Ten: How to Get Ahead in War

Fortunately for them, there was no sabotage of the Ascendant Justice-Gettysburg, and because there was no sabotage, there was also no need to stop in Eridanus Secondus' asteroid belt for repairs. They made very good time to the location where the Hierophant would pass through on its way to Earth and lurked in Slipspace, the goddess in the Shard making it so that they were still in the alternate dimension without going anywhere. "So what's the plan?"

"You're a goddess. Don't you know what's going to happen?"

"I might."

"Are you going to tell us?"

"…Probably not."

"Dammit."

"In any case, I'm going with you," Epheria declared, "I've spent a hundred thousand years cooped up in this little sliver, waiting for you to come and get me, and I'm not about to miss out on any more of the action."

"You are a weird goddess."

"We can have an entire conversation on what would be considered a 'normal' goddess, or we can plan this mission and kick some butt." She pointedly crossed her arms, and Whitcomb picked up on her unspoken "get moving, idiots."

"She's right; we need a plan to stop the Covenant from reaching Earth. Cortana, what can you give us?"

"We are presently on a collision course with the Unyielding Hierophant," the AI said calmly, watching as Halsey paced in a corner of the room, "and we have approximately six hours until we reach the intersection."

"I can make it more, if necessary. Or less."

Cortana nodded her thanks, then continued, "Based on the transmissions I have intercepted, the Hierophant is a mobile space station, between ten and twenty kilometers long, and that means that the simplest way to destroy it is to pull a 'Halo': cause a chain reaction in one of their reactors. The security protocols in place will cause the other reactors to attempt to stabilize the flow through a fluctuation of their own levels, and that, in turn, will send all of them into a wildcat state, making them detonate shortly after the sabotaged one goes." She crossed her arms and – fast as lightning – exchanged glances with Epheria. Both knew what the other was thinking: the sacrifices of Lieutenant Haverson and Vice Admiral Whitcomb. They could not very well permit them – or anyone – to replicate that; there had to be some other way to lure the Covenant ships in close to the space station.

"And how do you suggest we sabotage this space station, Cortana? Dropping this ship out of Slipspace for even a second would doom us all."

"A dropship."

"Pardon?"

"A dropship. A single dropship is incapable of staying in Slipspace under its own power; the field would deteriorate or tear the ship apart. One of the Covenant's dropships has a more than significant likelihood of the former, so the Spartans could drop out of Slipspace and board the Hierophant." The construct checked their course and their time; the time-space continuum was fluctuating slightly around them as if Epheria was unsure whether they needed more or less time. She turned her head to look at the goddess, who laid her hands on her chest and shook her head, holding Cortana's gaze. The AI lifted her shoulders in askance, and the goddess made a gesture; whoever was in control of the Tower of Eternity was creating the disturbance, trying to rip the space-time continuum and kill all of them. She cocked her head, and the other responded; the only thing they could do was move forward as fast as possible before the fabric reached its breaking point.

-------------------------------------------

John reached up and rubbed his forehead, voicing a quiet groan. There it was again, the ache in his frontal lobe, the signal that someone somewhere was messing with the universe. He rested his elbows on his desk and covered his eyes with his palms, fingers winding through his short bangs, and the Spartan forced his mind to relax, to try and gain impressions of the meddler.

...sla…

What?

…nsla…

Deep breaths, he told himself, deep calming breaths. Imagine a calm pool, perfectly still, perfectly cool, the kind where you could unwind all day…

…enslave…

-------------------------------------------

"And how are we supposed to get the Spartans back on board?"

"I can do it."

"With all due respect –"

"But nothing. I said I was going with them and I shall. My presence will lure all of the Covenant ships closer to the Hierophant, and before it detonates, I will bend the fabric of space and bring them back aboard. I can stop them from getting killed while on the station, too. All you'll have to do is hide behind the moon or the planet itself near the intersection and wait. I'll do the rest." The goddess appeared very firm in her decision and crossed her arms as if expecting them to argue further. Finally, Whitcomb sighed and verbally acknowledged the fact that they truly had no say in whether she went or stayed; she was a goddess. "More like a custodian, a guardian. A very, very, very powerful one."

