The Rift

[Dominus]

Ah, finally! A Covenant-centered chapter just in time for the stuff to really hit the fan in the Halo universe. Much as the tension over in the ST universe is starting to approach nerve-wracking levels, I will always remain a true Sangheili fan at the end, and am glad that you've decided to pay such particular attention to them and their situation in this update.

Grr, just bloody die already, Truth. God-Emperor, I can say without pause that there's not a single smarmy xenos I've ever loathed as much as that vile creature. It's a testament to your writing that I hate him so much; very few Halo fanfics out there seem to get him properly in character these days. I certainly won't weep any tears when High Charity is (hopefully) atomized...

All things considered, that was a truly mind-blowing chapter, IO. I hadn't predicted that the great Sangheili rebellion would begin so soon and in earnest, but you've really outdone yourself this time.

But yes, please don't kill off Barclay just yet! I don't care if the Imperial spy meets an unfortunate end in a tragic airlock accident, but Barclay's come too far in this story to die just like that.

EDIT: "Kill off," not "of"...

[Noble Ire]

Chapter Sixty Four


In the dark gap between two massive buildings, blocky and functional like most in the lowest of High Charity’s districts, Deau ‘Mefasee scrabbled for support against one slick, tarnished wall. Emerging from an adjoining alleyway, she stumbled a few steps and then caught hold of a protruding column of machinery-housing. The Sangheili leaned upon the tube-like structure for a moment, sucking deep, haggard breaths through her heaving mandibles, and then used it to pull herself back onto her feet. She glanced over her shoulder at the shadowed alley behind her, and finding it empty, allowed herself to take another few, slightly calmer drags of air. Noting that the modest, drab collection of metal plates she sported on her skin-tight bodysuit was sliding out of place, she took a few more moments to readjust an ill-fitting poltroon and chest plate. Silently cursing her inability to find a better-proportioned disguise, ‘Mefasee straightened up as best as she could and began to walk towards the “daylight” that illuminated the space beyond the narrow alley.

Taking another calming breath, she stepped out onto a large open concourse. A primary avenue that bisected the entire district, the space stretched off beyond view to left and right, a thirty-meter gap between the gigantic edifices of factory buildings, housing warrens, and bureaucratic offices, many of them dozens of stories high. The roadway of seamlessly-interlocking metal plates on which she stood was but the lowest level of the thoroughfare. Above her, partially blocking the artificial illumination that poured down from great strips and circles of white radiance that stretched across the massive dome a hundred kilometers overheard, raised roadways and suspended platforms connected the towering structures on either side. Above this network of crisscrossing walkways, a steady flow of air traffic, automated cargo haulers, smaller transport craft, and even the occasional armed patrol craft maneuvered through the artificial ravine.

‘Mefasee took momentary solace in the sheer enormity of her surroundings. There were few places better to hide in the strictly-regimented Covenant than the lowest level of a civilian population center, where the sheer crush of population and encroaching apparatus made each minute living being seem like just another part of the great, holy machine. Desperate to fully exploit her surroundings, the Sangheili again straightened her dull metallic raiment, that of a simple manufacturing laborer, and hurried towards the largest assemblage of sapients in view.

The crowd, nearly one hundred Sangheili, Unggoy, and Kig-Yar, most of them dressed in uniforms as dull and utilitarian as ‘Mefasee’s, was thronged around a circular dais that was raised two meters above street level. The bust of a nameless Prophet was affixed to its flat top, one of thousands of such icons and statues that adorned every street and level of the sacred city. The mass of workers was not paying homage to the carved face, however. Instead, their eyes were fixed upon a Sangheili who had climbed onto the platform and was addressing those assembled below in a booming, irate voice.

On the very edge of the crowd, ‘Mefasee could not clearly hear what he was saying over its collective murmuring and the occasional shout from a spectator closer to the center, but she still had a fairly good idea of what was being said nonetheless. She made her way along the perimeter of the slowly-growing throng, periodically glancing up and down the concourse for the best avenues of escape, should they be needed. Pushing through a small knot of avian Kig-Yar, she heard one of them whisper something unintelligible to a fellow, and looked back to see a skeletal, yellow-skinned alien loping out of the crowd, back in the direction from which she had come. She tracked the creature’s movement until her eyes fell upon the alley which she had just exited. As she watched, a bulky mass of sinew and matted hair stomped into view from the darkness, a vicious bayoneted grenade launcher clutched in its grayish hands.

A chill of fear pulsed down the Sangheili’s spine, and she immediately turned away from the open street. Her pursuers had managed to trace her, despite her best efforts to fade into the sprawling metropolis after she left the communications hub. She had known that pursuit was all but ensured due to the magnitude of the heresy she had just facilitated, the Supreme Commander had warned her of as much, but still she had hoped…

Any hopes of escape on foot ‘Mefasee might have had were dispelled as she heard the familiar buzz of a dropship settle in over her head. She could tell that the vessel was similar in make to the recovery ship she had once commanded, and she knew its alternative specifications all too well. ‘Mefasee pushed deeper into the crowd, trying not to imagine the insect-like craft settling in the air above a hundred meters away, its quartet of bottom-slung plasma cannons scanning the throng as Jiralhanae soldiers disgorged from its hold, their falls softened by the dropship’s shimmering gravity lift. Her only chance now was to blend in, just another common laborer among millions. Perhaps her pursuers didn’t know her face, or have her biometrics on file.

The laborers and overseers she pushed passed were thoroughly enthralled by the speaker and resisted little as she moved past them, and soon ‘Mefasee found herself at the front of the crowd, only a few meters from the bellowing Sangheili. He was a mid-level bureaucrat, by the look of his civilian dress, and the scarred stub that was his left arm explained why.

“And what of the High Council?” the speaker shouted, holding out his intact hand ominously. “They were summoned to their chambers by the Hierarchs before ‘Falanamee even arrived in this system. Why has there been no word from them since? Why are none allowed near the Council tier, or the Common Towers? Why do the Prophets keep our greatest leaders locked away as battle looms within view of this holy city? Is it because they fear what the Councilors will do if they are allowed to face ‘Falanamee openly? Do they fear that they might find some truth in his words?”

Murmurs of approval rippled through those below, mostly from the Sangheili, but a few Unggoy leant their chirpy voices to the chorus as well. The Kig-Yar were silent and uneasy.

“I am no heretic,” the Sangheili continued. “It is not heresy to demand the truth, no matter what some may say! Look at me! Look at my arm! I lost this arm defending our Holy Covenant from real heretics, mad traitors and worshippers of false gods. I lost the honor and glory of battle; I have spent countless cycles serving here, far from the fires of war, and for what? To preserve and sustain my people and my kin, and all those who are loyal to us. I am no heretic. If Teno ‘Falanamee labors as I do, as he says he does, then he is no heretic, either.”

As the mass of spectators roared with agreement, ‘Mefasee chanced a look over her shoulder. Plainly visible in the midst of a pack of skittish Unggoy, four Jiralhanae soldiers were scanning the assembly with keen, cruel eyes. The fugitive could not help but stare a moment at their leader in shock and dread. A massive, white-haired brute, easily twice the size of any Sangheili within view, with a metallic war hammer clutched in his right fist. She recognized his savage face and hulking frame in an instant, though she had seen him before only from a distance, and as his crimson stare met hers, she knew that the chieftain had done the same.

At random, she plunged back into the crowd, away from her pursuers. Over the clamor of the firebrand and his throng, she heard a loud bark and the thud of heavy footfalls. ‘Mefasee threw herself around an unusually heavy-set Sangheili and searched the street again desperately for a route of escape. She caught sight of the dropship still hovering off to her right, but the other side of the avenue was still empty save for a few curious pedestrians. Abandoning all pretense of evasion, she made for the rear of the crowd as fast as the press of bodies would permit. Her ill-fitting uniform jangled and slipped, but she ignored it. Just another handful of observers, and she would be in the open. The Sangheili prayed that the Jiralhanae would not dare to discharge their weapons in the thick of a riled mob.

The blow fell upon her broad back like the concussion of an artillery blast, and she felt herself sprawl irresistibly onto the smooth paving plates. Before she even brace for another blow, ‘Mefasee felt club-like hands latch onto her shoulders and yank upwards, pulling her back off the street. She began to struggle, but when she looked up, she saw the albino Jiralhanae peering down at her, holding one of the gently-pulsing gravity projectors imbedded into the head of his weapon centimeters from her face. He jabbed the weapon at her, and she fell still.

Tartarus rumbled at the pair of Jiralhanae holding her, and they began to tug her out of the crowd, back towards the waiting dropship. They had not moved more than a few meters, however, before the soldiers stopped, responding to the sound of shouting from behind. ‘Mefasee twisted against the iron grasps of her captors and looked back over her shoulder. Most of the crowd had moved back when the Jiralhanae had fallen upon their prey, but a few Sangheili had remained. ‘Mefasee recognized one of them as the worker who had been rallying the mass.

“What do you think you’re doing with her?” the veteran demanded, approaching Tartarus, who had also stopped.

“She is wanted for offenses committed against the Covenant, Sangheili,” the hulking chieftain growled. “It would not be wise to interfere. Your loyalties are already in question.” He jerked his head towards the now-vacant pedestal.

“Do not question my loyalties, Jiralhanae,” the other spat back, disregarding the size difference between them as he stalked close. “It is not your place. The guardians and enforcers of this city are still of my people. It is their duty to pursue and arrest. Let them take me, if they will, but I shall not allow you and your brutes to lay a hand on me, or that female. Release her.”

Tartarus glowered at him. “I have been directed by the Hierarchs themselves to seize her. Perhaps they no longer have faith in the Sangheili and your enforcers. What your people call loyalty may no longer satisfies them.” The white-haired soldier glanced at the dropship, and ‘Mefasee followed his gaze to see a quartet of armed Jiralhanae approaching. She also noticed that the crowd had begun to grow again, and that it was beginning to encircle her captors.

Tartarus noticed it, too. “Now, call off your mob and let me pass.”

“They are not my mob, Jiralhanae,” the one-armed warrior said dangerously. “I cannot control them, or stop them from doing what they feel they must. I warn you again, let the female go.”

Tartarus looked about him, scanning the ranks of Sangheili that were forming all around. His beady eyes met those of one of the soldiers holding ‘Mefasee for a moment, and the other grunted meaningfully. The chieftain turned back to the tense worker.

“Warn me? Of this rabble?”

He snorted a derisive laugh, and then brought his weapon to bear on the Sangheili firebrand in a rapid, fluid motion. The smaller figure stared at the broad head of the gravity hammer for a full half second before Tartarus squeezed a control stud and a halo of roiling bluish distortion burst from it. The pulse caught the Sangheili full in the face and chest, and he careened back into a group of other protestors, sending several of them to the street with the force of his fall. At the same moment, ‘Mefasee’s keepers lurched forward, bowling through the thin line of civilians that had formed in their path.

She attempted to kick one of the Jiralhanae off of her, but he ignored the blows, never breaking pace for the hovering dropship. As soon as they were free of the crowd, the four other Jiralhanae rushed past them in the opposite direction, evidently moving to assist their leader. ‘Mefasee could hear shouts of surprise and anger erupting from the assembled Sangheili, and then the low whump of the gravity hammer’s repulsor as it sent another member of the throng spinning away. She struggled to look back, but the Jiralhanae held her fast, and in a few moments, they had arrived under the waiting strike ship.

As she was shoved into the column of colorfully-pulsing energy that emanated from the underside of the craft to the street below and tugged irresistibly upwards, she heard the sudden report of a Jiralhanae firearm. Her gut clenched, and she tried not to envision a trickle of purple Sangheili blood flowing down the polished concourse. Then a new pair of unforgiving hands received her, and Teno ‘Falanamee and his grand designs seemed as far away as they had ever been.

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Almost as one, the war fleets assembled before High Charity detected the approach of the four blade-ships. Even as coordinators stationed on the holy city began to transmit urgent warnings to the defensive armada, hundreds of ship masters watched on holographic displays as the angular alien vessels moved further and further into the system, ignoring the outlying outposts and scattered picket ships that they passed. Their progress was not particularly swift, but it did not need to be. Every warrior of the Holy Covenant knew what the demon-craft were capable of.

For a few moments, the opposed fleets of Teno ‘Falanamee and the Hierarchs were still, their relative positions to one another locked as though nothing had interrupted their lethal contest of wills. Then, gradually at first, and then in a great flurry of divergent movement, the encircling flotilla began to fragment, all order lost. A trio of destroyers from the Fleet of Joyous Recompense broke off from the main group and forged into interplanetary space towards the new invaders, their commanders seized either by a fit of blind valor or the irresistible pull of vengeance for the fallen. A few others, mainly Jiralhanae-controlled ships, shot off in the opposite direction, seeking what little shelter there was to be had behind High Charity’s armored bulk.

The majority remained around ‘Falanamee’s fleet, but even they started to deviate from their firing positions as ship masters debated with zealots and fleet masters with admirals. High Charity, where Truth still sat transfixed upon his throne, was momentarily silent, and without its overriding authority questions of command and priority spread like a firestorm. There was little doubt that the not-so distant quartet of human vessels posed a vastly greater threat than the entirety of the Supreme Commander’s force, but most also agreed that it was out of the question to simply let him continue on to the capital. There were simply not enough warships at hand to meet both threats.

Despite all of this confusion, the chain of command quickly began to reassert itself, and the High Admiral placed in opposition to the Supreme Commander, a wizened and battle-harden veteran nearly half again ‘Falanamee’s age, was in the process of reigning in the commanders of the combined fleet when flare of boiling plasma lit the void. All eyes and all sensors slashed to the edge of the encompassing shell nearest to High Charity. Two volleys of roiling plasma torpedoes were passing each other in the space between the two forces. In that moment, no one could be certain who had fired first; all simply watched, frozen once more, as the deadly lines of light cut through the blackness, and then erupted onto the shimmering shields of two opposing cruisers.

With that, the battle began.

The surrounded vessels surged forward as one, unleashing a withering hail of plasma missiles and energy pulses at any and all ships in their path. The defenders responded in kind, but after the first volley, their cohesion began to waver. Finally forced to fire upon the Supreme Commander, some ship masters felt their loyalty to the Prophets slip away. The subsequent barrage was lessened somewhat as the guns of several vessels remained quiet. Within their hulls, new conflicts erupted, some wars of words and posturing, others open bloodshed as newly-minted separatists and loyalists fought for control of their ships with mutinies, counter-mutinies, and summary executions.

Abandoning those warships stricken by internal strife, High Charity’s vanguard moved quickly to pursue the now-motile oblong formation that was threatening to smash through the rear defensive line. As cruisers and assault carriers on both sides exchanged volleys of fire at rapidly decreasing ranges, a typhoon of Seraph fightercraft wove between the blasts. As their carrier commanders ordered them to engage, pilots found their tactical computers overwhelmed by the sheer volume of other identical craft arrayed against and alongside them. Transponder recognition protocols next to worthless in the swirling storm of pulse lasers and fractured hulls, and large-scale maneuvering was quickly abandoned in favor of ship-to-ship dog fighting. Isolated squadrons fought simply to keep their pilots together and alive. Casualties to friendly fire alone mounted into the hundreds with shocking speed, and the toll promised to grow even faster as the titanic furball moved into the thick of the contracting defensive line.

As massed fire shattered the defensive field of the sleek battlecruiser on the outermost port flank of ‘Falanamee’s formation, burning away meters of heavy armor in instants and sending the stricken vessel into a drunken spin, the rest of the force closed even closer to the rear defensive line, their weapons emplacements forging a road of brilliant illumination before them. With combatants mere dozens of kilometers apart now, the plasma projectors of the opposing fleet barely had to aim at all, and returned the fire with even greater ferocity. Several ships at the tip of the hurtling bullet were forced to veer off and fall back under the onslaught and one, hit head-on by the searing beam of a capital energy projector, disintegrated outright, its hull peeling back from its curved nose as its reactor ignited with the uncontainable infusion of power.

