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Within Jupiter:(wings of gold)
Posted By: SeverianofUrth<residentpark@aol.com>
Date: 17 June 2004, 8:08 PM


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      "Amazing..." I heard someone say. "Just look at that!"
      "All I see, my good man, is a fucking deathtrap." Replied another.

      Within Jupiter... Jove, Zeus, whatever. I look at the port screen, and currently the lens are zoomed on to the floating Covenant fortress, somehow eeriely, strangely beautiful.
      It doesn't seem to be made of steel, or anything hard like plasteel or titrinium. It seems more like a... faery zepplin. It has wings, giant butterfly wings of kaleidoscopic colors, photoreceptive films of membrane covering the fragile bones of molten plasma. It floats, bobbing and yielding to the harsh, flesh-stripping winds of the Gas Giant. And in, amongst the wings and the flesh is a strange city, a network of spires portruding from a single, small, and infinitely heavy piece of a star kept in stasis.
      I am a scientist. Military. There has been no other since the war began. And I am part of an task force, sent through the recent gap made by the pioneering Mark VI's in the Covenant armada to reach Jupiter, investigate the strange sightings, and destroy whatever needs to be immolated. Inhumed.
      But as I stare at the strange castle in the sky, I find that the idea of destroying this thing is somehow... repulsive. Not even for survival. The idea makes me want to weep.

      "Ah... You all right, Hopkins?" Padma, one of the eight scientists assigned here, asks. I tell that I am. She nods, and walks away. And I want to scream, 'Of course I'm not alright, and you shouldn't be either! We are about to destroy something so unique, so beautiful, how can you not notice it!'

      The ship that I am on, Terrance, slowly approaches the floating city. The wings draw closer, closer, closer... I could hear my 'colleagues' discussing whether or not the wings might have defensive capabilities.
Defensive capabilities! How can they conceive of such a thing... We are murdering a angel, I feel.

      Am I a traitor, to feel this way? Never.

      Our ship slowly, systemically starts passing through the wings. The wings are giant; they actually enfold the craft that we are on, a frigate! the ship passes through slowly, carefully, but the wings are bursting now, the plasma that runs through them like blood seeping out into the turbulent air.
      For some strange reason, there has been no attempt at defense.

      The ship reaches the city in the middle. The spires are just about the size of the ship, and at least a score of them portrude from out point of view. They seem dark, forbidding; not evil, but rather... on a highter plane then us. Us humans. How inferior we are...

      The marines, and the fighters are all being prepped for battle, I'm sure. We scientists are currently gathering the plasma fluid that seeped out of the wings using remote controlled floaters. One of them slices through the wings, and takes a chunk of the membrane. I want to cry.

      Bash. The frigate, using a plasma ram crashes onto one of the spires, and the building bursts into pieces. I am suddenly reminded of the history texts: of the events in the beginnings of the 21st century.
      Through the magnification scopes I can spot Covenant bodies hurtling through the air, and suddenly, a thought strikes my mind.
      Martyrs.
      Is the reason for no defenses whatsoever had been just a ploy? To gear the minds of their soldiers with hate and anger, with vengeance and retribution? Will this city of the faeries become a Covenant battle cry, as Reach and other colony planets of ours had become?
      But I can't stop ourselves. I watch, as boarding parties go in through the crash, and crash into other spires, bursting into plasma flames. Still no defenses.



REPORT:ON THE TASK FORCE 37123/JUPITER

      From transmissions gathered through the voids of space, it has been ascertained that as the task force sent to Jupiter left the gas giant with the mission fulfilled, they were set upon by 34 cruisers! What we have gathered so far point towards a succesful boarding of the frigate by the Covenant forces, and the taking alive of the ship's crew. A filmdata had been sent of a man, name Stephen A. Hopkins, with his skin -stripped- from his flesh! The injuries seem to have been inflicted out of retribution rather than of investigation, and similar fates would probably have been inflicted to the rest of the surviving crew. Along with the filmdata was the voice of the Hopkins, Stephen A. screaming out with what is assumed to be pain:
      "Vengeance upon the infidels!"
      No other data has been retrieved.


      END OF REPORT. (man this is cheesy)





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