Immediately, the Spartans received permission to head to the launch bay and begin reinforcing one of the three Spirits that they had used to retrieve Doctor Halsey and Admiral Whitcomb. Only an elite squad would need to head out to fight the Covenant; the more that went, the more likely they were to get killed. Epheria hitched a ride in one of the pouches on Fred's ammo belt, and they could hear her whispering to Cortana every once and a while in that strange, fluting, almost musical tongue that they'd spoken in when they first met. The construct was busy doing some reinforcing of her own, strengthening the copy of herself so that it would not succumb to instability nearly as fast while inside the Hierophant's systems. She watched them load all of their necessary gear onto the dropship: Lotus antitank mines, explosives, crates of ammunition and the weapons that used them. She was disappointed that she would not be going along – again – but she was needed on the conjoined ships, while this was a mission for an expendable AI.

She was not.

Cortana flicked on the Spartans' private COM and said, "Ten minutes to the drop zone, begin final preparations now." Epheria caught on and used the natural abilities of her present residence to make it so.

"If you can do that, why can't you just warp all of the gear onto the dropship for us?"

"Lazy bones."

-------------------------------------------

Their exit from Slipspace was bone-jarring, teeth-rattling, and utterly disorienting. For all of their reinforcements, they could to nothing to smooth the ride, and the dropship inverted, rolled, and spun out of control with every quantum filament that they passed through. The Spartans hung on to their quick-release harnesses for dear life, hoping that none of the straps broke in the event of the dropship throwing their full weight on it. One of the beams welded to the hull snapped and sprayed a handful of incredibly sharp slivers that embedded themselves in the hull perilously close to Linda's head. The whole of the dropship was dark; the only light provided came from their helmet lamps, and they had long since turned them off, the jarring of the beams of light playing havoc with their vision.

Blue and Black Teams' vital signs were erratic, the Senior Chief noted when he pulled them up on his display, but well within normal parameters, and the radiation leaking into the lead-lined hull was livable. For now. Epheria had told them that given the shortened nature of their transition, the radiation levels would not be fatal or dangerous in any way at all, and her words were holding true at the moment. Just then, the dropship jerked violently and sent Fred spilling forward, his movement arrested by the harness but head slamming against the inside front of his helmet. Another jolt slammed his head against the back of his helmet, and clinging blackness clouded his vision for an indeterminate amount of time before the whispers of Cortana's copy pulled him from unconsciousness.

His biosigns pulsed sluggishly on the inside of his visor, but there were no detected injuries, though his whole body ached as if he'd just been run over by a steamroller. The rest of his team hung limp in their harnesses, still out of it, and Epheria's Shard went floating past his head, the goddess doing a very good impression of freestyle swimming while she drifted by. He reached up and caught her, and she condensed herself back into a seamless crystal, which he promptly slotted back into the pouch it had escaped from. Once he'd woken up the rest of the Spartan assault team, Cortana's copy said, "Large volume of COM traffic detected, F- through K-bands. Received three hails so far."

"How can you pick up anything? The hull's been line with lead."

"Numerous breaches detected. COM traffic is also unusually strong, indicating a close proximity to sender." Her voice was terse, her words short and to the point. "Awaiting orders."

"Stand by." He moved to the portside hatch and eased it open manually. At first his vision was obscured by the hull of an immense frigate, the silver-blue hull reflecting an unknown source of light, but it moved aside, engine cones seething blue fire – letting him see the rest of them. "How many?" He asked the AI fragment in his neural lace.

"Two hundred and forty-seven warships," she said after a moment, "Estimates of the total population based on your limited field of vision bring the numbers to approximately five hundred ships."

For an instant, all of the Spartans' minds bore the same thought: five hundred? There – there was no way humanity could survive that. The Covenant's opening shots would obliterate Earth and all of its defenses; humanity would be wiped from the face of the universe. The aliens had never gathered in such for before, but they had seen this kind of destructive power before: Halo. Halo and the Flood. Fred clenched a fist, and Epheria chose that moment to speak. We have a fool-proof plan, you lot. You've stopped this kind of force before, and you can bloody well do it again.

Her slightly rough words enabled them to gather their courage, and Fred spoke to the construct in his head. "You said they've pinged us three times?"

"Affirmative."

"Tell them that our engines are crippled on we need assistance to move. Let's see if we can get them to take up to the Unyielding Hierophant for repairs." He moved back from the hatch and closed it, turning to find his gun. Kelly handed it to him, and all of them ran checks on their armor and weapons while they waited for the ferry that Cortana said was on its way. The dropship jolted in a less severe version of their Slipspace journey when the ferry docked with them, and Fred again moved to the hatch where he had assessed the size of the Covenant fleet, feeding a fiber-optic camera through a miniscule crack in the hull.

