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Foersaken Forefathers Part X
Posted By: Havok and AlphaBravo343<Tactical_Havok@hotmail.com>
Date: 22 July 2003, 3:59 PM


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      The Axis task force jumped into the system in a blinding flash of brilliant blue light. The formation was huge, numbering in the thousands. The Axis was the freshly formed alliance between the Human, Forerunner, and Covenant rebel faction. With the combined resources and Forerunner technology, another breed of super ships had been built in the short span of five years.

      Each ship was identical, each wielding a dizzying array of weapons. They were large, measuring a kilometer from bow to stern. The main guns were a meld of Forerunner and experimental Covenant technology. Each ship had two large turrets, one fore and the other aft. In each turret was the bore of a giant X-Ray laser. Deep down in the bowels of each ship were two large fusion bottles.

      The task force lanced in system, its target soon obvious: around the star system's sun was a ring of planets, twelve in all. Each planet was heavily fortified, supplemented with a formidable array of ships in orbit. The Covenant had grown in number, and this was one of their breeding grounds: star system 81902.

      The defending warships drifted out to meet this somewhat expected threat. The forces now in play across the board were nearly equal. This was a huge group of installations, a special military base for the Covenant. The Prophets had no say on what went on here. This was the scientists' domain.

      The Axis spacecraft wheeled at their centers of gravity, presenting their twin cannons to the enemy. Deep in the depths of the Axis ships, certain energies were released. Atomic energies. In each fusion bottle, plutonium was smashed together in a sea of liquid nitrogen. The resulting detonations were contained in the fusion bottles, and forced up into the cannons.

      The attacking formation became one giant flash of white light, thousands of kilometers across as every ship fired together. And in that instant, the Covenant ships and three of their planets...melted. The nuclear energy in each cannon was focused and compressed, and blasted at their targets at almost six times the speed of light.

      It was incredible; the Covenant commanders had never seen anything like it. Millions of Covenant soldiers had just evaporated into the unforgiving black void. The Forerunner ships continued in system, readying their guns for another salvo. The defense could not hold up for many more of those volleys. With a heavy hand, the Battle Commander activated a secure link to a small remote planet on the other side of the star. He morosely muttered in his guttural tongue, and the reluctant command was acknowledged.

      The Axis fleet, spread out strategically so as not to concentrate their forces in any one area, continued to slide toward the crumbling Covenant live of defense. The Forerunner and human commanders were already lightheaded with the optimism of complete victory. A sense of victory and security slid over the minds of the bridge crews. It was a tragic error.

      A large blue sphere dropped out of slip space in an ethereal glow, right in the center of the massed Forerunner forces. Maybe if the gunners had been more alert for danger, maybe if the commanders could have possibly imagined this happening, the following moment could have been changed. But it was not so.

      All bridge crews turned their eyes toward the strange object. Its surface was alight with swirls of lazily twisting blue light. It was mesmerizing. And it was deadly.

      As all the captains and commanders watched, something began to happen. The blue whorls began to slide around the sphere, twisting faster and faster. And as they accelerated, they began to change colors, from the soft blue glow, to a deep purple, and then to a deep fiery ruby. The sphere expanded to twice its original size, and then, vanished in a flash of blood red light.

      And from the focal point of its existence, the black space, rippled. These ripples rapidly turned into huge rifts in space- time. And these rifts rapidly sped away from their point of creation. And the effect was deadly.

      Axis ships were torn apart by the unstoppable force; immensely strong alloys were twisted and shredded as if they were tissue paper. Reactors and fusion bottle erupted in violent throes all across the Axis formation. In a few short seconds, thousands of powerful warships and millions of lives vanished. The debris were sucked out of real space, into the rifts in the space-time continuum. There was nothing left.

      It was total devastation, and it did not stop there. The rifts swiftly consumed what was left of the Covenant fleet. The Covenant Commander knew the threat those new Axis forces posed to the very survival of the Covenant Empire. And so he sacrificed his forces for the greater good.

      The rifts rippled through the planets, shattering them. The fission reactions in the star became unstable. The center of that solar system erupted in a flash of pure white light, leaving nothing left.

      The rifts ran their course, finally wearing themselves out three light years from its focal point. Axis watcher drones recorded the event silently. The data was pulsed toward the nearest information gathering station, and from there it was transmitted to the highest command in the Axis command structure.

      The loss of life was horrific, and it had dealt an immense blow to the military capabilities of the Axis war machine. The Forerunner and their counterparts retreated to lick their wounds in hiding for a while. The Covenant had brought this war to a whole new level, and it was time to play dirty.

To Be Continued...





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