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Forsaken Forefathers part III: Unexpected Annhialation
Posted By: AlphaBravo343 and Havok
Date: 26 May 2003, 4:10 AM


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0320 Hours, April 14, 2553 (Military Calendar)/
UNSC Carrier Achilles in distant orbit over Covenant occupied planet

      "Gentleman, We are here today to deliberate the manner in which we will strike the Covenant planet below," said Admiral Sabian as he sat in his padded chair at the head of the long conference table. Around him sat the Forerunner military leaders and Human Admirals. "Here is an overview of the situation groundside, The Covenant have occupied three regions across the surface of the planet. Two land factories and one large harbor. The two factories just got up and running twelve days ago and haven't begun real construction yet, the harbor, on the other hand, is a different story." The Admiral clicked a button on the tac pad in his hand and a holographic display of the Harbor and its surrounding area flickered to life in the center of the table. In the hologram, there were hundreds of Covenant ships hovering above the water. Small hovercrafts moved in between them and large cargo and repair arms jutted from the large docking pads next to each ship.
      "The harbor is one of the pivotal docking stations for the Covenant fleet. Over one-thousand ships come in and out of this station each week. I need your thoughts on how we should attack. The planet is able to sustain a large population. So, do we destroy the planet?, initiate bombing raids?, or send an invasion force?"
      "I think we should initiate surgical air strikes on the stations," replied Commandant Tic'ondrel, "If the planet can sustain a population, then we can do so when this is all over."
      "No good, they could have defenses up that we don't know about. I recommend bombardment from orbit," retorted Admiral Miller.
      After thirty minutes of bickering and complaining, Admiral Sabian was becoming irritated. If something was going to be decided, it needed to be now. "All in favor of the air strikes?" hands raised all around the table, "All in favor of the bombardment,?" a handful of the leaders raised their hands. "Air strikes it is then. They will begin at..." he looked at his watch, "0360 hours, dismissed."
      He watched as the men filed out of the room. He walked over to his personal tac display and began making the necessary preparations for the attack.

__________________________________________________________

      Zimik glanced out of the porthole next to his work station on the ridge above the docking harbor. The blue ocean spread out as far as he could see. His eyes drifted down until they fell upon the large cruisers and battleships hovering above the water. He sighed and turned back to his holo sensor screen. He was part of the sensory outpost crew of four, three grunts and an elite. He looked over at the grunt in the personal station next to his. The grunt was toying with its plasma pistol until the top popped open and the small energy core was exposed. Zimik chuckled as the core, exposed to the oxygen, liquified and poured onto the grunts' workstation. The grunt yelped in suprise and scrambled for the small freon container mounted on the wall at the rear of the room. Instead of help, the grunt only got jeers and snickers from the other grunts. The grunt flicked the switch on the containers' handle and freon spewed onto the station, cooling the plasma and coating the wall behind the station.
      "Good job," said one of the grunts sarcastically as it turned back to its station.
      The grunt dropped the empty container to the floor and hobbled back to its seat. Zimik looked back at the display and his eyes splayed wide. The entire fore area on the sensor screen was covered in blips. Zimik ran to the elites' office, panting as he stopped in the entrance.
      The elite growled and removed its hooves from the desk. "What is it?" it snorted.
      "There are multiple targets on the sensors heading for the harbor!" Zimik shouted.
      "Hold on there," replied the elite calmly as it reached for the holographic operations log on the desk, "There is a flight of Seraphs coming in from the north production factory. Nothing to worry about," said the elite as it returned to its slumber.
      Zimik sighed as he walked back to his station and plopped into his chair. I've got a bad feeling about this, he thought as he remembered how bored he was. This is going to be a long day...

The sleek Forerunner Phoenix bombers screamed over the water, flying lower after the Covenant had detected them initially. The main land became visible on the horizon and quickly, the starships appeared, hovering above the water. No Covenant fighters were in the air, they had achieved suprise.

The entire harbor sprang to life right after the first of the mini warheads streaked into the open deck of a Cruiser, and detonated, crippling the large ship and dipping the bow toward the water. The strange fighters slipped and swerved in between the large ships, firing their laser weapons at the exposed decks of the ships. Zimik had walked down to one of the docking stations next to a Covenant frigate, and when the fighters began their suprise bombardment, he sprinted onto one of the open decks of the ship. All around him ships were detonating in huge balls of blue flame as their plasma cores cracked open, feeding the flames with super-heated plasma. Some of the fighters he could discern as human, fired their chain cannons' projectiles at some of the remote gun emplacements on the decks of the ships. He saw an elite fall from a gun emplacement and he scrambled behind a group of grunts for the turret. He was about four meters behind the group as they were dismembered by a burst from a human fighters' guns. He stared, dazed for a moment and was brought back to reality abruptly by an explosion inside the ship across the docking station, he watched as the center of the ship bulged and gave, sending chunks of the hull in wide arcs from the severed ship.
      He clambered into the seat of the turret and charged the plasma core. He sighted one of the foreign fighters and squeezed the triggers. Plasma spewed from the twin barrels at the fighter, and it dipped to avoid the stream. It came about toward Zimik and its chain cannons opened up, one of the small projectiles cracked the plasma core and the turret erupted into a ball of furious nuclear fire. Zimik was consumed by the blast.
      Several Seraph fighters launched from the airbase a few miles away from the harbor and rushed headlong into the fray. A Longbow fighter dropped in behind one of the seraphs and opened up with its chain cannons. The tracer rounds whizzed past the nimble fighter and it went into evasive maneuvers. The Longbow stayed with it however, and the bullets found their mark, ripping the fighter into three smoldering pieces that spun toward the water. Soon after that, the Covenant realized that they had lost the installation and surrendered to the Human and Forerunner forces.

Admiral Sabian surveyed the smoking harbor, saw some of the broken and destroyed ships sitting halfway out of the water. He looked out over the water at the hovering Forerunner ships and the small prisoner transports ferrying POWs' to the ships. A complete victory, a world wiped clean of the Covenant. This would serve as a message to the remaining Covenant troops, that their days were numbered.

To be continued...





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