25 September, 2552 — Spirit Dropship Enroute to Unyielding Hierophant, Tau Ceti System
Leonidas-151 POV
The Spirit dropship rumbled beneath my boots as we approached our insertion point.
T-minus 60 seconds. The countdown glared in amber across my heads-up display.
The interior of the alien craft was silent except for the hum of its grav-lift systems and the quiet, ritualistic clicks of Spartans running final gear checks. All fourteen of us were crammed into the main bay, shoulder to shoulder, each loaded down with weapons, demolitions, and enough ordinance to level a city block. The mission we were about to execute would either cripple the Covenant or leave us floating as ash in the void.
Linda sat directly across from me, tightening the strap on her SRS99 Anti-Material Rifle. She caught my glance and gave a short nod. The white slash of the Spartan "smile" gesture — two fingers swiped across the visor — was unnecessary. She was back, fully suited in Mark V, freshly repaired and ready. The flash-cloned organ replacements Halsey provided had done their job, and if Linda had any lingering aches, she didn't show it. Spartans didn't complain.
"Combat ready, Leonidas," she said over our private channel. Her voice was calm. Focused. Same as ever.
"Good to have you back," I replied.
A small blink on my HUD indicated John's open squad net. His voice came over the comms, cool and clear. The tone of a leader whose words carried absolute weight.
"Team assignments final," John stated. "Red Team: Fred, Will, Grace, Isaac, Vinh, Anton, Malcom—you're on the starboard reactor. Blue Team: Kelly, Leonidas, Li, Joshua, Samuel, James, Linda—you're with me on the port reactor."
No hesitation. No questions. Everyone knew their part.
John paused for only a fraction of a second before adding:
"Remember: zero comms once we disembark. Fragment Cortana is slaved to both teams. If one side completes early, assist the other. We neutralize both cores together or not at all."
"Acknowledged," Fred responded for Red Team.
"Acknowledged," I echoed for Blue Team.
The timer hit thirty seconds.
My armor's neural interface hummed as my Titan AI, BT-7274, synced status across my system.
BT-7274: Synchronization complete. Mission directives confirmed.
Protocol One: Link to Pilot.
Protocol Two: Uphold the Mission.
Protocol Three: Protect the Pilot.
Even now, the old familiar voice anchored me.
Kelly finished loading her M90 shotgun with a final click-clack. Sam ran a final systems check on his modified MA5B. Li and Joshua synchronized their demolition charges with Cortana's fragment AI, ensuring both the timing and the detonation sequencing would align perfectly.
The drop bay lights switched from blue to amber.
"T-minus fifteen seconds," Polaski announced from the cockpit. "Approach vector steady. No sign they've detected us yet."
"Yet," Kelly muttered under her breath.
John's voice cut through once more. "Lock visors. Seal systems."
With a hiss, my internal seals compressed. Air pressure stabilized. HUD refreshed.
I stole one last glance at the others. Spartan steel surrounded me. My brothers. My sisters. Every one of them ready to die without hesitation — and equally committed to ensuring that wouldn't be necessary.
"T-minus five," Polaski counted down.
"Four."
"Three."
"Two."
"One."
The Spirit shuddered softly as its grav engines shifted, pulling us smoothly into the maintenance shaft.
The hatch split open with a faint hiss of decompression.
We were in.
The shaft extended into darkness, its curved metallic walls etched with Forerunner engravings partially reworked by Covenant engineering. Pale blue maintenance lights flickered every ten meters, illuminating the narrow platform that ringed the interior. Unlike the main hangars, this access corridor wasn't designed for troop movement. It was perfect for infiltration.
John gave the silent hand signal: Split.
Fred and Red Team peeled off to the right. Their HUD tags blinked green as they disappeared deeper into the starboard service tubes. My eyes lingered on them for a half-second longer than necessary — if we failed, they wouldn't make it back. None of us would.
John turned back toward Blue Team.
"Move."
We advanced down the port-side corridor in a tight diamond formation. Every bootstep landed in perfect silence thanks to the adaptive gel layers within our MJOLNIR suits. The air smelled sharp—ozone mixed with the faint trace of burning plasma. The pulse of distant engines vibrated through the deck, almost like a heartbeat.
BT-7274: "Threat analysis initiated. No hostiles detected within 200 meters."
I acknowledged silently.
Covenant patrols would come eventually. We just had to stay ahead of them long enough to finish this.
Ahead, massive conduits branched off the corridor—arteries feeding plasma to the station's reactor core. This was the circulatory system of the beast we were about to gut. Every second we stayed undetected bought us precious time.
Cortana's fragment materialized on our HUDs in the corner of our vision. Her voice was calm, clinical.
"Path to port reactor located. Two levels down. Minor forcefields detected. I will handle door access."