The rest of the mass pressed on undaunted, and within moments, the lead elements were skirting past their counterparts, scant kilometers apart. Furious broadsides rent a dozen ships on both sides into showers of burning fragments, but the separatist warships still moved forward, and what remained of the rear line was forced to flee. Colossal hulls wallowed up and down, left and right as fast as their drives could propel them, their crews left overwhelmed and disoriented by the ferocity of the onslaught. The survivors maneuvered to rejoin the rest of the pursuing vanguard force, and soon were lobbing fresh fusillades of blue fire at the Fleet of Particular Justice, but the damage was done. High Charity’s outer defensive line was broken.

The frigates and carriers assigned to the space station unleashed a new torrent of fire upon the approaching vessels, and a fresh force of fightercraft surged forward to harass and distract. High Charity, now directly threatened, also joined the battle; all across its surface, the jagged peaks of massive plasma projectors hummed with energy and spat burning comets of energetic particles the size of bulk transports into the void. The smallest and most maneuverable among the attackers were able to avoid the more devastating blasts, and largest were able to absorb the first volleys of these defensive guns, but many of the others could do nothing but burn in space as they were bisected by the massive projectiles.

And still, outnumbered and beset from both sides as it was, the fleet surged onward. Now ‘Falanamee’s flagship, the Sacrosanct, was at the head of the formation. A large swath of its smooth underside was blackened by the impact of concentrated volley of plasma bolts earlier in the battle, and smaller burns covered its wide aft section, but it fought as though it was fresh from the shipyard. A quartet of well-placed blasts from its main guns tore a large chunk from a frigate that had dared to approach the tip of the formation, no longer a blunt bullet but a focused cone of ships, aimed fixedly at the capital city’s bulbous cap.

Then, when Particular Justice had almost closed ranks with High Charity’s warship perimeter, it abruptly dispersed, vessels modest and massive alike breaking their advanced and spreading out in opposition to the defenders. Shots from the walls in front and behind went wide, and as the vanguard struggled to realign they firing arcs, each attacking vessel chose a target amongst the ranks of the final line and opened fire, igniting local space with the glare of weapons discharges, multi-gigaton explosions, and the angry flickering of energy shields. Taking advantage of the momentary distraction that the change of strategy had sewn, the Sacrosanct and an escort of two assault carrier and half a dozen destroyers and light cruisers, broke through the terminal barrier. Forests of point-defense weapons on High Charity’s curving bulk came to life, spraying the intruders with lethal fire, but before more than a few bolts could find their marks, a torrent of fightercraft poured through the gap after the larger vessels, enveloping them in a roiling cocoon that confused the space station’s gunners and drew off the lighter emplacements.

Before the ships of the combined fleet could turn their guns upon the breaching warships, dozens of troop carriers, dropships, and close-support aircraft hurtled from the cavernous hangar bays of the flagship and its companions. Pulse lasers from the station’s looming surfaces began to tear into them, but the emplacements were quickly silenced as ‘Falanamee’s ships opened fire on the capital for the first time. Under cover of the bombardment and the shield of flanking Seraphs, the detachment of landing craft rocketed towards High Charity’s hull, crossed the small distance to where its cap tapered off to meet the base of its massive, protuberant tail section, and disappeared over the lip. As the tiny vessels began to maneuver their way through the station’s last defenses and into its honeycombed outer crust, the warships that had delivered them turned back and rejoined their brothers in battle.

Hundreds of millions of kilometers away, still far too distant to directly observe the furious melee but aware of it nonetheless, four white hulls advanced.

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Neither Migaw nor Cakap had ever seen the inside of the High Council’s meeting chamber before, either in person or by proxy. Only the privileged elite were allowed within its gently-steepled, high walls, and the common masses only knew of what transpired within from the periodic proclamations given on the high terrace beyond the chamber’s well-guarded gates. As the pair were ushered in, impromptu and mercifully ignored parts of Ship Master ‘Nefaaleme’s escort, they were momentarily overwhelmed by the majesty of the place. Even from the shadowed corner where they stood, surrounded by towering Sangheili and Lekgolo, the sweeping rows of elevated benches, broad and immaculately polished wall supports, and seemingly limitless ceiling were awe-inspiring for creatures used to the cramped quarters of transports and carrier barracks.

For what was almost the first time in his life, Cakap wondered if the favor of the gods was actually with him. By some miracle, probably due to the ship master’s haste to travel down to the holy city with his charges, Migaw and he had managed attach themselves to guard surrounding the two human captives as it moved for the August Judgment’s prison block to one of its hangar bays, and from there onto a large, fast transport craft. After a brief journey, they had found themselves disembarked at one of the station’s private, high security ports and ushered hurriedly through the upper districts. Cakap had thought the elegant streets and gardens they passed seemed oddly vacant, but then again he had never been to the station before, and knew little of its inner workings.

They had only been challenged personally once, just before the group entered a sheltered passageway on the anterior side of the High Council’s tower complex. A Jiralhanae guard had evidently noticed that their uniforms were not those of marines or special ops, like the few other Unggoy in the escort, and had demanded they explain their presence. Migaw had nearly fainted and Cakap was barely able to stammer out a half-baked excuse involving the post of “human-tamer” or some other imagined position, but before the guard could inquire further, ‘Nefaaleme had used his authority to deflect him and gain the group entry into the structure. Distracted either by his eagerness to reach the Council Chambers or his diastase for the Jiralhanae, the ship master had not questioned them further, and neither had any of his protectors, each of whom was also to tense to notice a couple of lowly labors in their midst.

The company had finally arrived at their destination, Cakap gathered from the chamber’s busy and grand nature, and ‘Nefaaleme had disappeared behind the sloping partition that shadowed the humans and their guards from the rest of the hall. No one had told him exactly where they were, but he had decided that they must be at the Covenant’s very core because of the sheer number of robed Prophets and magnificently-armored Sangheili that stretched out before and above him. They were seated on the elevated platforms that lined both walls of the long chamber; forty silver-armored councilors or more packed the benches on one side, while a few dozen Prophet’s sat upon the other. Cakap noticed that their benches were not nearly as crowded, with several conspicuous gaps between the representatives. The wide nave between the stands was oddly empty, save for a few raised terminals and a crimson-inlaid walkway.

Curious to see what could illuminate such a space, Cakap looked towards the ceiling. From the uppermost tier of the gradually-narrowing roof, all but lost from sight, a gulf of brilliance poured white light down in a great, piercing drift. Migaw gazed at the sight in open awe, and for once Cakap could not begrudge his speechlessness. If ever there was a place made divine by its design alone, this was it.

An artificially-amplified voice emanating from somewhere behind the obstruction beyond which ‘Mefasee had disappeared, calling the Unggoy back from their momentary reverie. It was thin and dry, but undeniably commanding, with the characteristically overbearing and subtly dismissive tone of the most obnoxious and self-important Sangheili. Still, Cakap knew immediately that the speaker was not of the warrior caste, for he had heard the voice before. Every servant of the Covenant had. It was the High Prophet Regret, current constituent of the triumvirate that had dominated the Unggoy species for countless generations.

“Honored councilors, I can only assure you again, the Prophets would never pursue any course that would see the Sangheili unseated from their ancient role as our protectors and generals,” he was saying. “The friendship of our two peoples is the very foundation of the Holy Covenant. Without us, you would not know the will of the gods, and without you, we could not spread their gifts throughout the stars. Why would we upset this divine duality?”

“What of the Jiralhanae, Hierarch?” a Sangheili councilor asked stridently. “Teno ‘Falanamee speaks the truth when he says that many of their kind have been allowed to take on roles that the Sangheili alone have filled for millennia. They are allowed privilege and rank that no other client race of this union has ever even dared dream of. Hundreds of ships defending this very Council are no crewed largely by Jiralhanae. Some of them have claimed the rank of ship master!”

“The Jiralhanae are still newly of this covenant,” Regret replied calmly. “They have not yet been given a lasting place in it, and we are granting their kind an opportunity to prove their loyalty and demonstrate where they might be of the greatest use to us all. I will admit, they have taken well to the decks of the holy armada, and we have allowed them certain… extraordinary dispensations. Nevertheless, the Jiralhanae have never shown themselves nearly as capable or cunning as your own warriors. It is not the intent of the Hierarchs for your primacy in martial matters to be challenged. We would never allow it.”

“Remember the first canto of the Writ of Union, councilors!” This was a new voice, but familiar nonetheless. The High Prophet of Mercy’s high, wavering speech brought a lifetime of public sermons and affirmations to Cakap’s mind.

“So full of hate were our eyes
That none of us could see
Our war would yield countless dead
But never victory

So let us cast aside
And like discard our wrath
Thou, in faith, will keep us safe
Whilst we find the path”

“Prophet and Sangheili long ago learned the price of discord. It clouds us from our true path, distracts us from the wisdom of the gods. To deprive your people of their ancestral guardianship would only invite the chaos of the Ages of Conflict and Doubt, and strip us of all we learned of the gods and their devices.”

Many of the Sangheili councilors whispered to each other uncertainly after this proclamation, but not all were so easily swayed. Another near the back row stood to make himself heard.

“The Jiralhanae are not the only matter at hand. ‘Falanamee implied that there are other currents of change within our union of late, and that cannot be denied. You, noble Hierarchs, have taken a far greater role in the prosecution of war than any of your predecessors have in countless generations. It was by your word that the war against the humans was made one of annihilation rather than assimilation, as has always been our custom. Your directives have compelled specific fleets and forces of arms to move from system to system often since the arrival of the humans’ new warships, sometimes over the protest of our high admirals.”

A Sangheili closer to the front raised his voice in agreement. “The very social order of our homeworlds has been changing at your behest. Age-old centers of commerce and industry have become obsolete, and new ones have sprung up closer to the fringe. The Unggoy have been multiplying far faster than the needs of conquest have demanded. The Yanme’e have been allowed to grow more and more insular. The Kig-Yar, mercenaries and privateers, have been given prominent roles in the Armada, despite their questionable loyalties.”

A sharp laugh from across the chamber interrupted the speaker.

“Kig-Yar? Unggoy? Jiralhanae? Has it become Sangheili custom to obsess over the lower castes?” a Prophet councilor jeered. “What concern is it of ours how they arrange themselves, as long as they serve humbly and loyally? Do you see a Jiralhanae in silver armor seated next to you? A robed Kig-Yar next to me?”

Several of the other Prophets began to laugh as well. The Sangheili who had been interrupted glowered dangerously at them, but before he could speak again, Regret’s voice rose again.

“There is no need for such jibbing, councilors, not here of all places. Your concerns are valid, Councilor ‘Tadasee, as are yours, Councilor ‘Niglethee, but you must understand, this Covenant must adapt as it faces its final trials on the path to the Great Journey. The humans are but one obstacle that must be overcome before we are all to be saved, and to do that, we must sacrifice the security of some of the old traditions. Reflect upon what has been done, councilors, and you will see that it has all been for the betterment of the Covenant and its people, the Sangheili included. Do not let the vitriol of a heretic like Teno ‘Falanamee cloud your vision.”

“The traitor skilled wielder of both word and blade, but do not let him deceive you with either. His words are devoid of truth, and his might has atrophied with the taint of heresy. Come, look upon his favored agent, one who he has trusted above all others! A female of the lowliest clan!”

Something must have occurred that neither of the Unggoy could see, because the councilors began to murmur more loudly and rapidly than ever before. There was the sound of a body falling to the floor, and a then a low moan. Migaw perked up at the sound, but Cakap couldn’t quite place it.

“What is the meaning of this, Hierarch?” a councilor demanded. “Who is she?”

“This is Deau ‘Mefasee, once a transport pilot attached to the August Judgment. ‘Falanamee transferred her to his personal staff when he came to this city last, and then left her when he was dispatched to combat the humans. She is the one who planted the message that has spread discord and confusion throughout this system. Do not blame this pitiable creature for her crime; no doubt, ‘Falanamee’s corruption overcame her. She is just a portend of the traitor’s true nature. He knows what he preaches is false, and so he only places his trust in beings he can dominate absolutely.”

Migaw stared at Cakap, fright visible in his beady eyes. “Her!” he whispered urgently. “What should we do now?”

Cakap had no answer. He had never expected the Sangheili’s order to take them as far as it had. Now she was captured, and they were very far from the familiar warrens of their carrier, leaderless in a place they should have never dared venture.

“But this is not the height of his depravity. No, the blasphemer is not content merely to question the word of the gods, insight rebellion, and tyrannize the minds of the weak. Ship master, bring them forward.”

Ahead of Cakap and Migaw, one of ‘Nefaaleme’s guardians made a rapid hand gesture, and the entire company started forward. The two Unggoy could do nothing but follow as their group filed around the obstructing pylon. As they emerged from the shadows, Cakap could see that they had entered the chamber through a secreted entrance at its back left corner. Beside them, facing the empty nave from a raised circular dais, the thrones of Regret and Mercy floated in the middle of a ring. A ring of bright light, within which both were positioned, both defined them in the eerily-lit chamber, and seemed to separate them from it.

Below them, to one side of the rostrum, a well-groomed and unusually well armored Jiralhanae stood with his head bowed in customary respect for the assembly. At his feet, the prone and naked form of Deau ‘Mefasee lay sprawled. Her arms and legs were badly bruised, and she appeared to have slipped into unconsciousness. On the side closer to them, Ship Master ‘Nefaaleme stood, watching his soldiers and their charges enter view.

A silent signal made them halt again just outside of their shadowed alcove, and the pair of special operations marines moved back, parting the ranks of the other guards. Each seized one of the humans by a forearm and dragged them out of the group towards the dais. Another cue directed the rest to retreat back into the darkened space, but Cakap and Migaw lingered near the obscuring support’s lip, watching as the beings they had been tasked with guarding were dragged out of their reach.

“Eminent Councilors, Hierarchs, I am Galo ‘Nefaaleme, ship master of the fleet carrier August Judgment. I was at the human world Reach when the first blade-ships appeared. I watched the Ascendant Justice fall to the weapons of the enemy, and my ship recovered the Supreme Commander ‘Falanamee after the attackers were initially repelled. He was not the only being that found his way onto my ship that day, however.”

He gestured sharply to the two beleaguered humans now standing before him, each still held straight by the special operations soldiers. The councilors looked on in varying degrees of surprise, confusion, and indignation. Never before had humans been brought into non-military construct, much less the very chambers of the High Council. Had any but the Hierarchs themselves ordered it, the sacrilege would have been punishable by immediate and dishonorable execution for whoever had propagated it.

“These two creatures, presumably survivors of the battle, managed to commandeer one of my salvage craft and latch it onto the August Judgment’s hull in hopes of evading the eyes of the armada. They were quickly discovered nonetheless, and after a customary interrogation, I was prepared to put them to death. Before my order could be carried out, however, ‘Falanamee countermanded my authority. He demanded that the captives be spared and brought here for further interrogation, despite the fact that they had shown no sign of bearing any useful information. And then, when my vessel arrived here, he made no effort to inform this council or any other authority of their existence. He was content to let them sit in my holding bay, fed and sheltered from their rightful judgment.”

Regret moved forward, raising his hands, and ‘Nefaaleme fell obediently silent, although he looked fully prepared to say more.

“Is this a being who you would wish to ally yourselves with, friends? Consort of weak-minded females and protector of abominations in the eyes of the gods? Teno ‘Falanamee was once a great warrior, but some weakness in his heart has tainted him, and caused him to stray from the true path. Do not allow yourselves to stray as he did.”

The muttering of the Sangheili councilors was even louder now. Some still sat silently with their arms crossed, their faces impenetrable masks, but others peered from the disgraced pilot to the captured humans uneasily. The evidence of the Supreme Commander’s corruption could be fabrications, of course, but if it was true…

“Teno ‘Falanamee is dead.”

From the shadowed alcove on the opposite side of the rostrum the final member of the Covenant’s supreme triumvirate. The gold of his throne and his gilded crown glinted in the mystic light as he joined his fellows on the dais. A massive, white-haired Jiralhanae who had accompanied him in stopped a respectful distance away from the Prophets, and stood with arms akimbo. His raised upper lip revealed a row of vicious teeth in what could only have been a smirk.

