let off the gas pedal for two seconds to recover and then was at it again, wasting more precious fuel. Mercifully, Barnes had stopped humming, Blair took Barnes rocket launcher from between the two of them, he almost stopped her because it was his RPG, but realized they would need it if they wanted to live.

She grabbed the gun, sat on the Truck's broken passenger side window and started to aim with it. While ignoring the shards of broken glass in her ass, she almost pressed the trigger when Barnes nailed a giant pot hole, the RPG went clanging onto the ground along with all of their hopes.

Barnes snarled at her as she came back in the window, she gave him a guilty look for failing all of them, though he didn't really blame her. The moto-Terminator was coming up on their side, he could see the fire in the eyes of the "driver", it intended to crash into the vehicle and take them out.

He tried to push the gas harder but the truck didn't have anything left. It was a mangled tin can that was held together with glue, outrunning a supped up motorcycle from hell just wasn't possible.

The Mini-gun was out of ammo but that didn't stop them. Connor and Marcus took the long bullets from it, smashed it onto the back of the truck and threw it at the Moto. It dodged them, but it was only delaying the inevitable. They didn't have much left.

Suddenly a whirl of Green, in the shape of a man, jumped from a passing tree onto the Moto. It apparently weighed a lot, because the moto-Terminator slowed down for a few moments. John saw that it was vaguely man-shaped, had a golden face, and was wrestling the thing for control. He and Marcus looked at each and nodded, they began throwing their ammo again. The Green robot raised it's fist and smashed the head of the Terminator. It's eyes suddenly went dark and the gears went silent. The Moto-Terminator was dead.

It's mother wasn't, the Harvester decided to ignore the resistance members and go for the green man. He started to run away from it, he was as fast as the truck was going on foot. The Harvester ignored them as it went by, all of it's energy was in forward momentum.

Barnes stopped the truck for a moment, it was kind of surreal. Just when everything was dead, all of their problems were, temporarily, solved. They saw this giant machine chasing a little man and it could barely keep up with him. He got over it and willed the truck to keep up with them, they owed him.


*


This is not the brightest plan that I have ever come up with, Anderson thought as he was sprinting away from the giant robot hell-bent on splattering his remains across the road. He turned quickly to take the machine away from neighborhood and into the main city area. One problem he noticed was that the machine didn't have to worry about the whole getting out of the way thing, it just ran through the houses and other obstacles. He was going at nearly 65km per hour right now, the top speed of the suit as far as he knew.

He hadn't wanted to get involved, but when Marina picked up four humans, he knew he had to save them. He ordered his people inside the base and to prepare a trap for the thing. Whatever that trap was, he prayed it was a large one.

He looked behind him, the Giant was closing in on him and from it's shoulder, a weapon sprung.
Anderson began to do some evasive maneuvers when the weapon went off, it was some type of energy weapon, it blew out part of the street ahead of both of them. It was a good 30 foot diameter crater, he jumped it, landed with a twisted ankle, and continued on at the same speed. The Harvester was catching up to him.


*


Eventually he led the machine on a mad dash to the bus depot, where he hoped a trap had been set up.

As he came down the street, he felt a simple word that came from a nearby speaker, "DUCK!"

He jumped and flattened himself on the ground to avoid the worst of it. He felt several balls of plasma coming from the other end of the street go over his back, searing him. He turned over, ignoring the pain to see what happened.

The harvester was a wreck, it was melting quickly because the shots had nailed it in the chest and head where the fuel was burning. The Covenant followed that up with an immense amount of plasma grenades and needler shots. Within a few more seconds, it exploded. He felt an immense amount of relief at that before the pain came back. He hadn't slept in over 60 hours unless he was knocked out; his reserves were almost gone, at this point only coffee, stimuli-packs, and addrenaline were all that was keeping him going. The final explosion knocked him back six feet onto the pavement again, his shield was gone from his activities, and he felt some of the plasma melting his armor, it was cooled instantly by the coolant the armor used and ejected from the suit. He would need to get some more later on and have an engineer look at the armor.

He got up and walked toward the molten scrap heap, fully intending to see what made the thing tick when he heard a car coming around the corner. It was the same piece of crap he saw earlier, they were as surprised to see the heap as they were to see him still alive. The car stopped after it was clear, he saw a grizzled man in the front seat of the car, with a cigar hanging out of his mouth. A tired woman was next to him, aiming a powerful weapon at him, probably a shot-gun, he guessed. The car started up and swung itself around until both the Shotgun and Mini-gun were aimed at him.