"Understood," John replied.
We pressed forward.
I couldn't help but glance out one of the narrow observation slits cut into the wall. Through it, I saw the rotating docking ring of the Unyielding Hierophant gently spinning against the black canvas of space. Hundreds of Covenant warships orbited the station like vultures circling a fresh corpse.
And we were about to light the funeral pyre.
Six hours. That was all the time Cortana estimated she needed to complete her infiltration, double back around the Covenant fleet, and return with the Ascendant Justice for exfiltration.
Six hours to bring this city-sized war machine to its knees.
Blue Team advanced in perfect unison, silent as ghosts. We moved with surgical precision through the winding maintenance conduits, following the thread-like waypoints projected on our HUDs by Cortana's fragment AI. It navigated the alien labyrinth with unsettling ease, as though the ship itself whispered its secrets into her code.
Eventually, the tunnels ended at a vertical shaft sealed by a shimmering violet forcefield.
Cortana's voice crackled across our squad channel.
"Forcefield disabled. Proceed with caution. You're entering the station's habitation sector. Expect resistance."
The barrier fizzled and blinked out. John was first through.
We emerged onto a spiral staircase that twisted upward along the inner wall of a massive vertical chamber. The sheer scale of it was staggering, even for a Spartan. The chamber's roof arced hundreds of meters overhead, lost behind the glow of an artificial orange sky radiating from the curved ceiling. Massive support pillars extended up into the void like the trunks of some alien forest.
Around us, towers rose from the deck plates—impossibly smooth, almost organic, studded with crystalline windows that reflected orange light in every direction. Dozens of aerial walkways spanned the gaps between the towers like webs, while grav lifts shimmered with antigravity energy, ferrying Covenant personnel up and down. This wasn't just a ship—it was a floating city.
And it was alive with Covenant activity.
We kept low, pressed tight against the inside curve of the staircase. Above and below, squads of Elites and Jackals patrolled lazily, seemingly unaware that death was stalking among them.
The silence was only broken by our own breathing and the faint whine of our suppressed weapons as we swept the area.
"Hold here," John signaled via hand command.
We froze halfway up the staircase. John scanned ahead, eyes narrowing behind his golden visor. His MJOLNIR armor stiffened slightly, his stance shifting low and centered. Something wasn't right.
I scanned the upper level where John was focused. There, standing on the platform that terminated the staircase, was a silhouette unlike any we'd seen before.
Massive.
The figure was easily nine feet tall—wider than even the bulked Sangheili. Thick grayish-brown fur rippled across heavy muscles, its head framed by twin curved mandibles and small red eyes that gleamed with a primitive, almost feral intelligence. Heavy armor plating covered its chest, shoulders, and shins. In its right hand, it carried a brutal spiked mauler—half club, half shotgun.
For a brief moment, the creature simply stared down at us.
Then it let out a deep, guttural growl that vibrated the air itself.
A new species. We had no designation for it, but I instantly understood that this was no Elite, no Jackal. This was something worse.
Cortana's voice whispered urgently across the channel.
"Uncatalogued Covenant combatant detected. Likely Covenant auxiliary. DNA profile—unknown. Caution advised."
John didn't wait for further analysis.
"Leonidas—cover the stairwell. Kelly, Li, Sam—cover the street level. Linda—high ground overwatch. I'll handle this."
His voice was like steel—sharp, deliberate.
I gave a short nod, moving into a defensive position with my BR55 shouldered tight against my chest plate. The others fanned out, keeping the lanes covered, each movement perfectly rehearsed from years of training. No one argued with John-117.
The Brute—because there was no better word for it—stepped forward, flexing its massive arms. Its red eyes narrowed, locking onto John with predatory focus.
John advanced up the last few stairs, closing the distance carefully, hands steady.
Neither side fired. Not yet.
The Brute grunted, lowering its center of mass and pounding its spiked club against the deck in challenge. The vibrations rattled my boots even from thirty meters away.
This was going to be brutal.
The wind hummed softly through the cityscape around us, carrying faint echoes of Covenant patrols from distant platforms. The distant rumble of plasma conduits created a low-frequency vibration that sat like a second heartbeat in my chest.
For now, the Covenant hadn't noticed the skirmish about to unfold in their backyard. And we needed to keep it that way.
Both titans stood poised at the edge of violence.
The Brute bared its teeth and charged.
The Brute exploded forward like a battering ram. John barely sidestepped in time, the creature's spiked mauler smashing into the stairwell rail, shearing through the hardened metal like it was cheap alloy. Sparks showered down the shaft, briefly illuminating the battlefield in violent orange flashes.
John countered with precision—controlled bursts from his suppressed MA5B into the beast's torso. But the 7.62mm rounds thudded into the Brute's dense flesh, embedding but failing to stop it. The thing grunted, its momentum only slightly checked by the impacts.