The transport was taking them toward a ship that looked like two teardrops had fused together in the middle, creating a figure eight like ship, and a strange ring rotated around the point of connection, connected to the ship itself by featherlike tendrils. There were Covenant ships docked on the ring that looked like toy baubles next to the station, making him realize that it could not be anything but the Unyielding Hierophant. The station was far larger than estimate, at least thirty kilometers long if not more, and housed who-knows-how-many soldiers. If it got to Earth…

He moved away from the hatch, and gravity pulled them to the floor a few minutes later, atmosphere hissing into their ship through the cracks. He gestured; Black Team moved to cover the starboard hatch while Blue Team got into position in front of the portside one, and a moment later it squeaked open. An Engineer bobbed in, closely followed by two others, and Fred signaled for the Spartans to stand down; they were no threat so long as they were left to their work. There was no one outside but more Engineers, so they quickly took cover in a catwalk overhead, leaving the Covenant scientists to do their job with single-minded intensity. The Spartans swept the bay for any immediate threats and found only two Grunts pushing barrels of coolant. They had no weapons and would be easy to avoid, so they let them be; their disappearance would be noticed.

Linda spotted a holopanel and covered Fred with Will's help while he made for it, quickly inserting Cortana's cartridge into it and darting back behind a plasma coil the size of a Warthog. "I'm in," the construct said over the COM, "I've secured and encrypted both the intra-team COM and this channel."

"Good work. Where's the reactor?"

"Seven kilometers further into the lobe. You will need to take me with you, however; the reactor console is isolated. I can create a copy of myself to remain in the system, but it will have potentially severe aberrations that I cannot correct."

"That's a risk we'll have to take." Twenty seconds later, they were darting through a hatch and following Cortana's instructions to the reactors. Meanwhile, on another encrypted channel, the copy was sending every scrap of information she could get her data packets on to the original Cortana, specifically looking for Forerunner references to his existence in history files and vids. There were a few taunting hints – "the Cursed Warrior," "the Dark One," – but nothing solid. It appeared that any data on him would have been taken with the Forerunners when they left the galaxy, the residual data never to be found, or John had taken it with him. She could understand why he went to such lengths to hide his existence, however, even staying continuously cloaked; time paradoxes were not fun by any means.

Linda scurried up a concealed ladder to a roof where she could cover them, and the remainder of the two teams sped across the open space leading to the reactor that was their target, using the carved columns at the entrance for cover. One of the now rather numerous Cortanas in the station's systems alerted them to the presence of the Brutes via a pre-recorded message from the original, alerting them to the danger as well as the similarities to humanity. Provided Kelly could stay out of their reach, she told them, they should be able to sneak up on them and slit their throats from behind, though they were likely to be wearing power armor and have shields.

Fred was the first to catch sight of the beasts; they were taller than Elites and only had one jaw like humans did. They seemed like an under-evolved version of humanity, explaining why the copy had likened them to humans, and were covered in thin hair in a similar manner. Their appearance made Epheria speak for the first time since they had arrived on the station: You shoot. I'll make sure the bullets hit their targets. The Spartans obliged her, unlimbering the weapons that they'd slung to make their speedy way across the open gallery in the station, bringing the barrels of their assault rifles to bear on the beasts even as they crept closer in the shadows. No doubt their cover had already been blown by the handful of Grunts they'd been forced to kill along the way, their corpses left on the metal plates making up the floor a ways back, which meant that there was really no reason not to gun them down.

They opened fire, visibly saw the paths of some bullets curve in the direction of the Brutes; each slug penetrated a weak point on their armor and sent the corpses sprawling backward with the translation of momentum and lack of resistance. One of the Brutes who was slower to die growled fiercely and charged them in a red-eyed rage, and the Spartans dove out of the way, turning their weapons on the beast when it passed between them. The goddess' unfailing accuracy ensured that it was killed instantly, enabling them to proceed through a passage way meant for Engineers and rappel down to the floor when the hall terminated abruptly.

The reactor itself was an impressive complex of five hundred and twelve smaller reactors joined together, each one the size of a Pelican and aligned in perfect rows and columns eight deep. They glowed a seemingly benign blue, but that just meant that they were high-voltage producers. Cortana directed them to the console at the base of the immense cube of reactors, and Fred slotted her in; shortly after, she spoke. "I'm in. There are very few counter-intrusion measures in this part of the station, and I can proceed with the overload whenever you'd like. Keep in mind that it will take ten minutes for the whole thing to blow, however."

Fred looked down at the pouch holding the Shard. "Epheria? How are you getting us out?"