“The heretic’s flagship, the Sacrosanct, has been destroyed,” the third hierarch continued before the suddenly still assembly. Even the other High Prophets stared at Truth in shock. “None escaped from the vessel’s death throes. I watched it burn to embers myself.”

“What are you saying?” one of the Sangheili councilors, ‘Niglethee, demanded, all decorum momentarily forgotten. “How could you know this? Teno ‘Falanamee’s should still be on the fringe of Covenant space.”

“The former Supreme Commander brought a rebellious fleet here, to this system, with the intention of conquering High Charity.”

“What?” another councilor roared, jumping from his bench. “Why were we not informed? It is our duty to lead the armada, especially if this city is threatened!”

“Do not concern yourself, honored councilor,” Truth said calmly. “Your warriors have acquitted themselves exemplarily against the traitors, and even as we speak, their remaining warships are being obliterated.”

“I shall say again, the heretic ‘Falanamee has fallen, and his apostasy will perish with him. There will be no schism of this Covenant, not this day, and not ever until the ending of this realm and our ascendance into the realm of the gods. Rejoice, friends, for the faithful have triumphed!”

The Council Chamber’s main door resounded with the thud of a heavy impact. The noise was so loud and unexpected that all eyes in the hall turned from the High Prophet simultaneously and fixed onto the entryway. The pair of ornately-armored Honor Guard who had been rooted to posts just out of sight on either side of the door moved cautiously towards it, their glowing ceremonial pikes at the ready. The clamorous sound did not repeat itself, but those in the chamber with keen ears could detect a very faint hiss from beyond the heavy, carved metal door, like the din of a welding torch.

Then there was a clank from somewhere within the barrier, and it drew back into the surrounding wall. With a wet thud, the body of a Jiralhanae soldier spilled into the chamber, its fur covered in thick blood that trailed from a large gash in its back. Its right hand still clutched a metallic shaft identical to the ones that the attending Honor Guard carried. The eyes of the guardians lingered on the corpse only momentarily before flashing back to the open aperture, where several figures now stood.

Over the slain Jiralhanae, backed by a squad of heavily-armed Sangheili in uniforms of all colors, Supreme Commander Teno ‘Falanamee stepped into the Council Chamber, a lit plasma sword blazing in his right hand.

[rhoenix]

Excellent. This is just getting better as the chapters pass, Noble Ire.

[The Vortex Empire]

Amazing, Noble Ire. I wonder who the Councilors and Honor Guards will side with. And if I were one of the Prophets, I'd be scared now. Very scared.

[fusion]

Question what happen to the star destroyers?
I am confused....


Otherwise it was excellent.

[Noble Ire]

Question what happen to the star destroyers?
I am confused....

They're still coming, but they jumped in on the edge of the system, and squadron is approaching relatively slowly both because the captains know they don't need to hurry, and because of the unexpected battle they find High Charity embroiled in. The Covenant forces arrayed around Asphodel obviously acknowledged the magnitude of the threat, but all of them have more immediate problems.

[Dominus]

Most impressive, Noble Ire. I was under the impression that we'd be returning to events in the Star Trek universe by now, but I certainly won't complain at the opportunity to continue advancing the Covenant story arc, which still seems just slightly less bleak than ongoing events in the Alpha Quadrant.

Having said that, I hope the Arbiter has something incredible planned for his little meeting with the Council, otherwise I doubt that even his streak of good luck will last. If nothing else, I hope he cuts the Prophet of Truth to ribbons, for no one in the history of Halo has deserved such a fate more richly than him.

And a request from the peanut gallery, if I may: let Barclay live! The annoying Imperial lapdog is free to catch a stray plasma bolt in the face, however.

[Noble Ire]

Most impressive, Noble Ire. I was under the impression that we'd be returning to events in the Star Trek universe by now, but I certainly won't complain at the opportunity to continue advancing the Covenant story arc, which still seems just slightly less bleak than ongoing events in the Alpha Quadrant.

The Star Trek plot arc will return very shortly; there's just one all-Covenant chapter left.

Having said that, I hope the Arbiter has something incredible planned for his little meeting with the Council, otherwise I doubt that even his streak of good luck will last. If nothing else, I hope he cuts the Prophet of Truth to ribbons, for no one in the history of Halo has deserved such a fate more richly than him.

Let's just say that the Arbiter hasn't quite finished the fight.

And a request from the peanut gallery, if I may: let Barclay live! The annoying Imperial lapdog is free to catch a stray plasma bolt in the face, however.

I assure you, Barclay still has a role to play. I wouldn't bring him so far just to have him die in the crossfire (although that would quite Serenity-esque). Still, I won't making any promises as to who lives and how dies, not yet.

[Noble Ire]

Sorry about the amount of time it took me to get this update written; I just started college, and my schedule has been pretty full for the last month. Then, of course, there's Halo 3, which has been eating up a lot of my free time. Still, here it is. Happy belated Halo day to you all.
------------------------------------------------------------------


Chapter Sixty Five


There was no clamor from the assembled councilors. No one expressed shock at seeing the warrior who had just been placed among the ranks of the dead. No one even recoiled at the presence of heretics in one of the holiest places of the Covenant, or the weapons they brandished so unashamedly. They simply watched, transfixed. No councilor, Sangheili and Prophet alike, dared to step between the Hierarchs and their nemesis.

Teno ‘Falanamee advanced another step, and then raised his free hand, a sign for his escorts. They obediently withdrew from the doorway back into the great hall’s antechamber, but they did not seal the door, or slacken the grip on their weapons. Satisfied, the Supreme Commander continued on slowly, his eyes fixed squarely upon Truth, who sat motionless at the end of the Council chamber.

The pair of Honor Guards flanking the breached entryway took a moment to react to the new arrival, but when they finally moved they did so swiftly, rushing past the intruder and blocking his path with their pikes and towering stature. The fine points of each weapon angled directly at ‘Falanamee’s long neck, but he did not flinch or fall back. Instead, he let his gaze meet each of theirs in turn. All three stood quite still, the thoughts and emotions of each warring silently.

“So, you’ve escaped judgment once again.” Truth’s voice echoed in the breathless space, cold but calm. “I failed to see your loss of favor with the gods when you were nearly slain at Reach. Rest assured, you will not escape your just fate again.”

“Nor shall you, Prophet,” ‘Falanamee replied, his voice measured in spite of the blades fixed less than a meter from his flesh. “The gods do not look kindly upon betrayers, and your treachery is greater than any this Covenant has ever known.”

“Treachery!” Regret stammered from behind Truth. “You have assaulted this holy city! You have incited rebellion with your lies! Even now, you stand in this hallowed chamber with a sword drawn in anger! And you accuse us of treachery?”

Truth held up a bony hand to silence him. “The magnitude of your heresy is self-evident, ‘Falanamee. Your claims have no foundation in fact, and your mind has been tainted by some poison of doubt or vainglory. It is a testament to the restraint of my brothers and I that you still live. Do not think, though, that we will continue to show this mercy if you trespass further.”

“Do not further defile this hall with your guile, Prophet,” ‘Falanamee said. “It is clear to all of us that you and you alone are the master of your machinations. Do not hide behind these others or any of your kind; they are slaves, subservient to your will. If you wish to challenge my words, at least find the courage to do so frankly.”

Regret and Mercy’s jaws fell open and they began to fidget upon their elevated seats, but neither seemed willing or able to respond to the charge. Murmurs shot through both council galleries. There had long been rumors that triumvirate had fallen under the domination of one of their number, in opposition to the ancient customs of the Covenant, but no one had ever voiced them before in a High Prophet’s presence, much less all three.

Truth’s face was a mask, but he spoke quickly and loudly to silence the whispered discussion. “Enough! There will be no more slurs spoken in this chamber by you, Teno ‘Falanamee! You are hereby stripped of your rank and all your rights as a warrior of this Covenant. Your actions have shown that you are nothing more than a heretic, and you shall meet a heretic’s end! Guards, take him from this place!”

‘Falanamee’s eyes returned to the two Honor Guards. Neither had moved to comply with Truth’s command. From beneath their great helms, they stared intently at the proclaimed heretic, as though trying to peer into his mind. He did not blink or falter under their combined stares, instead swelling to his full height and slackened his grip on the hilt of his energy sword. Its dual points flickered and vanished.

“Do what you will, brothers,” ‘Falanamee said. “This blade is not for either of you.”

Slowly, the guardians withdrew their pikes and stepped from the former Supreme Commander’s path. Truth’s thin lips quivered with fury, and the other Honor Guard at attention around the chamber shifted slightly, their minds cast into doubt by the actions of their comrades. Before the High Prophet could shout another order and test their resolve, however, weapons fire echoed from the antechamber.

One of the Sangheili standing outside the inner door barked an order to ‘Falanamee’s other escorts and they moved hurriedly from sight. The hiss and belch of plasma weaponry resounded again, followed by several muffled roars and indistinct shouts. There was a scuffling noise closer to the door, and then the colossal frame of Xytan ‘Jar Wattinree stooped through the opening, his gold and silver armor splattered with purple blood.

The Imperial Admiral clutched his own energy sword in one hand, and dragged a red-armored Sangheili major by the neck with the other. When the titan caught sight of ‘Falanamee, he cast the warrior in his grasp violently to one side, sending him into a protruding, sculpted support with a crunch of distressed metal.

“I gave you a chance to die with dignity, ‘Falanamee!” he rasped, stalking forward with powerful strides. “I gave you the chance to escape a dishonorable death, despite your heresy! Instead, you spit upon me and defile my generosity! You steal my soldiers, set brother against brother, and bring doom down upon us all!”

‘Falanamee did not retreat before the enraged Sangheili, but neither did he reply.

“Do not think I do not know what you have done!” Wattinree bellowed. “You realized what the Prophets of Radiant Sanctum knew, and yet you let the humans seize them! You lead the blade-ships here, to this holy place, and destroy all hopes opposition by turning our people against one another!”

“There are blade-ships here, in this system?” a Sangheili councilor demanded. “Why were we not informed of this, Hierarchs? What else has been kept from us?”

Wattinree ignored the speaker. He only had eyes for ‘Falanamee.
“I have done what I must to save our people, Admiral,” the former Supreme Commander said, quietly, but clearly. “The crimes of the Prophets must be addressed, and their power broken. This is the only way.”

“You are mad, heretic!” Wattinree boomed, stopping within arm’s length of the resolute warrior. “By your actions you have betrayed our people and this Covenant! Sangheili die uselessly outside these walls because of your treason! You no longer deserve even the air which you breathe, and I shall ensure that you take no more of it!”

With a mighty roar, he raised his glistening sword high into the air and brought it crashing down onto where ‘Falanamee stood. For all the speed and agility honed by decades of unending drills and merciless combat, it was all that the shamed officer could do to avoid the ferocious blow. The polished floor plates before Wattinree were rent into smoking fragments as the blade gouged them, and when the admiral wrenched his weapon back, the wrecked surface bled a fountain of sparks from a severed conduit beneath.

The Honor Guards backed swiftly out of Wattinree’s path, and ‘Falanamee had no place to move but back, up the Council chamber’s long nave. His sword burst to life only just in time to deflect a brutal chop that Wattinree aimed at him from the left, charging forward as he struck. ‘Falanamee regained his footing and managed to parry another swift blow, but found that the other Sangheili was again too close and fully before him. Nearly half-again as tall as his prey, Wattinree’s size and strength were almost unmatched by any save the greatest Lekgolo, and he knew it well. The giant brought his blade down upon his foe once more, placing all his incomparable might behind it.

‘Falanamee knew that he could not stop the blow, and could do nothing but jump back again, his energy sword raised and at the ready. Wattinree regained his balance quickly despite his massive bulk and pressed forward again, each of his slashes a killing blow. Against the blistering edge of the energy blade and the might of its wielder, ‘Falanamee’s energy shield and thin armor plating would be useless.

Knowing that he could not stay on the defensive forever and hope to survive, ‘Falanamee ducked under the next blow, and rather than fall back, he charged directly at his attacker, leveling his blade at the armored midriff. Wattinree side-stepped the lunge, and with the same surprising speed he had exploited before, seized hold ‘Falanamee’s forearm as the sword it held sailed past. The shield of the smaller fighter’s armor flared and crackled, its glassy surface strained under the imperial admiral’s iron grip. ‘Falanamee felt his feet slip along the floor as the massive hand interrupted his momentum and began to drag him into the air.

‘Falanamee knew that he was completely vulnerable to attack, and saw out of the corner of his eye the brilliant fangs of Wattinree’s blade, poised to impale his exposed flank. His left foot fell upon the raised heel of one of Wattinree’s boots, and he kicked off from it as hard as he could, simultaneously twisting his sword arm. The shield burst into a shower of sparks and Wattinree’s four fingers dug shallow gouges in the metal vambrace, but the giant lost his grip and ‘Falanamee tumbled free just as the sword probed the air where he had been momentarily suspended.

Wattinree wasted no time, and fell upon ‘Falanamee again even as he struggled to rise from the ground. As the admiral’s blade slashed down at his chest, he could do nothing but meet it full with his own sword. The two clashed violently, and ‘Falanamee’s arm began to buckle as Wattinree bent his full musculature into the blow. The defending duelist felt the bones in his arm creak under the strain. Wattinree sensed that his prey was weakening and leaned in further until he filled ‘Falanamee’s vision. The added weight was simply too much for the sword arm to withstand, and with a blinding pulse of pain he felt the bone in his forearm snap. As it did, however, he rolled out from under Wattinree, taking advantage of the fact that the admiral had sacrificed his own balance in his eagerness to slay the heretic.

As Wattinree recovered, ‘Falanamee rose to his feet, passing his sword from the shattered arm to the intact one as he did. He pressed the wounded limb to his chest, and the pain abated slightly, enough to allow him to think clearly once more. ‘Falanamee could now see how Wattinree had achieved his high rank, and why he had never been defeated in personal combat. His enormous size and strength were factors, but he was also oddly swift and agile, and his skill with the energy blade was painfully evident. Even if the two had been of the same build, ‘Falanamee was not certain he would be able to best the Imperial Admiral under normal circumstances.

But as the combatant turned towards him once again, ‘Falanamee could see that his broad chest was heaving beneath its ornate covering. They had been fighting for barely a minute, he had the clearly had the upper hand, and was completely uninjured, and yet Wattinree’s breaths were harsh and deep. One look at the eyes within his high helm told ‘Falanamee why. His foe was so consumed with fury, so intent upon destroying the heretic who had defied him that he was attacking recklessly, without thought of pacing himself. That made the glowering titan even more dangerous, certainly, but it also gave ‘Falanamee a faint glimmer of hope, absent since the Admiral had appeared in the Council chamber’s doorway.

Wattinree’s onslaught began again as fierce as it had been before, and ‘Falanamee was forced back into retreat. He could wield a blade nearly as well with his left hand as his right, but the loss of the latter had affected his balance, and parrying Wattinree’s was becoming swiftly more difficult and laborious. He attempted to turn the melee back up the admiral several times, scoring several glancing blows against his energy shield, but none were powerful enough to breach the barrier, and Wattinree responded to each attempt with three blows of his own.

Suddenly, ‘Falanamee felt his back run up against a ridged surface, one of the large holographic projection terminals that flanked the nave’s central walkway. Seeing his prey pinned, Wattinree drove his weapon straight at the other’s chest. ‘Falanamee spun from the column, his sword clattering against the attacker’s in a useless attempt to turn it away. As he tried to keep himself from falling to the floor, the Sangheili felt what was left of his armor’s shield shatter and in an instant a swath of flesh from his right shoulder all the way down his back burned with pain, its protective plate unable to repel Wattinree’s slash.

Grunting and biting against the growing agony of the wound, ‘Falanamee stumbled onto his hands and knees and crawled away from the terminal. With bleary eyes, he could see the Hierarchs and their court. In an instant, he took in ‘Mefasee’s prone form, Reginald Barclay’s terrified face. He saw Truth’s smirk, Tartarus’ sneer, and Ship Master ‘Nefaaleme’s face, oddly devoid of satisfaction at the downfall of his old adversary. He saw, too, as the pair of Honor Guards near the head of the chamber, close at hand now, stepped quickly back.