Its muscle density is off the charts, I thought grimly, tracking the brawl with my sights trained upward.
The Brute swung again, wide and low. John ducked under it, responding with a sharp strike from the butt of his rifle into the creature's jaw. It barely flinched. The sheer size disparity was unsettling, even by Spartan standards. John's MJOLNIR-enhanced strength could crush a normal human like paper—but against this beast, he was fighting a wall of corded muscle wrapped in armor plating.
The Brute grabbed the barrel of John's rifle with one hand and ripped it free like a toy, crumpling the weapon into a twisted mess of metal and electronics. Before John could react, the Brute's massive forearm shot forward, slamming into his chest plate like a wrecking ball. The force sent John flying backwards, crashing into a support column hard enough to dent the reinforced structure.
Kelly cursed softly over comms but held position as ordered.
"Status?" I asked sharply.
John grunted as he pulled himself to his feet. "Still in it."
The Brute didn't wait for him to fully recover. With terrifying speed, it lunged, closing the gap in two strides. Its left hand clamped around John's throatplate, lifting him off the ground like a ragdoll. His MJOLNIR armor's servos strained, legs kicking against empty air as the beast's fingers dug into the reinforced collar seals.
I could hear John's oxygen alarms pinging on open comms—pressure spike warnings, servo stress readouts, redlining rapidly. The creature was crushing his windpipe through the armor's inner seals. Not even MJOLNIR could fully protect from that kind of brute force strangulation.
John's free hand swung upward—his combat knife flashing in the artificial light. The blade bit into the Brute's bicep, cutting deep, but the monster snarled and squeezed harder.
His other hand reached for the eye.
Smart. Always go for the sensors.
With a sudden torque of his hips, John shifted his weight, angling his wrist and plunging the blade directly into the Brute's right eye socket.
The creature howled in rage, its grip faltering—but it didn't drop him.
John didn't hesitate. He drove his helmet forward, slamming the top of his visor against the knife's hilt with brutal force. The blade sank deeper into the creature's skull.
The Brute's whole body convulsed. It staggered back, its free hand clawing at its own face as blood and neural fluid gushed from the ruined eye socket.
John dropped to the deck, instantly rolling to his feet, drawing his M6D sidearm and emptying three suppressed rounds point-blank into the creature's exposed throat.
The Brute let out one last wheezing roar, its legs buckling under its own weight before collapsing with a ground-shaking crash. The platform beneath our boots vibrated from the sheer mass of the thing hitting the deck.
Dead.
But not quiet.
Alarms started to pulse faintly in the distance—Covenant signals reacting to the noise and motion from the fight.
"We're burned," Fred said over comms, calm but urgent. "We need to move."
"Agreed," John replied, already collecting a plasma rifle from the Brute's corpse. "Maintain comms silence. We don't need half the station zeroing in."
I fell in behind him as we advanced quickly up the last segment of the stairwell. Linda's overwatch called in softly from the high ground above:
"Multiple contacts rerouting two levels up. We're still clear—for now."
Covenant squads were undoubtedly converging on this sector, but the tight confines of the maintenance shafts gave us options they couldn't anticipate.
We ducked into the next service tunnel, moving at full combat speed, rifles up, adrenaline high. The air was thick with the scent of ionized plasma and alien blood.
This station was waking up—and so was the full weight of the Covenant fleet above us.
The labyrinth of maintenance corridors finally began to open up into more functional infrastructure. Overhead, coolant pipes and power conduits hummed with life as the artificial sky loomed high above us. Strange birds—avian life imported from Covenant client worlds—fluttered across distant towers under that constant orange glow.
Four hours remained.
John signaled a full stop. We took cover behind a towering gravity stabilizer pillar, its field faintly distorting the air around it like waves of shimmering glass. Linda's voice cut through the team comms, low and steady.
"Two squads of Elites—zealot class. Half a click ahead. Guard rotation every five minutes. They're guarding something big."
I leaned forward, optics dialing into max range.
"They're babysitting the elevator shaft," I confirmed, sighting the narrow lift built into the far wall—a vertical grav-lift rising deep into the station's core.
Kelly adjusted the suppressor on her MA5B. "Looks like our express ticket to the reactor."
John pulled up the tactical overlay Cortana had mapped based on what little of the station's architecture we had hacked. The vertical shaft led directly to the port-side reactor core. The mission's beating heart.
"We'll take the lift up," John stated, calm as always. "But the way back down… won't be this quiet."
Understatement of the year.
"Weapons check." My voice was clipped, focused. Every round was going to count now.