The closer you are to the final destination, the less likely it is that there could be negative effects. I recommend starting the overload now and proceeding back out to the launch bay where you entered. Cortana's copies can simulate an image of me connected to a detonator somewhere along the hull of the Hierophant to lure the ships in so that they'll be totaled by the ensuing explosion. The Spartans agreed, let Cortana's copy scan the crystal, and headed back out into the station at large. There were numerous Banshees circling overhead, Elites and Grunts sprinting all over the area, and the goddess shouted at them to "just go already" when they paused to get their bearings. Every second they dallied was one second closer to oblivion, and they broke out across into the open, their weapons at the ready. Nothing was going to stand in between them and escape. Their infamous sniper joined them on the way, and they could hear hundreds of Cortana copies repeating system error codes over the radio as they wove through the tunnels to the main bay where they had entered.

5:12.

The eight warriors ducked and dodged and returned fire on the Elites that followed them out to the repair bay, and Epheria said abruptly, Okay, change of plans. Too many Cortanas to do anything and succeed with it, so I need you to get me out into the open. Just set me on the ground in clear view and keep fighting; I'll do the rest.

Fred did as she asked and kept up a steady stream of fire on the Covenant trying to overwhelm their position. He was vaguely aware of Epheria calling out in perfectly simulated fear, speaking in a foreign tongue that they could not understand, but the Covenant reacted to her. Instantly, distant carriers seen through the force field that kept the atmosphere in the bay turned toward the Hierophant and began accelerating in their direction, and more Covenant spilled into the bay. "What did you tell them?" he barked at her as he lobbed a grenade over their plasma coil barricade, crouching to prevent any potential shrapnel from injuring him.

Just that I had been captured by monsters and forced to help you and that I needed someone to rescue me. Though the more accurate translation is "Demons." I also told them that you were blessed by my enemies and could not be overcome unless the whole of the fleet banded together.

"So what do we do to get out?"

2:09.

We wait.

1:57.

The Spartans abandoned their assault rifles in favor of the Covenant plasma weapons when they ran out of ammunition and hosed plasma fire at those who were brave enough – or stupid enough – to charge them in an attempt to take them out by themselves. The Elites were refusing to use grenades so close to the "holy light" for fear that they explosion would damage the Shard itself.

0:45.

The Covenant warships crowded around that section of the station, dispatching Elites with jet packs and countless dropships in their direction.

0:26.

"This is getting to be all too common."

0:19.

And here…

0:12.

…we…

0:09.

…go.

0:05.

The fabric of space and time rippled violently; this time the group actually saw the location they needed to go to being pulled towards them, the rest of space folding away out of sight somewhere "below" them, and Fred scooped up the Shard and ran like hell for the safety of the Gettysburg mess hall ten feet away, fighting the urge to vomit at the unnatural sight. The second after the last Spartan, Arthur, made it into the mess hall, Epheria let space smooth itself out again with an almost audible snap as it returned to its normal plane state.

0:00.

The explosion of the Unyielding Hierophant in the depths of space was utterly silent but viewed by all via a single Clarion spy drone hovering just outside of the moon's shadow. Immense arcs of red-orange flame claimed ships that had been outside the blast radius and left others adrift, dead in space. There were perhaps a dozen surviving cruisers, those who had been unable to get close enough to the Hierophant to discharge the passengers that were oh-so-eager to begin their Great Journey.

Their time would come.

Instead of pursuing the remainder, the humans set a course for home.

-------------------------------------------

…enslave the Forerunners and humans … for the crimes of their ancestors…

Well, that was about as clear as the mysterious message was going to get. John rose from behind his desk, silently calling for the Terrible Twins, and they materialized at his side when he exited his office. "Tell me something," he told the strangely serious pair while they paced along behind him, "I need to know if there are any races of slavers out there who would hold a grudge against the Forerunners."

"The P'Vort," Venera said instantly, "They're a race of psy-enabled warriors who tried to enslave the Milky Way while we were the dominant empire."

"We beat them, obviously," Kenera added, "but there are no records about them if they attacked the Precursors. Why do you ask?"

"I think they're going after humanity now."

-------------------------------------------

[ROGUE PROCESS x.X.x ERROR-ghost117]: /End log: OPERATION: First Strike. /Begin log: Installation Zero-Five.

**********

I fear who I am becoming,

I feel that I am losing

The struggle within.

I can no longer restrain it,

My strength it is fading,

I have to give in.

- "It's the Fear," Within Temptation (The Silent Force)