He rolled to the left, barely hearing Wattinree’s blade as it bit deeply into the polished plate where he had been an instant before. ‘Falanamee struggled to rise, but a swift kick sent him sprawling again. He tumbled hard into another of the raised terminals, and he felt his sword slip from his hand. He thrust his arm out feverishly, searching for it, but found nothing. A moment later, he felt a great weight slam into his sprawled left leg. ‘Falanamee groaned as the bone strained and cracked, and looked up to see Wattinree standing over him, two energy swords now in his hands.

“It is over, heretic,” he heaved, angling both blades at the trapped form of his enemy. “Know that the sons of the Sangheili will remember your name with nothing but distain, for you deserve nothing more.”

“And you…” ‘Falanamee gasped through the pain sweeping over him. “Know that you will be remembered as a great and proud warrior. A fool, but a great warrior nonetheless.”

Wattinree snarled savagely, and leaned low over the heretic, eyes wild and shot with blood. He drew his arms back, and then plunged each of the swords at ‘Falanamee’s heart.

The Sangheili watched the four glowing spikes fall for a split second, and then twisted his torso violently to the left, so that he slipped from the column against which he had been propped. The blades plunged deep into his right shoulder, boiling away golden armor and black bodysuit and settling into a mangled mess of flesh, blood, and bone. As one of the prongs burst from ‘Falanamee’s back, the two pairs of searing points crossed and momentarily locked together. Though blinded and breathless from the agony of the blow, ‘Falanamee threw his left arm up and caught hold of Wattinree’s wrist. His fingers locked tightly around the sheen of his energy shield, and he pulled with all his strength.

Expecting the dual stab to be a killing blow, Wattinree had allowed himself to overextend his center of gravity, and he was unable to resist the sudden pull on his left arm. With a startled rumble, he toppled over onto his side, nearly crushing ‘Falanamee under his enormous bulk. The two blades tore free from the smaller soldier’s shoulder and their prongs slid further into one another, locking them more fully. His hand still clasped tightly around Wattinree’s wrist, ‘Falanamee pushed towards the imperial admiral’s chest, and the swords moved back towards their wielder.

Supine and disoriented by the sudden fall, Wattinree didn’t notice that his arm was being pushed until he caught sight of the twin swords raised above his face. He tugged the right blade away, and it complied, but with it came the shimmering barbs of the left, now angled down before his split chin. Their tips slashed the surface of his shielding, and the barrier sputtered with a shower of arcing light.

His eyes flashed from the deadly points to his wrist to ‘Falanamee’s face, now spare centimeters from his own. The former Supreme Commander saw understanding dawn in them, and something else as well, but he could not wait to comprehend it. His grip tightened, and he threw his weight against Wattinree’s left arm.

Only one barb of crystalline light penetrated the Imperial Admiral’s shield and what lay beneath, but it was enough. Xytan ‘Jar Wattinree spluttered as the sword slid slowly into his long neck, thrashed slightly as simmering blood spat from the small gash, and then lay still.

Reluctantly, ‘Falanamee’s fingers released Wattinree’s limp wrist and let it fall onto the dead Sangheili’s chest. He stared at the body for a long, silent moment, and then slowly, laborious, pushed himself onto one knee, wincing as he pulled his fractured left leg across the ground. Pausing first to draw a deep draft of air through his open jaws, ‘Falanamee looked towards the Prophet’s dais.

The look on Truth’s face had transformed from satisfaction to rage, and perhaps, the Sangheili squinted through heavy eyes, fear. He seemed oblivious to the awed whispering that was slowly rising from those around him. Squaring his back and raising his bulbous head as high as he could, the High Prophet directed his throne to hover forward, away from the Hierarch’s isolated ring.

“Tartarus.”

The Jiralhanae chieftain, whose face had also lost its savage mirth, stepped forward to join his master, hefting his gravity hammer in both hands. ‘Falanamee was motionless as the two approached, still heaving from the gravity of his wounds.

The assembled councilors were still locked in breathless silence, but Truth would not have heard them even if they were shouting in unison. The full breadth of his intellect was fixed upon the wounded Sangheili, and his intent was clear.

“Your skill in combat has survived your heresy, I see,” he said slowly, halting several paces before ‘Falanamee. “But this victory will not save you. All you have done is rob this Covenant of another champion in its hour of need. For that alone you should die a sinner’s death, if you had not so fully earned such judgment by your other crimes.”

“Wattinree will not be the last to die this day, nor the most deserving,” ‘Falanamee managed through trembling jaws.

“Indeed.”

Truth nodded shortly to Tartarus, and the hulking albino stepped from his side, moving to face the kneeling Sangheili. The Jiralhanae towered above his prey, filling ‘Falanamee’s vision with a solid mass of white fur, rough hide, and the polished metal of the chieftain’s favored weapon. At the top of this mountain of flesh and mane, two crimson eyes glinted down at him.

Tartarus took his weapon into both hands and slowly aimed its massive head at the motionless ‘Falanamee. The Jiralhanae’s lips were drawn back in a jagged grimace, but he moved with obvious relish.

“You need that to kill me, Jiralhanae?” ‘Falanamee asked, his eyes not locked onto the weapon but the eyes of its wielder.

Tartarus snorted. “I would not sully my hands with the blood of a heretic like you.”

The hammerhead leveled at ‘Falanamee’s helmed forehead, now less than half a meter away. Tartarus’ toothy expression widened as he fingered the activation stud on his weapon’s haft. He had tested the hammer’s most powerful setting on the injured and vulnerable before, and it never failed to please him.

The Jiralhanae’s eyes wandered down to his weapon briefly, reveling in its blunt and murderous form, and then moved back to meet ‘Falanamee’s stare once more. Perhaps Tartarus had hoped that his glee would corrode the Sangheili’s resolve before his end, and his lips opened marginally in preparation for a final taunt. However, the words did not come.

Instead of hopelessness or terror, the look Tartarus saw upon the face of his prey was one of pure defiance. It conveyed a strength that belied ‘Falanamee’s battered condition, and indeed exceeded any that the Jiralhanae had ever seen in him. The being that stared at him was not merely a proud and charismatic warrior, a fighter and leader of soldiers. The brute looked instead upon a creature that had endured physical strain and mental torment that would have broken almost any other; a being that had been robbed of everything, and yet still fought and suffered for its fellows and its kind. Tartarus saw the heart of the Sangheili people, the avatar of their will, their honor, and their pride.

He looked into the eyes of the Arbiter.

“Do it!” Truth hissed at Tartarus’ back.

The chieftain had frozen, unable to break free from the crushing stare. His lips closed around his pointed teeth, and he fumbled for the hammer’s firing stud, but before he could find it, Teno ‘Falanamee’s left arm shot up and he laid hold on the weapon’s haft. As Tartarus looked on mutely, he jerked the hammerhead away from his face, and then slowly pulled himself up, using the hammer and the Jiralhanae’s own quivering brawn for support. His eye’s never left Tartarus’, and the latter was held fast by the power of his gaze.

“Were you not going to crush, Tartarus?” ‘Falanamee asked clearly in the silence. “Don’t you have the will to take me alone? Don’t you have the will to challenge the Sangheili? That is what you wanted, isn’t it? To take our place with your bare hands?”

‘Falanamee pushed himself laboriously to his full height and Tartarus fell back a step. Above, a Sangheili councilor murmured something, and then others joined him, their voices resonant and harsh in the still air. The red beads of Tartarus’ eyes sped towards them and traced erratically from face to face, their vision blurred by the turmoil in the Jiralhanae’s mind. He took another step back, and ‘Falanamee moved with him.

The Sangheili craned his neck closer, and moved his mandibles in a whisper.

“Fear suits you, animal.”

Tartarus’ savage face contorted violently with rage at the insult, but nameless terror still weighed upon him heavily. His crimson pupils twitched within their bonds, thrashing from ‘Falanamee to specters that no one else could see. Then, in a burst of motion, Tartarus attempted to tear his weapon from the Sangheili’s grasp. The violent exertion made ‘Falanamee stagger forward a few pained steps and his arm buckled visibly, but his hold did not break. Before Tartarus could try again, he leaned toward the weapon and then kicked off from one of the Jiralhanae’s trunk-like legs. The sudden movement propelled the hammer out of Tartarus’ clutches and swung it around ‘Falanamee’s back. Its head slammed into the floor and screeched against the smooth surface as haft swung, but the Sangheili warrior kept it under his control. Crouching, he turned the weapon away from himself and leveraged the hammerhead into the air, fixing its shaft under the armpit of his limp arm and guiding it with the other.

The chieftain found himself less than a meter from the head of his own prized maul. He stared at the weapon, his jaw quivering, half open, and then looked again at ‘Falanamee’s resolute visage. The sight consumed him; he did not see that the Sangheili’s legs were buckling, or that blood was flowing freely from the wounds on his back, or that the fingers of his left hand could not move towards the hammer’s firing stub, so occupied were they with the simple task of keeping the massive weapon aloft. In Tartarus’ eyes, his foe was indomitable.

The Jiralhanae took a halting step back, and then his contorted lips fell open as he unleashed a great roar.

As the terrible sound reverberated from the Council chamber’s high roof, Truth’s bulbous eyes bulged wide in horror, and his voice cracked.

“No! Tartarus, you fool!”

In unison, more than a dozen of the sealed doorways that lined every level of the chamber sprang open and a swarm of Jiralhanae shock troopers poured into the sacred space. Prophet and Sangheili councilors alike sprang to their feet in confusion and protest. Soldiers were a common sight within the Council chamber, but they were usually Sangheili, and few save the Honor Guard were normally permitted to bear non-ceremonial weaponry, firearms and explosive which jangled from troopers’ bandoliers and bulged from their fists. The Jiralhanae swiftly filed into the central nave and spread into the ranks of the councilors, aiming their armaments at any Sangheili nearby.

Below, the leader of the force that Tartarus’ signal had summoned paused, confused by the scene that was frozen before him. The officer had been informed that he would be called for only after the High Prophets and their kin had left, but they were still present, with several Sangheili soldiers close at hand. Jiralhanae made effective soldiers, but they were often reckless and indiscriminate in combat; the added variable of the Prophets could only slow them down. So the Jiralhanae lieutenant paused, unwilling to act with his masters so close, and his indecision crept easily through the ranks of his subordinates.

The few Honor Guards within the chamber came to their senses quickly and moved to rebuff the unannounced arrivals, but they were vastly outnumbered, and each one was swiftly surrounded by half a squad of the brutes. Before either could make the first move, however, one of the councilors, the Sangheili named ‘Tadasee, leapt onto his seat, his hands thrust into the air.

“’Falanamee was right!” he bellowed over the rising din. “The Prophets and the Jiralhanae have betrayed us! Defend yourselves, brothers! Do not allow yourselves to be taken as we have been deceived!”

The reaction was immediate. In the face of such an overt and unexpected threat, even those councilors who had opposed ‘Falanamee’s sedition could do nothing but unite in outrage. They all knew that Truth’s minion had summoned the Jiralhanae mob, and each could see the blackened barrels and glowing firing nodes of the weapons aimed squarely at them. What the Prophet’s intent was, whether the soldiers meant to kill or merely subdue, did not matter. The insult was inexcusably brazen, and the councilors were the proudest of their people. They rose up as one furious tide, and fell upon their would-be suppressors with fists and feet, undaunted by the firearms of the soldiers.

Truth watched as the Sangheili councilors unleashed themselves upon his soldiers. He had hoped fleetingly that he would retain control of the situation in spite of Tartarus’ premature summons of his troopers, but that hoped dissolved as a pair of heavily-armed Jiralhanae collapsed under a ferocious barrage of hammer blows without firing a single shot. They were caught off-guard, and the councilors were as skillful as they were proud. The crack of Jiralhanae sidearms began to rend the air, but Truth was already moving into the nearest cluster of unengaged soldiers.

“Deal with this,” he snarled at Tartarus as he angled towards the closest exit. “Don’t let any of them escape.”

The chieftain was still transfixed by ‘Falanamee, but he managed a slow nod. The Sangheili still held the hammer at Tartarus’ face, but the head had begun to dip, and his entire body was now trembling. As the Jiralhanae in the nave surrounded him, looking cautiously from their leader to the battered warrior, his strength finally gave out and he fell to his knees, Tartarus’ hammer dropping uselessly before him. The clatter of the weapon seemed to break ‘Falanamee’s hold over its master, and he straightened up, his toothy leer returning, if weaker than it was before.

Tartarus stooped to reclaim his weapon, and then regarded ‘Falanamee carefully. The former Supreme Commander kneeled with his right arm sprawled on one leg and his other flat on the floor for support. His breathing was loud and pained, and his golden armor was cracked and stained with dark blood. And yet he stared at Tartarus unblinkingly, still challenging even as he struggled with every breath.

The chieftain snorted nervously, shook himself, and then stepped back. He gestured to one of his lieutenants, and then turned away, fixing his attention on the melee above them. The indicated officer stepped up eagerly followed by two especially formidable creatures, each of them brandishing the bladed end of their grenade launchers. They drank in the sight of their bloodied victim and stalked forward ravenously, each eager to be the first to hew at ‘Falanamee’s flesh.

The lead soldier was an arm’s length from the Sangheili when something propelled him into the air and splattered his sinewy form across the nearest wall. In his place, the blue-armored bulk of one of Ship Master ‘Nefaaleme’s Lekgolo rooted itself to the floor, shadowing ‘Falanamee with its spiny, rolling form and beckoning to the startled Jiralhanae surrounding them with its outstretched shield arm, now splotched with gore. The giant’s brother was close behind and thundered into another pack of simian troopers with a sonorous bellow, flailing with armored limbs and barbed carapace as it trampled a luckless lieutenant under its massive feet.

Tartarus’ nostrils flared at the smell of the blood of his own kin, and he barked orders over the din of combat, his attention focused now upon the twin Lekgolo, one of which was barely a few strides from him. His soldiers complied quickly and drew back from the titans, priming grenades and shouldering their own projectile launchers. The Lekgolo did not pursue them, opting instead to shield the stationary ‘Falanamee, but they still cast out wildly with their arms at any Jiralhanae that was slow in withdrawing. The pair dared not use the powerful energy weapons imbedded into their right forearms at such close range, but the Jiralhanae within the nave no longer had a charge to protect, and eagerly prepared to bombard the former Supreme Commander and his guardians.

As Tartarus’ squads were still scrabbling into safe firing range, however, a smattering of plasma fire lit their outer flank, and several Jiralhanae fell to the floor, howling masses of burning flesh and hair. The rest of ‘Nefaaleme’s vanguard had joined the fight, and although most were occupied with the brutes that had moved to defend the High prophet’s dais, a handful of Sangheili had managed to turn their beam rifles on the elder chieftain’s massed force. The head of the chamber was a confused display of crisscrossing fire and rushing bodies, but even from where he kneeled, ‘Falanamee could see Regret and Mercy, both panic-stricken, drop from sight as their circular platform plummeted into the floor. Blast doors sealed the escape route almost immediately, but not before ‘Nefaaleme’s two personal guards could cast themselves into the breach with energy blades closed in their fists. A strangled noise echoed from the shaft, but it was fleeting and swiftly consumed by the continued roars and cracks closer by.

Dead councilors littered the Sangheili side of the upper tiers, but Jiralhanae lay slain around them in even greater numbers, and the surviving elite were finishing off the interlopers with brutal efficiency. Some had produced energy swords secreted in armor and under seats, and the rest bore weapons torn from Jiralhanae hands.

The Honor Guard on the opposite side of the hall had been slain within moments of ‘Tadasee’s call to arms, and the shock troopers there were now guiding frantic Prophet councilors through the upper exits. Seeing that their comrades on the other balcony had fared far worse, several Jiralhanae lobbed explosive rounds into the ranks of the surviving Sangheili councilors, shattering the energy shields and vulnerable bodies of a few and sending the rest scattering for cover. Most made for the unsealed exits behind them or the overhangs of the chamber’s towering support beams, but few of the warriors leapt down from the viewing platform, straight into the thick the other firefight. The sniping Jiralhanae turned their attention away from the enflamed councilors, figuring them dead, and were thus wholly unprepared when several scaled the curving wall below them moments later. Energy blades flashing and weaving, the vengeful elites tore through the troopers and leapt upon the remaining Prophets.