Each of us double-checked our loads—two full mags of MA5B AP rounds, two fresh M6D magazines, and as much plasma scavenged from dead Covenant as we could afford to carry. Our knives were blood-slick but ready.
Sam broke the momentary silence with a soft chuckle.
"Feels like old times."
I glanced over. Sam's voice was steady, but I saw the same tension building behind his visor that burned inside all of us. That growing edge Spartans knew well—the sharp focus before full-contact violence.
"This isn't Reach, Sam," I said softly. "But it may be worse."
Joshua gave a short nod as he finished syncing his plasma rifle. "That reactor's buried under half this station. When we light it up, we'll be sprinting through a hornet's nest."
"Won't be any hornets left when we're done," Kelly muttered.
John's voice cut through with quiet finality.
"We're not here to survive. We're here to finish the job."
He motioned forward. "Move."
Blue Team advanced like ghosts across the platform—silent, invisible death cutting through the gaps between rotating gravity rings and humming power cores. The Covenant zealots ahead remained oblivious as we slipped into a side conduit wrapping around the central chamber.
From this angle, we had a clean line to the elevator.
Linda whispered into the comms:
"Hold at the door. Patrol shift starting—three, two, one... mark."
Right on cue, half the zealots rotated away, marching with disciplined precision down an adjoining corridor. John raised his hand in a fist—advance.
We crossed the final thirty meters like a scalpel through flesh. One of the remaining Elites twitched at the faint sound of our boots striking the deck.
Too late.
My knife entered the soft gap beneath his mandibles before he could draw breath. The Elite spasmed once before collapsing silently. Beside me, Kelly and Joshua made equally quick work of the remaining guards.
The elevator door loomed before us—circular and massive, with shimmering fields of hard light locking the shaft behind it.
Cortana's fragment, carried in John's external processor, pinged the door's interface and went to work.
Within seconds, the hard-light barrier dissolved into blue motes.
"Elevator's ours, Chief," Cortana whispered.
John swept the lift with his weapon before stepping inside. The rest of us followed, forming a diamond formation around the central grav column as the doors sealed behind us.
The elevator hummed softly as it began rising—fast. Acceleration pressed slightly against us before the inertial dampeners compensated. Transparent panels offered a haunting view as we shot upward through the inner structure. Layers of alien machinery, maintenance scaffolds, and Covenant cityscape rushed past.
"ETA?" Sam asked, his voice low.
"Seven minutes to reactor access," Cortana replied.
"Then four hours total," I echoed. "We'll burn every second."
As we rose higher, my HUD clock continued its cold countdown. Time was our rarest resource now.
The elevator hissed to a stop with the faintest vibration underfoot. Ahead, the reinforced bulkhead doors irised open, revealing the towering cathedral that housed the Unyielding Hierophant's port reactor core.
A single glance told us everything.
Dozens of plasma conduits spiraled upward, feeding energy into a swollen spherical reactor nearly fifty meters in diameter. Thick beams of violet light arced between metallic pylons that looked almost organic in design, pulsing with the rhythm of the reactor's immense power draw.
John led the charge.
The first Grunt never even turned around. The suppressed burst from John's MA5B split its methane tank open, and the small alien collapsed without a scream. Kelly was already sprinting across the gantry, knife flashing as she slit the throat of another Grunt working a nearby console.
The Engineers floated in gentle arcs around the reactor, like jellyfish drifting through invisible currents. They worked tirelessly, cilia flashing as they ran maintenance protocols across control nodes embedded in the reactor housing.
Even now—after everything we'd seen—part of me hated what came next.
"Engage the Huragok," John ordered flatly.
No hesitation. There couldn't be.
We couldn't risk them repairing the system while we worked. Kelly dropped two Engineers with clean bursts from her suppressed SMG while Sam and Joshua cut down a third. Their fragile gas bladders burst, sending them tumbling weightless like torn kites.
I lined up my shot and dispatched the fourth.
They never screamed. They never fought back.
It didn't feel like combat—it felt like execution. But the mission came first.
"Area secure," Linda announced as her SRS-99 swept the upper gantries. "No contacts."
John gave a nod toward the central control platform.
"Leonidas. Cortana."
I stepped up to the console, plugged the dataline into my gauntlet, and linked the Cortana fragment into the Hierophant's reactor subsystem. Within seconds, alien script scrolled across my HUD, decoded and translated by her flawless precision.
"Safeties disengaged," Cortana's fragment purred. "Core instability initiated."
The reactor's steady pulse faltered—then quickened. A slow heartbeat becoming erratic. The power conduits flared brighter, pulsing like veins feeding a bloated heart ready to burst.
Joshua's voice came through my headset. "How long until overload?"
"Approximately six hours before full containment breach," Cortana replied. "Though that number may shorten if secondary failsafes reinitialize."