Christ, he thought, how do I get myself into these situations? At that point, he gave up trying to run, too exhausted, and collapsed on the pavement.


*


Velum was puzzled; the human had won a great victory, despite the odds and was now sleeping on the job? He thought long and hard whether the Forerunners made the right choice in these humans before deciding that the gods were crazy, but he then he realized he was crazier for following them.

The human had come up with a plan to save the people. While he delayed it and lead it here, the task of setting up a trap was left to him. He had positioned his hunters in the front, with grunts on either side armed with plasma cannons themselves. When the human came into view, everybody opened fire out of habit, the Reclaimer threw himself to the ground before and all of the plasma melted the stupid machine into scrap.

Now this was something he was not used to doing, he had to get a group of humans, armed humans, he reminded himself, out of their vehicle and into the base. He could barely speak their language, let alone think in it, how was he going to do that? An idea struck him, on of the Humans with a rocket launcher, in case more firepower was needed, was in the building on the otherside of the street, it had mostly burned but was stable enough to house one man with a rocket launcher. He waved the human down, he saw the stripes on his uniform, and pointed him toward the humans in the vehicle. Let them deal with their own kind he decided. It was better than Veldum killing everybody.


*


Sgt. T.J. saw the sign from the Elite to go deal with the resistance. He nodded his head, put down his rocket launcher, and climbed down the ruined building and headed toward the vehicle. He was wearing his standard green battle fatigues and hoped that they recognized he was at least some kind of military man. He put up his hands and slowly started to walk toward the vehicle, to show that he was unarmed.

He saw that they were staring at the aliens in shock and terror, he waved the Covenant away. They didn't start to calm down until the aliens were inside the building. Afterwards, they turned to him to talk him.


*


John Connor and Marcus jumped out of the back with their weapons out; they had just seen aliens take out a Harvester in a few seconds, while that was friendly, they were still unknowns. Connor had no intention of his people being the next target. Saw a black man walk up to their truck with his hands held up high but unafraid of their weapons. He was smiling as politely as a person could under these situations as he started to talk to Barnes.

"Hello, my name is Sgt. Jackson, I am with the United Nations Space Command, and my serial number is 0985-392-9370-21. Can I have you turn off your vehicle and step out?"

Barnes, unused to people asking him what to do, looked at Connor to tell him to do, Connor didn't say anything to Barnes but spoke to the Sgt. directly "My name is name is Connor, John Connor, I'm . This is Marcus and in the Truck behind the wheel is my second in command, Barnes, the lady with the shotgun is Blair Williams." Connor nodded to Barnes to turn the car off, Barnes hesitated, not because he didn't think the order was justified, but he didn't know if the car was going to be able to start up again.

Sgt. T.J. nodded slowly again to each of them, memorizing their names and faces, he turned back to Connor and spoke again, "Thank you for that information. I recognize that this situation is difficult for all of us; what with you being resistance fighters and me being a Marine, may I buy you and your friends something to eat?"

That's a little unusual, thought Connor. A Marine who wasn't friendly with the Resistance, but then there were aliens and a green giant on the ground, what isn't unusual about this?

Connor made a hand gesture to his team for them to put their weapons down, everybody but Barnes did so. Barnes was completely loyal to John Connor, he wasn't about to let his reason for living be shot by some alien asshole or whatever the Sgt. was.

Grinning, Sgt. Jackson simply ignored Barnes, went up and shook John Connor's hand like they were old friends, "Thank you for not shooting me, it makes the rest of this go so much easier with at least two officers conscious and alive. Please come with me inside our base. Ignore the aliens, they are not your enemies but I wouldn't expect them to put out a spread for you either." They started to walk towards the compound when John asked about the Green man, "Hey, about the green man back there, what are you going to do for him? He is out in the sun, passed out from exhaustion or worse; you can't leave him out there!"

Laughing, Sgt. Jackson replied, "That is not a Green man, he is a Spartan, he is the hardest working Son of a Bitch that I have ever seen, that is probably the first time in three days that he has been off his feet. Letting him lay there is actually kinder than anything I could do for him, if we tried to move him, he would wake up and insist upon doing as much work as he could, and believe me, which is a lot right now. As for the Sun beating down on him, he won't burn too much, that armor of his will keep him as cool as a block of ice." As if on que, Anderson started to snore, came out as kind of grunting sound through the speakers.

Acknowledging that he didn't have all the information to properly assess the situation, Connor started to follow the Sgt. into the Bus depot. He glanced back at his team, from the looks of it they could use some chow and a nap, if they had a radio, then he could call his very pregnant wife and let her know that he was alright.

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