Millennia of pent-up bitterness and distrust exploded from the Sangheili, and their frail prey crumpled before them like leaves in a maelstrom.

Several squads of Jiralhanae reinforcements poured into the fray from a shadowed entryway only to be met immediately by a force of Sangheili from the chamber’s atrium. It was a ragtag group, composed of soldiers with perforated armor and unstaunched wounds, but they set into the Jiralhanae with fanatical eagerness. The unit was led by a red-armored major who had accompanied ‘Falanamee from the Sacrosanct and a towering Honor Guard who had lost helm but charged into the loyalist ranks undaunted, his bladed staff blazing in the haze of combat. Just minutes before, the two had directed troops against one another, but they fought now as brother and comrade, sectarian strife forgotten. Word of the Prophet’s betrayal had spread quickly.
--------------------------------------------------

Reginald Barclay had endured weeks of constant uncertainty, pain, and mortal terror with a degree of mental fortitude that had surprised even him. Back aboard the Enterprise, he had been the one that the other members of the engineering crew generally expected to fall apart in the face of every crisis, despite his substantial technical skill. Had he been asked a month before if he could have suffered through near-constant firefights, captivity, torture, and deprivation with his sanity intact, Barclay would have evaded the question with a nervous laugh. And yet he had done it, managing even to avoid an excessive amount of self-pity in the effort.

Even so, as the engineer watched a Jiralhanae soldier swing the blackened muzzle of its grenade launcher in his direction, he felt a pang of regret at the fact that he had not indulged a bit more in hopeless weeping while in his confinement cell.

A blow to the legs knocked Barclay off of his feet, and he felt himself roll a meter away from the lower dais where he and his fellow captive Flitch had been forgotten with Teno ‘Falanamee’s arrival. A moment later, a booming noise and concussion swept over him, and he felt the back of his tattered uniform crackle and singe. The explosive projectile had impacted a far wall, but he was still badly shaken by the blast.

Disoriented, Barclay lay on his back for a few seconds, but the burning radiance of plasma bolts registered in his blurry vision an arm’s length above him, and he forced himself into action. His head still swimming, the engineer rose onto his hands and knees and made for the closest cover he could perceive, one of the raised terminals that lined the sides of the chamber’s nave. He crawled towards it unsteadily, trying unsuccessfully to block out the boom of nearby explosions and the screams of the wounded.

Something rubbed against one of his legs, and Barclay looked back to see an Unggoy in scuffed orange armor crawling along behind him. Another in identical garb was struggling to support the naked, half-conscious Sangheili that the Jiralhanae had deposited alongside Barclay and Flitch. Seeing the Covenant aliens following him sent a fresh spike of fear through the human, but he noticed that none of them were aiming weapons in his direction, or seemed to be armed at all. Barclay’s eyes met with those of the closer Unggoy, and he suddenly realized that the creature must have been the thing that had just knocked him off of his feet.

The alien punched him in the leg with one of its bony fists and Barclay gulped, remembering that they were still out in the open. He started towards the relative safety of the terminal again, and soon was between it and the chamber’s lower wall. The two Unggoy and the Sangheili tumbled after him, barely shielded from the spray of blue and red fire that washed against the other side of the obstruction in sporadic volleys. The Unggoy laid the larger being on the ground near Barclay’s feet, and then looked nervously from the Sangheili to Barclay to each other. One barked something tentatively, and the pair moved to crouch at either side of the terminal, flinching at each near-miss.

Momentarily safe, Barclay forced himself to ignore the constant noise and movement all around them and thought back to the display of which he had been a part. His keepers aboard the carrier had never bothered to remove the small metal disk clipped inside the waist of his uniform, and although the universal translator occasionally flickered on and off from over-use and damage, it still worked well enough to give him an idea what the Prophets had been saying. The Sangheili was Deau ‘Mefasee, who Barclay realized must have commanded the transport that he and the Arbiter had commandeered.

The Sangheili stirred and slowly turned its head towards him. She appraised Barclay carefully, her eyes keen even through the bruises that covered its long face. She attempted to sit up, but stopped immediately, grunted something pained, and fell back to the ground. One of the Unggoy looked over at its larger charge uneasily, but was drawn back to the battle by a roar and a new series of weapon’s discharges.

“Are… are you all right?” Barclay stammered, holding the concealed translator as though willing it to work.

“I will live, human,” ‘Mefasee replied, and Barclay noticed that her tone lacked the derision and distain that most other of her species used when addressing him.

“Are these… um…” he continued, gesturing uncertainly towards the two Unggoy. “Do they serve you?”

“Better than I expected,” she muttered, wincing as she placed a large hand over a small gash on her abdomen.

“Why did they…”

A shout sounded from just beyond the terminal, cutting Barclay off. There was a noise like boiling water and bending metal, and a Sangheili in blue armor fell within sight of their hiding place, its chest as mass of twisted plating and pulverized flesh. As life drained from the soldier, a heaving bellow rent the air and resounding footfalls pounded away from them.

“We must get to better cover,” ‘Mefasee panted, forcing herself onto one knee. “There. That recess in the wall.” She nodded towards the large, darkened niche to the left of the High Prophet’s dais. It was less than a dozen meters away and appeared to be vacant, but the path there was completely open, populated only by the occasional corpse or scattering of shrapnel.

“Cross that?” One of the Unggoy stared at her in disbelief. “We’d be splattered. Migaw and I couldn’t make it on our own, and you and this thing are choicer targets. We don’t even have any weapons!”

‘Mefasee glared at him, and then leaned towards the fallen Sangheili. She wrenched a plasma rifle from his frozen grip and plucked a rounded, bluish orb from his belt. ‘Mefasee placed the sidearm in her right hand and tossed the orb to Cakap.

“You know how to use a grenade?”

“Ah… of course!” The Unggoy fingered the device gingerly, obviously terrified even behind his breath mask.

Seemingly oblivious to her own injuries and exposure, ‘Mefasee loped from cover first, crouched to keep her profile as small as possible and training her weapon in the direction of the heaviest fighting. Cajoled by the Sangheili’s force of will and the heightening peril of their position, the other three leapt after her almost simultaneously. Barclay’s longer legs made it easier for him to keep pace with ‘Mefasee, but the Unggoy waddled along so furiously that they more than compensated for their squat statures.

The focus of the fighting seemed to have shifted more towards the center of the chamber, and the group of escapees crossed most of it without being noticed. ‘Mefasee vanished into the shadowed haven first, and the Unggoy were quick to follow, each of them determinedly ignoring the bodies strewn across their path and the firefights close at hand. Barclay, however, was unable to completely block out the battle, and could not help but glance over his shoulder at a sudden uptick in the volume of the melee behind him. In the same moment his foot caught on the sprawled leg of a Jiralhanae shock trooper and he stumbled, only meters from the relative safety of the niche.

Barclay managed to prevent himself from falling flat on his face, but only just, and found himself on his side, lolled out near the Jiralhanae’s limp weapon’s arm. Overcome for a moment by the frantic beating of his heart, the human could do nothing but stare incredulously at the exposed crystalline spines of a Covenant needler rifle that lay discarded centimeters from his face. After a painfully long spell of helplessness, Barclay collected himself enough to push away from the ground.

Someone screamed nearby. The engineer recognized the sound immediately, even if the intonation of the voice was not entirely familiar to him. It was a human cry.

Barclay’s eyes fell on Flitch, who lay upon his back not a dozen meters away, flush against the curving slope of the Prophet’s dais. He appeared to have survived the on-going battle without any fresh injuries; Barclay guessed he must have found cover similar to their own in the confusion of the conflict’s first blows. Something must have forced him from that hiding place, and a snarl made the cause of his flight was quite plain. A Jiralhanae of relatively small stature but impressive musculature was stalking towards the human, its eyes wide and crazed. Its pelt was covered in a patchwork of deep gashes and muddy blood, and it had lost its sidearms, but the beast and its kin were brutally strong, as the rent and broken bodies of Sangheili strewn across the chamber showed. An unarmored human would be effortless prey for the creature, especially in its pain-maddened state.

An image flashed into Barclay’s head. A white hallway of the Alliance flagship. Dead stormtroopers crumpled around him. The Arbiter, wounded but triumphant. A single Imperial soldier, his blaster raised.

Barclay thrust his hand at the needler and wrapped his hand around its grip. It was of truly alien design, two metallic paddles covered in pinkish spines, centered on a rectangular muzzle, but its firing stud was positioned intuitively enough. He leveled the weapon at the approaching Jiralhanae, and then hesitated.

More images came. Flitch leading him at the point of a gun towards the Republica’s hangar. The Arbiter’s face, scarred by the man’s blaster bolt.

Barclay depressed the stud.

The weapon shuddered violently in his hands as it disgorged a stream of translucent, crystalline shards. Barclay’s aim was poor, and a dozen of the projectiles spattered off the floor behind the charging Jiralhanae, splintering into colorful puffs of smoke. A credit to the weapon’s designer, the rest of the shards compensated for their imprecise targeting, and zeroed in on the bulky simian. Guided by fundamental forces harnessed in a way that even Covenant engineers barely understood, the remaining barbs dug into the soldier’s exposed flesh, shredding its hide from waist to neck. The creature stumbled, howling but still quite alive. It turned its head towards Barclay, its mouth slack in a gaping snarl, but before it could move further, the weapon’s second unique function revealed itself. As one, the imbedded needler rounds glowed brightly and then exploded in bursts of plasmatic energy. The Jiralhanae was hurled backwards onto the floor, and was still.

Barclay stared at the dead soldier for a moment, remembering how the Imperial soldier had fallen the last time he had fired a weapon. He was numb, as he had been before, but feeling returned to him more quickly, and with it something else. Exhilaration. He had imposed his will upon another, destroyed a destroyer.

Or, perhaps, he had done the only thing he could, killed to save a life that might not even been worth saving. Barclay looked at the smoldering Jiralhanae corpse again, and the exhilaration evaporated. He allowed the spent needler to slip from his grasp.

Powerful hands closed about his shoulders and dragged him down. A moment later, a quartet of red plasma bolts lashed through the air above him.

“Move!”

With ‘Mefasee’s hiss came another sharp tug, and Barclay began to stumble backwards with her towards the dark recess. She let go, allowing Barclay to turn and run towards safety unimpeded. He peripherally noted the two Unggoy lifting Flitch to his feet and urging him onward, but he was too distracted to see the agent’s right hand subtly brush over Cakap’s hip as he was helped up. Even Cakap failed to notice that hand came away full.

The alcove was vacant and provided ample cover from errant gunfire. ‘Mefasee lagged at the edge, making sure that the humans made it into cover, but the Unggoy immediately made for the closest access hatch, a narrow doorway imbedded in the curving base of the wall.

“It’s locked!” Migaw groaned, pounding on door when it failed to open at his approach.

“Of course it’s locked,” Cakap replied. “It doesn’t look like the Jiralhanae want any of us to get out of here alive. Now, shove over.” He pushed past Migaw and started to inspect the frame. “Help me find the override circuit.”

Barclay and Flitch slid down against the wall next to one another, taking advantage of the opportunity to catch their breaths. The engineer glanced at his fellow escapee, unsure of what he should say to the man he whose life he had just saved, the same man who had kidnapped him and pushed him close to death, and who he had shared interminable days of confinement with in uneasy silence. Sensing his gaze, Flitch looked towards the engineer. His mouth twitched, but he turned his head away again swiftly, still silent.

‘Mefasee was still at the lip of the obscuring wall, peering outward. Barclay picked himself up and moved to join her. He only noticed as the field of battle came into view that the din of the conflict has died down. A few soldiers were still exchanging volleys from behind the seats and pillars of the upper balconies and the sounds of battle echoed unabated from beyond the gaping entryway, but the chamber’s main floor was all but empty. Amidst the mangled forms of the dead and wounded, only two figures remained standing. Tartarus was the first, his now-bloodied hammer discarded on the floor nearby, locked in single combat with the other, one of the Lekgolo who had rushed to ‘Falanamee’s aid. His brother lay lifeless in a pool of orange ichor at the very center of the hall, armor riddled with hundreds of plasma burns and impact marks.

The remaining Lekgolo reared up before Tartarus, shadowing even the massive albino. It unleashed a thunderous boom from deep within its armored shell, and then brought both its arms down upon the Jiralhanae’s head. Tartarus twisted sideways, avoiding the beast’s shield arm. The other slammed down on his shoulder, but the Jiralhanae had already braced himself for it. He grabbed to the limb and its mounted gun, ablating its impact and confusing the rampant Lekgolo. The armored being could tear through combat vehicles like they were nothing, but Tartarus still managed to keep hold of its arm. He trembled as he began to push against the trunk-like limb, but a smile was obvious on his face between choked grunts.

Unable to crush its target one-armed, the Lekgolo leveled its shield at Tartarus again and jabbed it at him, intent on sheering through the Jiralhanae’s tufted neck. Tartarus released his grip on his adversary’s gun arm with one hand, using it to grab onto the underside of the shield and guide it away, but he kept his hold on the first arm with the other. The Lekgolo found the barrel of its fuel rod cannon aimed at its own broad chest, and its other arm pushed uselessly out behind the Jiralhanae.

It’s armored-capped, eyeless head swiveled towards Tartarus’ face, now just half a meter away. It regarded him for a moment, and then pulled its shield inwards, hoping to crush the Jiralhanae. The chieftain blew out a contemptuous breath in response, and shoved his fingers into the exposed fire controls of the Lekgolo’s weapon.

A radiant jet of emerald fire burst from the cannon and washed over the titan’s left shoulder. Thick plating bubbled and melted away under the onslaught, and orange filaments of sinuous flesh beneath evaporated into the conflagration. The initial force of the blast had blown Tartarus clear of the Lekgolo, and he watched as it collapsed backwards, the base of its left arm and much of its chest missing. For his part, the Jiralhanae’s gleaming hair was badly singed, but he was otherwise intact, snarling grin and all.

Picking himself up, Tartarus turned his attention to a gold-armored figure propped against the far wall of the nave. Barclay realized immediately that it was the Arbiter, quite still, surrounded by the bodies of those who had died trying to protect him. A thrill of relief washed over the engineer when he saw the Sangheili raise his head slightly, but it vanished just as quickly. The Jiralhanae chieftain was approaching him slowly, cautiously, but his intent obvious.

“I overestimated you,” he growled. “You humiliated me in the face of the Prophets. You shamed me when you barely had the strength left to stand!”

One of the soldiers fallen at ‘Falanamee’s feet, the major who had lead reinforcements into the chamber, stirred and attempted to rise, blocking Tartarus’ path. The Jiralhanae kicked him aside contemptuously and continued towards his prey.

“But I see you as you really are once more. You are weak! An arrogant worm, just like the rest of your kind. Look about you, ‘Falanamee. Look upon the faces of the creatures that died to save you. They died for nothing. They will not be remembered long by you, and if any of your people survive the Prophet’s edict, these creatures will be known to them only as heretics and cowards. Disgrace and death is all that the Sangheili will know from this day!”

Tartarus stooped and lifted ‘Falanamee off of the floor by his cracked chest plate. He hung limply as the Jiralhanae pulled his face close to the former Supreme Commander’s own.

“And now it ends, heretic,” the chieftain said with cool relish. “Your death is the will of the gods, and I am their instrument!”

‘Falanamee’s eyes flickered away for a moment.

“Tools should not talk so much.”

With a yell, ‘Mefasee charged from her hiding place. She aimed her plasma rifle at the brute as she ran and opened fire. Tartarus’ eyes went wild for a moment, but he recovered from the surprise quickly. He turned to face the charging Sangheili and raised ‘Falanamee’s body in front of his own. She stopped shooting immediately, and her stride faltered. Tartarus barked a sharp laugh, and then flung ‘Falanamee’s immobile form at the female, lobbing him as easily as a sack of grain. The Sangheili hit one another hard, and both tumbled to the floor in a heap.