Sam grunted. "Which is why we disabled the maintenance crew."
But Cortana wasn't finished. More data scrolled across my HUD.
"Deploying viral fragmentation subroutines."
I watched as dozens—no, hundreds—of Cortana fragments rapidly replicated across the Hierophant's data grid.
"The system will seize under the replication strain. They won't be able to countermand my override. Even if a full Covenant fleet boards, they'll be chasing shadows."
The lights above us dimmed for a moment as the reactor fought to stabilize itself, overtaxed by both sabotage and computational overload.
That was when BT-7274's voice cut into my helmet.
"Pilot: I am receiving tactical uplink. Urgent status update from Red Team."
My gut tightened.
"Go ahead, BT."
"Red Team encountered enemy forces earlier than projected. Covenant patrols discovered their insertion point near the starboard reactor. They are pinned but holding defensive positions at sub-level two. Multiple enemy classes engaged: Elite Zealots, Brute combat squads, and Hunter pairs."
The timing couldn't be worse.
Cortana added, "Their comms silence is broken. Covenant fleet command is now aware of multiple intrusions. They will adapt accordingly."
John immediately pulled up the shared tactical overlay. "We stick to the plan. They'll hold their position. Our job is to complete this overload, exfil, and give Whitcomb the green light for phase two."
"No extraction unless we finish this side first," Kelly agreed. "Split focus and we lose both teams."
Sam checked his motion tracker and switched his plasma rifle for fresh energy. "Then we move."
We regrouped at the elevator, weapons ready. Covenant alarms echoed faintly through the maintenance shafts like haunting chimes in a distant cathedral. They knew something was happening, but not where to send their forces.
Not yet.
Linda adjusted her scope. "The clock's running out."
John's voice remained steel.
"Then we move faster."
The doors sealed behind us as we ascended. Blue Team was done here.
The Hierophant was in chaos.
Blue Team pushed forward at full sprint, moving like liquid death through the tangled lattice of the station's inner causeways. Our boots hammered down metal decks slick with coolant mist as we carved a path toward Red Team's position. The Covenant were fully aware now. Sirens wailed—strange, warbling howls that echoed off towering bulkheads. The station had awakened to defend itself.
But it wasn't fast enough.
"Three Elites on the gantry!" Linda called out. Before she finished her breath, her SRS-99 boomed, the first Elite collapsing mid-sprint. John vaulted onto a support beam overhead, landing behind the other two, his MA5B coughing three-round bursts that shredded their shields before his knife finished the job.
I dropped low, my VK78 kicking against my shoulder as I swept plasma fire off Kelly's flank. Grunts screamed and scattered, their methane tanks rupturing under precise bursts, igniting briefly before snuffing out in the low-oxygen maintenance bays.
BT-7274 chimed in calmly.
"Pilot: You are closing to within 400 meters of Red Team. Covenant forces have reinforced their location. Multiple enemy heavies detected."
"Copy," I growled through clenched teeth.
The Covenant weren't sending scout teams anymore.
They were throwing everything.
"Push hard!" John ordered.
We slammed through a cargo door, Kelly tossing a grenade that sent two Jackal lancers flipping end over end in a shower of blood and shattered shields. Brute war cries echoed ahead, the telltale howl of a pack ready to overwhelm.
Through the flickering lights, I could see the shape of the battle forming.
Red Team was dug in at a cross-section of two massive transit tubes. They were using overturned cargo containers as makeshift barricades while purple bolts of plasma and concussive grenade blasts shattered the bulkheads around them.
Then I saw her.
Grace was down.
Her armor was scorched black, chestplate caved in. She hadn't even had time to scream—the Brute grenade launcher had torn through her like she wasn't even there.
Fred and Malcolm were hauling her away while Isaac and William poured return fire into an advancing Brute squad.
I locked my jaw. My pulse spiked, but I forced my breathing steady.
No rage. No hesitation. Adapt. Overcome.
Ahead, Vinh stumbled back behind cover, one arm limp—completely gone. His stump still smoldered from where the Hunter pair's plasma had torn it away.
"Shields are failing!" William barked. "We can't hold much longer!"
They were falling back by meters—barely.
John's voice snapped over comms. "Move in. Flank wide. On me."
We sprinted ahead.
Kelly broke right, already moving at blistering speed—her jump jets hissing to propel her along a maintenance beam. Linda dropped prone on the upper catwalk, taking overwatch position, her rifle barking with surgical precision.
I followed John through the center.
A Brute came barreling toward us, power hammer raised. John's grenade bounced off its chest a second before it exploded, sending the alien crashing sideways into the bulkhead, spine severed.
I vaulted over its corpse and drove my combat knife up into the next Brute's throat as it charged. Its hot breath fogged my faceplate as I twisted the blade, blood misting my visor in a fine spray. The Brute gurgled and dropped.
We were almost there.
Red Team's position came fully into view.
The corridor behind them was collapsing under constant fire, molten debris splashing across the deck. Hunters roared, slamming their massive shields forward, forcing Fred and Anton back step by step.
"Leonidas!" Fred called out as he spotted us.
"Cover fire!" I barked to Kelly and Linda.
The air was instantly filled with disciplined bursts of suppressed MA5B and precision sniper fire as we carved a hole into the Covenant formation.
A plasma bolt splashed across my shoulder plate. Warnings flashed across my HUD, but I ignored them.
I slammed into cover beside Fred, my breathing tight.
"We're cutting you a hole," John growled. "Prep for fallback."
Anton nodded grimly. "We're ready."
Vinh was pale but conscious, his stump sealed with a hasty biofoam patch. Malcolm braced him up while William kept feeding his BR55 with a grim efficiency.
Behind them, the Brutes reorganized for another push. Dozens of Elites were stacking behind the Hunter pairs, plasma rifles charged, grenades primed. A mass charge was coming.
This wasn't a fight. It was about to be an execution.
John's voice was cold and absolute.
"We are not dying here."
The two fireteams were finally together.
The moment Blue Team broke through the last Covenant line and reached Red Team's position, we locked into a tight defensive formation without needing a word. Spartan reflex. Spartan discipline.
The corridor around us was scorched, littered with Covenant corpses, spent brass, and charred pieces of what used to be walls. The air smelled of plasma burns, melted metal, and vaporized methane. We didn't pause. We couldn't afford to.
John was already barking orders.
"Fred—rear guard. Anton, Malcolm—support Vinh. Everyone else on me."
"Copy," Fred responded, falling into position seamlessly.
I threw a glance to Vinh. His arm was gone, but he was standing. Pale, sweating, but steady.
Fred's voice cut in as we began our fallback maneuver. "What about the starboard reactor?"
I answered before John could. "We'll improvise."
There was no other option.
We were out of time.
BT-7274 whispered in my head.
"Pilot: Covenant reinforcements are encircling this sector. Estimated arrival in two minutes."
Covenant war cries echoed through the superstructure, growing louder as fresh waves rushed to cut us off. We had kicked the hornet's nest and now the entire fleet was scrambling to crush us before we reached exfil.
John glanced at his HUD timer. "Three minutes before Cortana arrives. We need to move."
We ran.
The spiral causeways that once seemed wide were now tight, oppressive corridors. Covenant infantry poured down from the upper levels: Grunts in phalanx clusters, Elites coordinating plasma fire from elevated ledges, Jackal sharpshooters tucking behind energy shields.
Kelly cut through them like a scalpel, moving ahead and clearing a path at lightning speed. Her movements blurred as she toggled her jumpjets to make tight turns along the winding architecture.
Linda's SRS-99 cracked in rhythmic bursts behind us, dropping Elites with precise headshots before they could rally.
I swept the flank as John bulldozed through the center, carving a brutal path with his MA5B. The suppressor did little to dampen the thunder of our movement, but we didn't care anymore. Stealth was long gone. This was survival.
We came to a junction — plasma bolts raining from overhead balconies.
"Crossfire—upper decks!" William warned.
I dove behind a thick structural strut and fired up at the Jackals peppering us from above. Fred lobbed two grenades up into the nests, detonating with a crack that rocked the whole junction. Bodies and shields came tumbling down.
The Hunters appeared next.
Two pairs, their shields scraping against the deck as they advanced like armored siege towers. The green fuel rods hissed from their cannons, forcing us into cover.
"Focus fire—right pair first!" John ordered.
We obeyed.
Four Spartans coordinated simultaneous suppressive bursts into the exposed joints of the nearest Hunter duo. One staggered. The other swung wildly, exposing its midsection long enough for Linda to drive a round through its spine. It collapsed with a metallic groan.
The second pair advanced—but not fast enough. Kelly flanked wide and jammed a pair of grenades behind their shields. The blasts ripped them apart in synchronized detonations.
We barely had time to reload.
BT-7274 pinged my HUD again.
"Pilot: Dropship inbound. Ascendant Justice will arrive in sixty seconds."
John spoke calmly, even as plasma bolts sizzled past.
"Almost home."
The exfil zone loomed ahead — a maintenance shuttle bay with a wide open service platform. Sheila Polaski had already landed the Spirit dropship, its rear hatch yawning open like the gates of heaven.
Polaski's voice crackled over comms.
"Get in, Spartans! I don't plan on waiting."
Covenant infantry swarmed the far end of the bay, but Sheila's quad plasma cannons blasted them back. Locklear and Haverson were laying suppressive fire from the ship's side ports.