“Do you still think that I can be taken so easily?” Tartarus boomed. “I am Jiralhanae! I am greater than any of you! No warrior can match me! What force of arms could hope to bring me to my knees?”

There was a flash and a hiss at his feet. He looked down to see the major who he had kicked aside without a second thought. A lit plasma sword was now clutched in his hand.

Before the Jiralhanae could even utter a word, the blade scythed through his right leg just below the knee. Roaring with pain and rage, Tartarus fell to the floor on his other leg. He lashed out blindly, flattening the major once more and sending his weapon spinning away. Then the chieftain stared down at his right left, the end of which was now a smoking, bloody stump. He clutched at it howling, all else forgotten.

Tartarus barely noticed the lone, unarmored Sangheili limp forward, and place the muzzle of her rifle in his face. When he at last perceived the curved shape his voice failed him, and he looked up at the weapon’s bearer. There was no pity there, no uncertainty. Nothing to exploit or bully. For the second time that day, Tartarus was completely powerless.

A dozen blue flashes came in quick succession, and then another dozen. ‘Mefasee fired until her weapon began to glow hot and vent steam, and then let it fall from her blistered hand.

The clatter of metal on metal rose away into the steepled roof, and the chamber fell silent at last. On the seating platforms, councilors looked from their places of cover to see Jiralhanae slipping through newly unsealed doorways, their battle cries muted. The hatch that Cakap and Migaw had been probing unsuccessfully slid open of its own accord, but the two Unggoy had abandoned it, distracted by ‘Mefasee’s desperate charge. As the pair waddled cautiously from the recess, Barclay straightened up to follow, but before he could move more than a step, an arm wrapped tightly around his neck.

Barclay gagged against the hold and began to struggle, but another hand was thrust in front of his face, the blue orb of Cakap’s grenade grasped firmly in its fingers.

“Quietly, now,” Flitch whispered in his ear. “I hate to do this to you again, but I’d really rather not get reacquainted with your alien friends. Now, back towards that door. Not a sound. Let’s just hope this goes better than the last time, for your sake and mine.”
------------------------------------------------------

[Noble Ire]

“Supreme Commander?”

Teno ‘Falanamee awoke with a start, and found himself staring up into ‘Mefasee’s concerned face. He tried to move, but pains from what seemed like every portion of his body quickly dissuaded him from the attempt.

“What has happened?” he managed slowly. “Where is Tartarus?”

“Dead,” ‘Mefasee replied.

Their eyes met, and ‘Falanamee required no further explanation.

“And the rest? Where are the Prophets and their minions?”

“The Council chambers are secure for the moment, at least.”

‘Falanamee turned to see Galo ‘Nefaaleme standing above him. The ship master’s golden armor was streaked with plasma burns, but it still shone in the ethereal light. The look on his face was obscured from ‘Falanamee’s vantage point, but the officer’s tone was softer than it had been the last time they had exchanged words.

“You…” ‘Falanamee attempted to rise again, with the same pained result. As he fell back into ‘Mefasee’s arms, he noticed that much of his armor seemed to have been stripped away.

“Be careful, Excellency,” the pilot admonished. She tore a length of material from a discard cloak she had wrapped herself in and proceeded to tie it around one of the deep gashes on the warrior’s exposed side.

“Will he live?” ‘Nefaaleme asked.

“We believe that he will, Ship Master. The Supreme Commander has strength beyond any that I have ever seen.” This was from the red-armored major, who limped toward the small group over the debris-ridden floor, a sword hilt clasped proudly at his side. Following his progress, ‘Falanamee realized that there were others assembled around them. Nearly a dozen Sangheili, councilors, soldiers, Honor Guard and support crew, stood around them in a loose circle. He caught sight of a handful of Unggoy as well, lurking between the Sangheili’s legs. All were silent, staring intently, almost reverently.

Staring, ‘Falanamee realized, at him.

“He still needs treatment,” ‘Mefasee said firmly. “And soon. He has lost a great deal of blood.”

‘Nefaaleme looked hard at the pilot and ‘Falanamee thought he saw a hint of a sneer in his mandibles, but the expression passed quickly.

“We require safe passage to the landing platforms before we can leave this place,” he replied at last, directing his words at ‘Falanamee. “I led the cleansing of this tier myself, but the Jiralhanae still occupy most of the city, and we lack the numbers and the coordination to take it from them. Communications have been sporadic fighting broke out in the industrial districts.”

A soldier passed through the encircling ranks, his helmet cradled respectfully under one arm.

“Here, one of my officers from the lower tiers. I will return shortly.”

As the two soldiers drew aside and began to converse, ‘Falanamee turned his head back to ‘Mefasee.

“Are you hurt?”

“I have never felt better,” she replied without hesitation. ‘Falanamee could tell by the relaxed smile on her mandibles that she spoke with complete honesty.

“You did well,” he said after stopping a moment to catch his breath. “Better than I could have expected, from any of our people.”

“I was not alone. We would have both been killed were it not for ‘Tahamee.” She nodded at the major who had joined her at ‘Falanamee’s side. He offered the Supreme Commander a salute. “The Unggoy served admirably, as well. But you… you did what none of us could have done. You were right about the Prophets. You saved us all from them.”

‘Falanamee’s split chin drooped. “The cost was too great. Wattinree need not have died, nor any of our warriors above this station. None of us may yet survive what I have done.” He pushed himself upwards once more, and this time he found the strength to fight past the pain that welled up to meet him. “We must go. This station is not safe. Now, help me up.”

‘Mefasee and ‘Tahamee each grabbed an arm and guided him to his feet. ‘Falanamee steadied himself, and then glanced down at his chest, which was still partially covered by his torn bodysuit. He loosed an inaudible sigh of relief; the brand of his old heresy was still hidden. A time would come when he would not need to hide who he truly was and what he had been through from his people, but it was still too soon. He knew better than any that old prejudices did not die easily.

“What is the status of the ships in orbit?” he asked ‘Nefaaleme when he returned a few moments later.

“Word has reached the armada of the Prophet’s betrayal, and our ship masters have allied themselves with the Fleet of Particular Justice. Those commanded by the Jiralhanae are fleeing the system. The traitors Mercy and Regret are dead, slain by my own soldiers, but Truth has likely escaped the city. The fleet masters are divided on whether to pursue the vermin or to stay and defend High Charity.

‘Falanamee nodded slowly.

“The human ships.”

“Yes. The blade-ships have closed to just outside lunar orbit, and they have begun to engage our outermost fleet elements. They may begin bombarding High Charity at any time.”

“Who is in command of our forces?”

‘Nefaaleme gestured at a pair of dark and ornately clad Sangheili watching them. “The High Council still holds authority, despite the Prophet’s betrayal. However, communications disruptions here have made it difficult to connect those that still live with the fleet. The armada requires direction.”

The two councilors whispered to one another, and then one stepped forward to address ‘Falanamee. “Many of our brothers on the council are dead, and those who remain are scattered and embattled. We cannot rely upon consensus to guide us through this struggle. If you still have the strength, Supreme Commander, we will cede our authority to you for this fight. Your rank should never have been stripped, and you may claim it again in an instant. All you need do is command us.”

‘Falanamee looked from one councilor to the other, considering the offer carefully. Deep inside, he knew that he did not deserve the honor; he had brought the Empire down on the capitol of the Covenant, and killed thousands of his own people in the process. The only course he could advise now would likely mean the deaths of millions more. Looking at ‘Nefaaleme, he could see in the ship masters eyes the vestiges of distrust. Bitterness and weariness that was more justified than the warrior could know.

But ‘Nefaaleme would follow him, nonetheless. So would all the others assembled in the ruins of the council chamber. Justly or not, he was their hero. Their standard in a fight that could easily sweep them into oblivion. He was needed, and he could not let them down.

‘Falanamee gently shrugged ‘Tahamee and ‘Mefasee off and stood at the center of the group as erect as his injuries would permit.

“High Charity must be abandoned if any of us are to fight another day. Ship Master ‘Nefaaleme, have your soldiers spread the word throughout the city. Get as many of our people and those still loyal to us out before the blade-ships can block their escape. You and I must return to your ship and coordinate our withdrawal. The blade-ships cannot be repelled today, but if we can regroup, we will make our stand on our terms should they pursue us. Now, though, we have a Prophet to hunt.”

A roar of approval met ‘Falanamee’s ears, and the Sangheili immediately began to prepare for the road back to the landing platforms, and space beyond. As warriors searched the battlefield for weapons and ammunition and moved to secure the chamber’s exit corridors, ‘Falanamee took in the chamber one last time. His eyes passed from the Prophet’s dais to the bloodied rows of seats above, over Tartarus’ bulk and discarded hammer. He lingered on Imperial Admiral Wattinree’s crumpled form, and then turned back to those who still kept close to him.

The major was but a few paces away, keeping careful watch on the upper balconies with a pilfered carbine. Migaw and Cakap sat against one low wall, taking advantage of the lull to share a nutrient pack. And then there was ‘Mefasee, still at his side. She looked agitated, far more than she had been a few minutes before. Another quick scan of the hall told him why.

“Where are the humans?” he asked her in a quite tone, careful not to let any of the others overhear them.

Her jaws tightened and slackened compulsively. “I do not know, Ship Master. We guided them to cover beyond the nave after the battle broke out, but I have not seen them since I…” She trailed off, glancing quickly at Tartarus and then back at the other Sangheili. “After the last Jiralhanae fled, I went back to look for them, but they were gone. I can only guess that they escaped through one of the access hatches. Cakap thinks that one of them stole a grenade from him before they left.”

‘Falanamee looked at the shadowy alcove from which ‘Mefasee had emerged. There would be no point in searching it again, he knew. Barclay and Flitch were no doubt lost deep within the city’s upper tiers now, ducking between firefights and ruined monuments. The Imperial spy was unchained, and Barclay was once again his hapless shield. It was the Republica all over again, and this time the humans had been cast into an alien warzone which they would likely not escape.

“Come, Supreme Commander!” ‘Nefaaleme called from an exit on the opposite side of the chamber, where most of the Sangheili cohort had already assembled. “It is past time to leave!”

He could still pursue Flitch, ‘Falanamee considered. They might not have traveled far, and he knew High Charity better than either human. To let Barclay slip away was all but a death sentence and the Sangheili knew it. Had he come all this way, bled and killed so much, just to let the being he had charged himself to protect be killed by the foolishness of a xenophobic wretch?

‘Mefasee gazed up at him uncertainly. He regarded her bruised and wearied face in silence, and then clasped an arm around her shoulders. There were things with which a single being could not compete or compare. Not even an Arbiter could deny them.

“Come on,” he said with only a tinge of hesitation. “Help me after them.”

‘Tahamee moved quickly to take his other arm, and the three moved towards ‘Nefaaleme and the others across the deserted battlefield, Cakap and Migaw in tow.

You saved my life once, Reginald Barclay. Now you must save your own.

[The Grim Squeaker]

FANTASTIC . I loved the Duelling scenes, quite evocative, even if it was done a bit too much like a Boss fight, but this is Halo after all

[rhoenix]

Fitch needs to die of a grenade enema. Without question.

Noble Ire, excellent work - as is now the case since I began reading this excellent tale of yours, I look forward to more. May the muses bless you with continued inspiration.

[Dominus]

Bravo, bravo I say! As always, I remain continually impressed with the quality of your work, and I think you've done the graceful yet bloody art of sword-fighting a fair turn in this segment. Indeed, I'd be hard-pressed to think of a sword-fight I've read in recent memory that had so much raw tension going for it. You conveyed the desperation of the situation more than adequately, I should think. Since you've shown no reluctance to kill off major characters thus far (Mara Jada, Luke and et al), I was understandably concerned that the Covenant story arc would be brought to a sudden and violent conclusion after Wattinree nearly bisected the Arbiter during their duel.

I like to imagine that the Imperial War Admiral realized the gravity of his mistake just before he died. I don't have much sympathy for him, however, given his actions in Ghosts of Onyx. One ill turn deserves another, I suppose. Regardless, one of the few things I remain convinced about in regards to Halo's canon storyline is that the old-guard Sangheili conservatives simply had to go before any alliance with the UNSC could have been concluded or even contemplated; we are "fortunate" in this regard that the lot of them were annihilated by the Nova bomb in GoO (or died by the conclusion of that novel), or else I believe Halo 3 would have turned out quite differently indeed.

Still, I must confess a little disappointment over the Arbiter's decision to leave Barclay to his fate. By rights, it was the correct decision, I know, yet it still does not sit well with me. That's what I like about your fiction, I think: it doesn't pull any punches. And damn it all, that contemptible little pissant Fitch needs to catch an Infection Form in the face.

By the way, whatever has become of 'Rtas Vadum(ee) in this fanfic? I can't seem to recall if he's been mentioned yet or not, but I thought that he might show up here, given that he seemed to be attached to the Spec Ops division at High Charity. (The fact that he is my second-favorite Sangheili is quite beside the point, blast it.)

[Noble Ire]

Bravo, bravo I say! As always, I remain continually impressed with the quality of your work, and I think you've done the graceful yet bloody art of sword-fighting a fair turn in this segment. Indeed, I'd be hard-pressed to think of a sword-fight I've read in recent memory that had so much raw tension going for it. You conveyed the desperation of the situation more than adequately, I should think. Since you've shown no reluctance to kill off major characters thus far (Mara Jada, Luke and et al), I was understandably concerned that the Covenant story arc would be brought to a sudden and violent conclusion after Wattinree nearly bisected the Arbiter during their duel.

Thank you. I'm glad that the duels managed to convey a good degree of tension.

I like to imagine that the Imperial War Admiral realized the gravity of his mistake just before he died. I don't have much sympathy for him, however, given his actions in Ghosts of Onyx. One ill turn deserves another, I suppose. Regardless, one of the few things I remain convinced about in regards to Halo's canon storyline is that the old-guard Sangheili conservatives simply had to go before any alliance with the UNSC could have been concluded or even contemplated; we are "fortunate" in this regard that the lot of them were annihilated by the Nova bomb in GoO (or died by the conclusion of that novel), or else I believe Halo 3 would have turned out quite differently indeed.

I'm quite inclined to agree with that. Decades of indoctrinated hatred are hard to dispel in any being, and it would be all the harder for some of those who probably helped spread that hatred in the first place. The Prophet's are hardly the only ones to blame for the war against humanity, even if they did initiate it.

Still, I must confess a little disappointment over the Arbiter's decision to leave Barclay to his fate. By rights, it was the correct decision, I know, yet it still does not sit well with me. That's what I like about your fiction, I think: it doesn't pull any punches. And damn it all, that contemptible little pissant Fitch needs to catch an Infection Form in the face.

It was a tough choice for him, but in the end, it was the only one he could make. The Arbiter is not a "chivalrous samurai" type character; he's a logical, seasoned warrior with an enduring loyalty to his people above all else. Indeed, earlier drafts of the story had him break the standard "hero" mold even more; let's just say that Flitch was not originally going to survive as long as he has.

By the way, whatever has become of 'Rtas Vadum(ee) in this fanfic? I can't seem to recall if he's been mentioned yet or not, but I thought that he might show up here, given that he seemed to be attached to the Spec Ops division at High Charity.

Alas, 'Vadumee was attached to the Fleet of Particular Justice, specifically Ascendant Justice, during the Battle of Reach (as per the Halo Graphic Novel), and thus was killed when 'Falanamee's flagship was destroyed. I'm fond of the character as well, and I would have liked to have integrated him into the cast, but unfortunately, that didn't work out.

[fusion]

This is excellent clear and flowing. Nice job!!!

[The Vortex Empire]

Incredible, Noble Ire. Absolutely incredible.

[Academia Nut]

I think the best part of all of this is that you've already established that you're playing by "no one is safe" rules and thus there was real tension in the fights because there was a real chance that you might have the Arbiter lose despite being such an important character.

Keep up the good work Ire, keep up the good work.

[Noble Ire]

Chapter Sixty Six



“Mark.”