We sprinted across the open platform, dodging plasma streaks and concussion blasts. Two Grunts ran toward us with plasma grenades primed, but William dropped them both with disciplined three-round bursts before they could get within throwing distance.
Fred and Anton heaved Vinh up the ramp.
I reached the hatch, turned, and laid down a final burst as Kelly vaulted aboard behind me. John was last, firing as he backpedaled up the ramp—cool, calm, controlled.
The hatch slammed shut.
BT-7274 pinged one last time.
"Pilot: Covenant boarding parties eliminated. Ascendant Justice inbound."
We felt the gravity shift as Polaski pulled the Spirit up and out of the station at maximum thrust.
Through the small viewport, I watched as the Covenant swarmed behind us like a tidal wave, too late to reach us as the docking shaft narrowed to a pinhole.
We had made it.
For now.
The Spirit dropship shuddered violently as Polaski pushed its engines to the limit, hurtling away from the Unyielding Hierophant's bulk.
We were still inside the storm — the entire Covenant fleet loomed like an endless armada across the starfield, ships positioned in rigid formations along the Heirophant's docking ring. Hundreds of cruisers, destroyers, carriers, and countless Seraph squadrons swirled around the station like vultures circling a dying beast.
The Covenant didn't know it yet, but their doom was seconds away.
BT-7274 pinged my HUD.
"Pilot: Covenant fleet posture suggests full combat readiness. Intercept vectors forming. Evasive maneuvers advised."
We couldn't outrun them. Not in this dropship.
And then the slipspace rupture bloomed ahead of us.
A swirling violet-black distortion cracked into the void, and the Ascendant Justice dropped out of slipspace like a vengeful god. Its forward plasma lances were hot, its shields flaring. For a moment, the carrier dwarfed us, looming like a wall of shimmering alien alloy.
Cortana's voice buzzed across comms.
"Linking up, Spirit. I've got you."
The hangar bay doors of the Ascendant Justice yawned open as Polaski cut the throttle and nosed us into the carrier's massive docking aperture. Gravity slammed back into place as we touched down hard inside the docking bay. The moment the hatch lowered, we sprinted into the ship's interior.
Whitcomb's voice came through the bridge comms the second we disembarked.
"Mission status, Spartans."
John nodded to me, giving the go-ahead.
I keyed my comms.
"Admiral. Port reactor disabled. Starboard reactor intact. Covenant fleet's tightened their perimeter. If we launch the Nova bomb now, they'll blast it to dust before it reaches critical detonation range."
The line went silent for a breath.
Then Whitcomb spoke, sharp and decisive.
"Understood. Change of plans."
He paused just long enough for the weight to sink in.
"Lieutenant Haverson and I will stay aboard the Ascendant Justice. All remaining personnel will transfer to the Gettysburg and retreat from the system."
I felt my jaw tighten beneath my helmet.
"Sir—" John started.
"That's an order, Spartan."
There was no debate. Whitcomb's mind was already made up.
As technicians rapidly secured the Nova bomb for transfer to the Spirit's cargo bay, Cortana's avatar flickered onto the bridge monitor, her features tight, her expression grim.
"I've initiated an uplink transfer," she said quietly. "Lieutenant Haverson is assisting me with the bridge controls. Transferring my core matrix to John's MJOLNIR system now."
John tapped his helmet interface as his armor's internal systems pinged alive with Cortana's integration.
"It's done," Cortana confirmed softly.
Whitcomb exhaled, squaring his shoulders.
"Now patch me through to the Covenant fleet."
Cortana nodded, her form dissolving as the communications channel opened.
A glowing holographic display of the Forerunner crystal appeared in Whitcomb's hands — a masterfully fabricated transmission. To the Covenant, it would look like he was physically holding their most coveted artifact. A prize beyond measure. A prize worth dying for.
In their zealotry, they wouldn't dare risk destroying it.
"Attention, Covenant commanders," Whitcomb boomed into the fleet-wide transmission. "I believe you misplaced something."
The reaction from the Covenant was instantaneous. The formations shifted. Warships broke away from their orbits and began vectoring toward the Ascendant Justice at full burn, engines flaring as they raced to intercept.
Whitcomb cut the channel.
"That got their attention," he said with a wry grin.
Our transfer was rapid and efficient.
Locklear, Polaski, the surviving Spartans, and all recovered personnel loaded into the Spirit and detached from the Ascendant Justice.
The gettysburg's captain, Commander Andrews, had already brought the ship into position. Its docking bay locked onto the Spirit as soon as we were in range, pulling us into safety while the old UNSC cruiser's shields flared to life.
From the Gettysburg's main viewport, we watched as the Ascendant Justice accelerated toward the Unyielding Hierophant's exposed starboard flank.
Covenant cruisers swarmed after it like bloodthirsty sharks.
"Admiral Whitcomb," Cortana whispered in my helmet feed, her voice heavy with admiration, "he's drawing them in."
John stood silently beside me as we watched history unfold.
As the Ascendant Justice closed distance, Whitcomb opened his last transmission across the Gettysburg's frequency.
"This is Admiral Danforth Whitcomb of the United Nations Space Command. It has been my distinct honor to serve alongside every man and woman aboard this fleet, human and AI alike."
His voice remained calm, steady, resolute.
"Today, we send a message. The Covenant believe they can crush us through sheer numbers. Let this serve as their reminder: humanity will never go quietly into extinction."
Static filled the channel for a moment. Then he simply signed off.
"Good hunting, Spartans. Finish the fight."
The channel went dead.
The Gettysburg's observation deck was silent. Not even the rumble of the engines, not the hum of the artificial gravity. Just silence. Every eye was fixed on the tactical hologram projecting Whitcomb's final run.
The Ascendant Justice charged forward like a lance of vengeance.
On-screen, the Covenant formation compressed—two hundred vessels in tight pursuit, unwilling to risk stray plasma impacting their precious station. The station itself loomed enormous on the display. The Unyielding Hierophant, crown jewel of the Covenant's logistics fleet, the heart pumping life into their endless war machine.
Whitcomb's voice crackled briefly across the Gettysburg's channel, just once more.
"For Earth. For Reach. For every world they've burned. Let them remember our defiance."
The Ascendant Justice's main plasma turrets spun up — twin rivers of hellfire lashing out ahead of its bow, carving through the smaller Covenant escort craft desperately trying to cut across its path.
Three destroyers burst into expanding fireballs of disintegrating metal, their shields shredded like paper before the ancient Covenant flagship's guns.
"He's clearing his own path," Kelly whispered next to me, her voice tight with awe.
The projection zoomed in automatically.
There. The tear in the Unyielding Hierophant's hull. The hole our battle had carved into the station's starboard reactor bay. A vulnerable, gaping wound.
Whitcomb wasn't slowing.
The massive bulk of the Ascendant Justice glowed as the plasma drives overloaded, burning far beyond operational tolerances. The ventral armor plating distorted under the stress, heated to blinding white as the ship rammed forward.
The ship's nose plunged into the reactor wound, sliding inside like a dagger into exposed flesh.
The moment it struck home, the station's entire frame spasmed—energy flickered across the docking ring like lightning arcing across storm clouds.
Then the reactor breach began.
A tiny point of impossible white light appeared deep inside the Hierophant's core—where Whitcomb had embedded the Nova Bomb manually. A sun igniting within metal and atmosphere.
We saw it from orbit. Even through the Gettysburg's reinforced observation deck, we saw it.
The Unyielding Hierophant bloomed like a second star. The station didn't explode in one single blast—it ruptured, layer by layer, ring by ring, as the Nova Bomb's fusion reaction unraveled the matter around it.
The Covenant ships closest to the blast were simply gone—instantaneously vaporized in an expanding wall of plasma and molten debris.
Further ships fared no better. Shockwaves hurled cruisers and carriers like toys, tumbling end over end as structural integrity failed. Firestorms consumed whole fleets as chain reactions ignited their reactors.
The blast radius continued to grow outward, engulfing hundreds of Covenant vessels in the blink of an eye.
The heavens were torn open. Space itself became a swirling vortex of collapsing matter and radioactive fire, tendrils of superheated plasma reaching out like fingers trying to claw back everything within grasp.
A single word escaped my lips inside my helmet.
"Magnificent."
John's voice was low, full of something close to reverence.
"He gave them something to remember."
The Covenant fleet was crippled. Two-thirds of their Tau Ceti force reduced to slag in a matter of minutes. The surviving vessels scattered, disoriented, helpless before the expanding inferno.
Cortana's voice came into my ear.
"Detonation complete. Eighty-nine percent destruction efficiency. No remaining pursuit detected."
Then Commander Andrews spoke.
"Spartans… we're clear for jump."
The Gettysburg's slipspace drives hummed, charging rapidly as the countdown appeared on our HUDs.
I kept my eyes locked on the viewscreen one final time as the white-hot inferno continued to grow.
Admiral Whitcomb and Lieutenant Haverson had turned certain annihilation into a beacon of hope. A message written in the stars, visible for lightyears to come.
Humanity will not be extinguished.
The Gettysburg shuddered slightly as the drive engaged.
The burning graveyard of the Covenant fleet dissolved into streaks of blue and violet light as we transitioned into slipspace.
Silence returned.
Only this time, it wasn't born of fear.
It was the silence of resolve.
The silence of survival.
The silence before the next battle.