In almost perfect unison, the angular forms of five Alliance starfighters slipped from the tachyonic realm of hyperspace into the cold reality of interplanetary vacuum. The squadron was composed of three X-Wings and a pair of A-Wings, each spaced several kilometers from the next in a wide ring. The formation was not particularly battle-worthy under normal circumstances, but it was fast and easily-overlooked, and that was what mattered.

The blackness onto which the ships intruded was an endless sea of bright stars, broken only by the impressive bulk of an orange gas giant that loomed several hundred thousand kilometers directly before them. Numbed to view beyond his X-Wing’s transparent canopy by a hundred similar memories, the squadron leader and commander of the Republica’s remaining fighter complement busied himself with his controls. After acclimating his vessel to the gas giant’s gravity field and easing it into a stable orbit, he opened a line with the astromech unit mounted a few meters behind him on the fighter’s hull.

“R2, what I’m reading from this planet matches the profile of the Sol system’s fifth world you had transferred into the tactical core. Can you confirm our location?”

Bright-green text etched its way across one of the small displays next to the pilot’s control yoke as R2-E9 replied in the affirmative.

“Good. I wasn’t sure how the Fed charts would transfer into your systems. We jumped a little close for my tastes, especially for a dry run.” Torn Addel was a cautious man. Though some of his comrades jibed him for it, he valued careful consideration far more than valor and bravado; he was still alive after a decade of fighting, and many of the “hot-shots” he had flown were not. Still, bitterness from the loss of the Republica hung as heavily on him as it did on any who had called her home, and he had not protested his current duty, risky as it was.

He was silent for the next few minutes, carefully observing his X-Wing’s passive sensor array for any sign of activity on his side of Jupiter. Tiny representations of 23 other small craft, his four squadmates and the four other formations of Alliance fighters that had arrived along with them appeared on his displays, spaced across the gas giant’s imposing frame, but there was no other obvious movement or comm activity.

At last, Lt. Commander Addel flipped a switch on his interface, opening a low-power comm line to his command. Jupiter’s bulk would prevent the signal from being overheard by unwelcome ears, at least for a time. Hopefully, they wouldn’t have to wait long enough for that to happen.

“This is Green Leader. Squadron leaders, report.”

“This is Blue Leader. We’re all clear here. No contacts.”

The first reply came from Lt. Kaam, who piloted the Republica fighter wing’s last B-Wing and commanded an assault unit of heavier, slower Y-Wings as an accompaniment to Addel’s fast attack craft. Then each of the squad leaders repeated the message, as did each of his squadmates. There had been no problems with the transit. Hopefully, it was a sign of things to come.

“Alright, let’s get started.” Addel settled into his heavily-inclined seat and firmed his grip on his navigational yoke. “Initiate approach one. Keep your eyes open, and stay close in to the gravity well. We want to get a look at them and clear off before they even think about looking for us.”

The Lt. Commander depressed his acceleration controls and his fighter began to towards the gas giant’s gently-curving horizon. Little blazes of thrust pulsed around him, and his squadmates spread into a long, staggered line to his left and right. As they approached Jupiter, their formation adapted a slight curvature to match the planet’s own. In the distance, each other squad formed a similar strand and angled towards the same horizon, their sublights lit with just enough energy to accelerate them through Jupiter’s pull. As the gas giant’s endless storms and roiling clouds rolled past beneath them, Addel’s pilots kept their eyes on their long-range scopes, scanning for any sign of life.

A minute passed, and all Addel registered were Jupiter’s tiny, barren moons. It was a member of Blue squadron, which was sweeping across the planet’s southern hemisphere, who broke comm silence first.

“Green leader, we’ve got a contact. It just crossed the planetary perimeter.” Lt. Kaam gave the anomaly’s position and heading.

Addel’s astromech immediately focused in on the area, just above the planet’s southern pole.

“I see it,” Addel replied, his voice calm.

The target was small and fast, moving just as quickly as his fighter. It was hugging the gas giant tightly, and it took R2-E9 several seconds to capture its silhouette and scan for any obvious emissions or transponder frequencies. As it did, the Lt. Commander weighed his options; it was unlikely that his fighters would be able to avoid notice for very long with a ship on their side of the planet. He could send out a scatter signal and hope that the contact failed to detected any of the Alliance craft before they were able to find cover in Jupiter’s upper atmosphere or behind one of its ragtag collection of satellites, or he could engage and try to destroy it before it was able fire off an alert deeper into the system.

In the end, Addel was spared the choice.

“Hello, boys,” a familiar voice crackled over his comm unit. “Fancy meeting all of you here.” It was a broadband signal that hit the receiver of every fighter his side of the equatorial bulge almost at once.

Addel gritted his teeth. If the Zerg had anything within Jupiter’s orbital perimeter, they’d probably pick up the transmission in short order.

“General Solo,” he rumbled into his headset, keeping to a narrow-beam pulse. “I thought you were on recon in the system’s asteroid belt. And please, sir, switch to a secure channel.”

“I don’t think it matters much now, Lt. Commander,” Solo replied. The Millennium Falcon’s distinctive disk was now clearly etched on Addel’s display. “I diverted to check on a distress signal from one of this planet’s moons. We knew it’d probably be a trap so we kept our distance, but those bugs are smarter than I gave ‘em credit for. A bunch burst from what I thought was an asteroid before we got into the lunar perimeter and gave the Falcon’s deflectors a few slaps before I got away.”

Addel’s irritation cooled and immediately began probing the space behind the approaching freighter once more. “How many hostiles, sir?”

Before the General could respond, one of his wing mates pulsed the squadron leader. “Sir, I’ve got at least thirty new contacts on my scopes. Same heading as the last.”

The Alliance fightercraft, though small, were able strike craft even against Imperial targets. Armed and armored with the same technology as the Republica, they were a match for even the most advanced Starfleet warship. Still, they were vulnerable to concerted attack, and Addel wasn’t eager to endanger any of his pilots until he had to.

“All squads, form on me,” he ordered over his comm, abandoning the covert frequency. “Make for the insertion point.”

Two dozen sets of maneuvering thrusters flared, and Addel’s fighters executed hairpin, 180-degree turns, tearing them from their fight vectors and away from the ambush unit that was just registering on their sensors. The Millennium Falcon surged up from the planet to join them, its ventral and dorsal guns swiveled back in anticipation.

“Shouldn’t your fighters be engaging, Lt. Commander?” Solo asked over the comm. “The last I heard, it was your job to clear this orbital for the fleet.”

“There’s been a change of plans, General,” Addel said as he began to feed a new set of jump coordinates to his R2 unit. He glanced out of a side pane of his cockpit’s canopy as his fighter raced away from Jupiter’s massive frame, searching for the distant star that was the system’s primary.

“Admiral Nechayev decided to bring the fleet in hot.”

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

There was no great speech. No recitation of inspirational quotes and ancient platitudes. No conjuring of heroes of old wars and older victories. There had been oratory in previous battles of the war, cheers and battle cries. The prose did not carry the day, or even save their orators from destruction.

As the Allied fleet surged through space, captains sat in their wardrooms, reflecting on past campaigns and old commands. Old friends gathered together and shared stories of peaceful times. Soldiers cradled pictures of loved ones. Weary veterans stared out of dark viewports, remembering the fallen. Each spent those precious moments as they thought best. Each provided their own inspiration, their own will to fight.

No word or phrase could have done better.

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

The Enterprise and its task force were the first to drop from warp. Just outside lunar orbit, the ships were beyond the range of any of the stationary defenses that the Millennium Falcon had picked up on during its long-range reconnaissance runs, but still inside its vanguard perimeter, a direct threat to Earth itself.

The planet that filled the Enterprise’s main viewscreen was not the Earth that Picard or any of his crew knew. By chance, the world’s rotation had placed the European continent directly before them, its distinctive landmass and rough coastlines illuminated by Sol’s bright light. Instinctively, Picard focused on France, where he had been born and lived throughout his childhood. Its wide, green plains, rolling mountain peaks, and spidery flecks of gray cityscape had been a part of him ever since he had seen Earth from orbit for the first time.

The long, winding outline of its coast remained, but nothing else was the same. Deep, black scars were etched across its face from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel, and their own once-vibrant blues were now dark and clouded. Where Paris and Marseilles had stood for thousands of years, only ragged blotches of ash were visible. Even the lands that had escaped immolation seemed dead, their native vegetation shriveled from green to dusky brown. What could be seen of Normandy and Languedoc beneath dark sheets of sickly, storm-laden clouds was splotched with lustrous black. The dull hue extended out in veins and wide flows, engulfing valleys and choking rivers wherever it had spread.

Picard’s throat burned and clenched as the image washed over him, but the din of battle stations broke into his consciousness, and he pushed the dark mirror of his homeland from the front of his mind.

“Report, Lt. Hensley,” the Captain ordered, his voice as calm as he could manage.

The woman who had replaced Worf at Tactical inspected her displays with a practiced eye. “The planetary perimeter fleet is moving to engage us. They should be in weapons range in twenty-five seconds.”

Her voice quavered as she finished her report, with fear or anticipation Picard could not tell. Either way, he could not begrudge her the lapse. Still, he would have greatly preferred it if the words had been spoken in familiar Klingon baritone. The plan of attack drawn up back on Deep Space Nine had demanded that Worf be assigned elsewhere, and Picard had approved the transfer willingly, but he still wasn’t used to his absense. This Enterprise was a new ship with a different crew, and Picard still relished any ties with his old command that he could get. His brief glimpse of Earth had driven home just how distant peaceful days of diplomacy and exploration truly were. This was his hour of need, and yet so many of the friends and comrades who had stood alongside him then were gone.

But he remembered them, nonetheless.

“Show me,” Picard ordered.

The viewscreen focused on a portion of space above Africa. A solid wall of starships filled the image, rough ranks and clusters of vessels that nearly blotted out the planet’s ruined surface beyond. They were mostly Federation in design, but Klingon and Cardassian hulls were scattered throughout, their green and tan plating just as battered and ill-kept as the gray of the others. Several of the ships were missing entire decks and ran with their skeleton-like superstructures exposed; these were not ravaged by combat but torn from captured shipyards half-built, their habitation decks no longer required. The hulls of a handful of others were marred by corruption from within, livid growths that sprouted from structural seams and unused shuttle bays.

“The Zerg seem to be consolidating their equatorial line, Captain,” Commander Data reported from the seat next to Picard. “Battle groups Betazed and Ferenginar have detected the concentrations of warships positioned at either pole moving towards the main group. Battle group Qo’nos has engaged the forces around Luna.”

“And the fleets we bypassed at Io and Mars?” Picard asked.

“Still pursuing at maximum warp. They should close to combat range in thirty-one seconds.”

Picard nodded. The Zerg attacking from Luna and out-system were General K’Nera and Fleet Admiral Nechayev’s to deal with. It was his job to punch through the main enemy fleet, and he wasn’t about to let Kerrigan’s minions strike the first blow.

“Has the first wave closed within firing range?”

“Affirmative, sir,” Lt. Hensley replied, steeling herself. The rest of the bridge drew in a collective breath.

Picard stared at his screen, eyes fixed on the pair of Galaxy-class starships now at its center, their phaser banks bright with building charge.

“Target the leaders. Quantum torpedoes, full spread.”

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

Deep within the darkened battle bridge of the USS Troy, High Templar Tassadar stood alone, motionless. The starship’s small, secondary command facility was almost as quiet as he was, still save for the low rumble of the warp core several decks below. Red combat lights lining the chamber’s ceiling and walls and the flickering glow of portable viewscreens arrayed in a semicircle in front of the Protoss provided the only light. The two other beings in the room, Starfleet crewers manning comm stations behind the templar, nervously divided their attention between the screens, upon which the battle for Earth was quickly unfolding, and the silent alien, waiting for directives they could relay to the Galaxy-class’ primary bridge.

Tassadar could sense them in the back of his mind, and his glazed eyes perceived the real-time feeds from across the Allied fleet playing before him, but his recognition of both was little more than peripheral. The vast majority of his mental energy was focused on space itself, and the growing multitude of psionic energies flaring and flitting across it.

Tens of thousands of distant minds filled his consciousness, each a minute candle in the swirling dark. These sapients, humans, Klingons, Cardassians, Vulcans, Andorrans, and a dozen other species, transient things when perceived from the depths of Tassadar’s trance. Compared to the unbending will and burgeoning psionic energy of Protoss warriors, they were almost imperceptible, but he could still feel them, if only barely. Their thoughts and emotions sang to him, interwoven as they were distant: hope, defiance, anger, fear. Their unity of their intent brightened each candle in the templar’s mind’s eye, and he drew as much strength from their warmth as he could.

Against this chorus was a different kind of unity, one that drained Tassadar of much of that warmth even as he turned his mind towards it. There were individual consciousnesses there, too, billions of them, but they did not sing with coherent thought of their own. Most were hollow and cold, animated only by motes of hunger, fear, and rage. Each faded ember was controlled by tendrils of intent, strings of the puppets that the Zerg were. And every string has its master, a nexus of inscrutable will and constrained emotion that poured its entire being into the manipulation of its countless limbs. Tassadar could perceive nine of these creatures, beacons of corruption that glowered at him from embattled space and the pained world beyond.

But even the combined taint of these nine could not distract Tassadar from the one that held their own strings. She sat upon the earth of a continent that had once harbored endless expanses of fertile savanna and baking sands. Now the land was cold and deformed, and a single malevolence was fixed at its heart, waiting. The Queen of Blades could hide herself from Tassadar’s gaze if she wished, but now she made no attempt to disguise her power.

Kerrigan wanted him to come, and he was eager to oblige.

Drawing back from Kerrigan’s consuming presence, Tassadar considered the forces arrayed around him. The Allied Fleet was divided into six battle groups, each of them named for homeworld lost to the Zerg. Battle group Vulcan was its lance, already heavily engaged with the forward Zerg echelon. Picard and the Enterprise were at its head, and Tassadar focused briefly on a tactical display as his capital ship squadron tore through a cluster of corrupted Starfleet picket ships.

Groups Cardassia and Ferenginar flanked Vulcan, serving as support and ensuring that the main offensive line wouldn’t be overwhelmed by the Swarm’s superior numbers. At the moment, the Allied Fleet and Kerrigan’s vanguard line were evenly matched in terms of ships, but Tassadar knew that would not last. She had reinforcements surging in from the Sol system’s outer planets, fleets that the Allied commanders had been forced to bypass in order to draw main battle line at Earth’s proverbial doorstep. In sum, there were a little over 300 Allied starships engaged. Kerrigan’s home guard consisted half again that number, plus her orbital defenses and whatever else she was undoubtedly keeping from his notice.

Victory by simple force of arms was a virtual impossibility, and retreat was becoming more infeasible by the second. But there was still some small hope, and Tassadar needed Picard and the others to hold onto it as long as they could.

Nechayev and K’Nera commanded the rearguard and lunar flank respectively, Betazed and Qo’nos. They were already being beset by the superior numbers of Kerrigan’s perimeter fleets, and the templar knew that they would not be able to hold out very long. A spasm of recognition flashed across his mind, and he perceived the arrival of the Millennium Falcon and the Alliance fighter wing. Their firepower and skill would hold back the tide for a time, but they alone could not bring victory. That chance was lost with the Republica.

Finally, there was the battle group at the center of the Allied fleet, of which the Troy was an integral part. It was smaller than the rest, composed mainly of older vessels and those that had seen too many refits; they were sturdy ships, but dependent upon the support of the more able vessels that encircled them. Fortunately, their role was not one of fleet combat. For now, all they had to do was move slowly forward as the Enterprise and its fellows blazed them a trail. Battle Group Earth was waiting.

There was a resounding twang of psionic energy from deep within the Zerg front, and Tassadar knew that one of the Cerebrates imbedded within it had delivered a new order to its pawns. As it busied itself with the command, the high templar latched onto its psionic tendrils and followed them, reaching out for the mind at their core.

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

The Cerebrate’s telepathic command burst into the twisted thoughts of its enslaved crews and bloated ship-minds, and they complied with it without pause or question. Cargo doors and shuttlebays on dozens of ships throughout the Zerg crashed open, exposing their darkened bowels to hard vacuum. The abrupt decompression blew the cargo of those vessels that still retained atmosphere into space. Rather than emptying their holds, some especially damaged ships simply cracked open at their seams, bleeding disintegrating structural plate and ravaged corpses as their remains tumbled suicidally towards the Allied lines.

Each discharging vessel spilled dozens of fleshy globes into the void. Only a couple of meters in diameter and lacking any signs of electrical activity, most nearby Allied warships simply bypassed them, focused on the endless waves of Zerg combatants. A few more experienced captains, however, had seen the tactic before, and immediately ordered their batteries to destroy the drifting objects. Before the veterans could raise an alarm throughout the fleet, the orbs began to unfurl.

Scourges were of an old Zerg genetic stalk, a biological design that Kerrigan had inherited from the Swarm Overmind before her. Mottled gray ovals of hardened flesh, the creatures were monstrous embodiments of Zerg combat doctrine. Their open, toothy maws and bat-like atmospheric wings made them look almost comically out-of-place in interplanetary space, but once unfurled, they moved through the blackness with eerie speed, propelled by the raw willpower of their dark masters. The mindless things possessed no obvious weaponry, but those who had faced them before knew that the impression was deceptive; Scourges were weapons themselves, living missiles that did not stop until they buried themselves in the hull of an enemy vessel and ignited their own volatile innards. Each carried less destructive force than a Federation photon torpedo, but their velocity, accuracy, and numbers made up for what they lacked in power.

Thousands of the beasts took wing, flooding every theater of combat with shrill cries that deadened before they escaped their gaping jaws. Both forward and rear lines of the Allied formation were embroiled in chaotic close-range fighting, with Zerg warships closing within a few ship-lengths of their prey, and the Scourges dove between dueling vessels with suicidal abandon. Their targeting sensors and proximity alert grids confused by the volume of enemy fire and flash-cooled debris, most Allied warships were completely unprepared as the first wave of beasts fell upon them, dashing against perimeter shields and enflaming them with withering detonations.

Onboard the command ship of Battle Group Betazed, the Versailles, Fleet Admiral Nechayev watched as one of the Akira-class gunships flanking her reeled from ten Scourge impacts to its port side. Its shields shattered and hull rife with quickly-widening breaches, it listed violently to starboard and began to tumble onto its side. The ship’s warp nacelles flickered dangerously and then went dark.

The Mitterland’s captain had yell over warning klaxons on his bridge for Nechayev to hear him over their comm uplink. The main viewscreen didn’t show the man’s face; one of the impacts had knocked the gunship’s visual capability offline.

“We’ve lost attitude control, Admiral, and I can’t raise Engineering! My internal sensors hubs are offline, but I think most of my port sections are breached, and we might have lost the core, too! Power reserves are still up, but I’m not sure how long they’ll last!”

“You’re engines and your shields are gone, Captain,” Nechayev said earnestly. “You can’t do anything else for us now. Tell your crew to begin evacuation.”

There was a burst of static on the line.

“Say again, Admiral! I couldn’t…”

“Abandon ship!” she shouted. “Get yourself to an escape pod. Now!”

The captain hesitated, but only for a moment.

“Yes, sir.”

The line went dead. Nechayev turned to Commander Slovach.

“Tell the Magellan and her escorts to pick up as many of the Mitterland’s pods as they can. The Versailles and the rest of my squadron will support.”

Her second-in-command frowned. “Sir, if we pull those ships off the main line, the Zerg might be able to breach it.”

“I’m not leaving those men to die, Commander,” Nechayev growled, but the flash of dying Ferengi marauder little more than a kilometer before them gave her pause. She glanced back at the other woman and saw obvious consternation in her features.

“Tell them to grab as many survivors as they can in one pass, and then put them back on the line.”

Slovach nodded and moved off towards a Comm station. Nechayev watched her go, clutched the sides of her command chair. Stopping for survivors in the middle of a firefight was an amateur maneuver, and the mistake had shaken her. The sight of Earth had been as hard on the Admiral as it had been on Picard; seeing her homeworld all but dead had made the months of fighting and loss seem pointless. Too many sacrifices, so much blood on her hands, all for naught. She hadn’t let the strain show before, not like this, but it had been growing ever since her first attempt to retake Earth had failed disastrously. Despite the loss, Nechayev’s reputation and the simple attrition of the war had given her command of all that remained of the Federation and its people. She was a capable leader, and had been for decades, but the burden of all those lives and the civilization they carried with them was a great one. Too great.

And now she had bet the hopes and futures of them all on a single gambit. The plan had been formed by others, but she had approved it, and if it failed, it would be end of everything she held dear. All would be lost on her account.

Nechayev closed her eyes. This was the end. Either way, it would all be over soon. There was still one small hope, but whatever chance it had would be lost without her. She had to hold back the darkness just a little longer.

With a deep breath, she opened them again.

“What’s the status of the rest of the fleet?” Nechayev demanded, rising from her chair.

“Vulcan is still advancing and the Zerg battle wall is starting to thin, but Cardassia and Ferenginar are taking heavy losses. There are reports of damage from Scourge attacks from across the fleet, especially on the lunar flank. General K’Nera is ordering his support ships closer to his heavier vessels to keep off the Scourges, but they’ve already lost two heavy cruisers.”

Nechayev climbed from the bridge’s main deck to join the reporting officer at his Tactical station. She could see from his display that her own battle group was holding, but the bulk of the Zerg perimeter fleets had yet to arrive, and if the Scourges continued harass her squadrons, the enemy reinforcements would overwhelm them.

“How many Scourges did the Zerg deploy?” she asked.

“It’s difficult to be sure, sir. They’re moving in and out of the Zerg formations very quickly, and the volume of debris in orbit is making them difficult to track. Judging by the number of ships that released them, I’d estimate at least twelve hundred.”

More than a thousand homing missiles loose in the middle of the fray. Once targeted, several of the creatures could be destroyed with a single phaser burst, but they were supernaturally fast and their lack of obvious emissions made them difficult to localize. If left unchecked, the suicidal drones might gut the entire Allied fleet.

“K’Nera has the right idea,” Nechayev said, more to herself than the crewman. She turned to Slovach, who was still at the communications hub.

“Commander, tell the squadron leaders to consolidate their formations. Advise that they adopt intercept configuration Beta.”

It was a basic maneuver: the heavier ships of a squadron would pull behind the rest, and the forward ships would put up a phaser screen to intercept any incoming projectiles. The more powerful ships could then target enemy capital ships with their heavier weapons without having to divert any of their onboard resources to point defense. The configuration was an old one, considered somewhat obsolete before the arrival of the Zerg due to the lack of fightercraft and missileboats in the arsenals of most Alpha and Beta Quadrant powers, but it worked well all the same.

With the threat of the Scourges momentarily contained, Nechayev turned her attention back to the rear front of the Allied fleet. The ten capital ship squadrons of Betazed, some 50 vessels in total, were arrayed in three-tier wall configuration. The hexagon formed by the forward seven took the brunt of the enemy assault, while the other three squadrons provided support where it was needed. The wall had effectively repelled the first push of Zerg ships from Mars with only moderate losses, but the enemy fleet was reforming for another assault, and the second perimeter group from Io was beginning to drop out of warp to reinforce them.

A quick diagnostic of her battle group indicated that Nechayev’s own squadron was one of the most combat effective at her disposal, despite the loss of the Mitterland. As the reinforcing Zerg fleet swelled and accelerated through realspace towards her battle wall, Nechayev had the commander of a badly-beaten squadron of older Miranda and Excelsior-class vessels fall back to one of the supporting positions and moved her own group to the front.

As the sleeker but no-less scarred hulls of her Akira-class escorts exchanged places with the century-old hulls, the first crimson phaser beams and paired disruptor pulses slashed from the refreshed Zerg fleet. The return volley was delayed and far less multitudinous, but painfully accurate and calculated; each captain knew that they had to make each of their shots count twice that of their foes.

“Show me the core of their fleet,” Admiral Nechayev commanded, settling tentatively back into her seat.

The viewscreen winked to a wide starfield. The dozens of warships arrayed across it in tight knots and staggered lines were tiny but nevertheless distinguishable from the distant stellar formations that backed them, especially when one fired a torpedo or energy pulse at the Allied line. The deceptively-irregular wall of commandeered machinery flared with waves of flashes and glimmers as squadrons of ships unloaded their batteries and accepted incoming munitions with spherical energy shields.

Zerg-infested warships at the head of the throng were soon within effective weapons range of her wall, and Nechayev and her crew were distracted with their own group of belligerents when ships at the rear of the attacking force began to break from their assault trajectories and focus their weapons away from the battle line.

“Admiral, two Zerg ships in sector 19-F just lost warp containment!” Nechayev’s tactical officer reported excitedly. “They’re detonating.”

The flag officer didn’t bother asking whether or not it was one of her squadrons that had delivered the killing blows.

“It’s about time. Comm, see if you can raise the Millennium Falcon.”

A few moments later, Han Solo’s confident voice burst into the Versailles’s bridge. “Sorry we’re late, Admiral. We tried to avoid some old friends around Jupiter, but they couldn’t get enough of us.”

Even through the ship’s universal translator, the Corellian’s gruff accent and cocky tone were enough to raise Nechayev’s eyebrows and bring the ghost of a smile to her lips. The outcome of this battle had just as much impact on him as it did any Starfleet or Klingon crewman, but Solo still managed to maintain the air of hot-shot rookie on his first patrol.

“General, we need to make a breakthrough planet-side, and Vulcan is being stalled mid-orbit.” Nechayev consulted a tactical display, which indicated that the Allied front was now all but stalemated by the Zerg line. “I need your fighters to create a fracture that they can push against. Once you’re through, soften up the orbital defenses and cover Earth as it makes it approach. Vulcan, Cardassia, and Ferenginar can handle Kerrigan’s armada if you give them leverage, but they’re losing ships more quickly than they can sustain.”

It was true. The three forward groups had already suffered 30% attrition, and although they had taken even greater casualties, the Zerg weren’t showing any signs of giving way.

“We’ll give Picard the punch he needs, Admiral,” Solo said without hesitation. As if to add emphasis to his point, a hulking, Klingon-made battlecruiser at the center of the Zerg fleet erupted into a cloud of super-heated gas and debris, victim to one of the Millennium Falcon’s formidable concussion missiles. As the surrounding vessels scattered, the freighter barreled through the rapidly-expanding cloud, followed closely by the cadre of Alliance fightercraft.

There was a throaty bellow over the comm-line.

“I see ‘em, Chewie,” Han Solo grumbled to his copilot. “Get on the dorsal gun. I don’t want these things getting anywhere out hull, and I trust you a lot more with the quads than the guys we’ve got in there now.”

A flock of Scourges had descended upon the Alliance formation from the midst of the Zerg fleet, and the creatures were mobbing the Millennium Falcon and the lead X-Wings and A-Wings. The quad laser cannons mounted to the top and bottom of Solo’s ships sprung to life, pivoting on their mounts as they belched blazing death into the swarm and triggered waves of premature detonations. Careful fire from the other Alliance ships quickly cleared off the rest and they surged away from the remnants of the flock, barely singed but increasingly wary.

“Do you want me to lend you a couple of squadrons, Admiral?” the general asked as his ships approached the Allied rear line. “It looks like you could use them, especially if there are many more of those damned things hanging around.”

Nechayev considered Solo’s offer. The Alliance fighters were faster and more maneuverable than any ship in her arsenal, and they easily matched the durability and firepower of her own flagship. A dozen of the small vessels would bolster her line by a substantial margin. K’Nera’s embattled forces, too, might benefit from the presence of the squadrons.

But the admiral’s hesitation was brief. She knew what theirpriorities had to be.

“No, General. I want all of you on the front. We’ll hold them here as best we can without your support. Besides, the trail you blazed through their ranks has bought some more time, I think. With any luck, you hit the fleet’s cerebrate. If not… well, we will manage. Just get us that breakthrough, and soon.”

Nechayev could picture Solo’s grin. “May the Force be with you, Admiral.”

“Good hunting, General,” she replied.

With that, Nechayev raised a hand to order the comm officer to cut the line, but stopped herself, remembering a brief meeting she had had with Leia Organa before the Allied Fleet had left her on Deep Space Nine. The Alliance councilor had been eager to join them, but Nechayev and the other members of the Council had decided it was too much of a risk. Despite her combat experience and willingness to face the dangers of battle first-hand, she played no part in their plan of attack, and it was quite likely that any ship she was attached to would be lost in the fighting, if any survived at all.

Still, Nechayev was quite sure that Leia would have found her way into battle had the Millennium Falcon not departed before the rest of the fleet. Indeed, she was fairly certain that was one of the reasons why Solo had been so eager to take on the preliminary scouting mission.

“Oh, and General Solo.”

“Yes, Admiral?”

“Councilor Organa sends her regards.”

There was a pause. “Thank you, Admiral.”

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

Lt. Commander Addel’s squadrons burst into the heart of the Earth-ward fray with such ferocity and speed that the Zerg line lost ten ships before it was even able to target the new attackers. Functioning in tight squadrons that exploited their maneuverability and small profiles, the faster X-Wing and A-Wing squadrons dove into thickets of Zerg warships, weaving in and out and wreaking havoc not with blinding sprays of laser fire and torpedoes that cracked shielding with frightening efficiency. The first waves of return-fire sowed even more destruction throughout the ranks of the defenders as the darting vessels flew into the shadow of nearby corrupted warships, allowing them to absorb photon torpedoes and errant phaser fire. The other fighters hung back with the Allied line, but their heavier weapons increased the effectiveness of Battle Group Vulcan’s bombardment enormously.

Addel and a wingmate angled at a Galaxy-class that was attempting to evade the capital ship’s renewed onslaught. It lobbed a photon torpedo at them, but their powerful engines carried them past it before it detonated. Not missing a beat, its enslaved crew targeted a stutter-pattern of phaser blasts at Addel’s X-Wing, now scant kilometers away. Most went wide, but one impacted his deflectors directly. His instruments fluctuated widely as blinding light almost overcame his canopy’s photo-reactive cells, and R2-unit shrieked so loudly that Addel could feel the vibration through the back of his seat.

The Alliance pilot gritted his teeth against the receding glare. Through dazzled eyes, he could just make out his deflector gauge: the phaser blast had pushed the fighter’s defenses to their limit, but the ship was still intact.

Rechecking and adjusting his firing vectors as quickly as he could, Addel depressed the firing stubs he held under both thumbs. The quartet of laser cannons affixed to each of his fighter’s four wings spat crimson bolts of energy at the saucer-section of the offending vessel. Simultaneously, his wingman, who had bracketed the Galaxy, unleashed his own volley of fire. The assault flared the ship’s bubble shield into nothingness, and the fighter pair strafed its length, burning away huge chunks of armor plating and structural components with each hit. As they flew away, the Zerg ship was already tumbling dead through space, its hull venting charred biomass and frozen coolant from dozens of breaches.

“Are you alright, Lt. Commander?” his wingman asked as they maneuvered momentarily above the main plane of combat.

“The deflector took most of it,” Addel replied, checking his instruments to confirm that his ship was indeed still in fighting shape. “Watch those phaser projectors. They’re more accurate with them than they’ve been before.”

“It must be the coordinators, those cerebrates,” the other man said as they executed a 90-degree turn back towards the battle line. “Command said there would probably be a few deployed here.”

“More than a few,” Addel mumbled to himself. The Zerg were fighting far more effectively than the pilot had ever witnessed before. Rather than relying simply on suicide tactics and their overwhelming numbers, formations and individual ships were executing complicated maneuvers attack patterns. Even their gunners seemed to have acquired additional skill, as his still-cooling hull clearly showed.

But even this web of willpower had been unable to stop a breach from forming in the defensive line. It was a small gap, large enough for only a handful of ships to maneuver through comfortably, but the Allied fleet pounced upon it immediately. Most of the Alliance fightercraft poured through it in single mass, their sights set on the armed orbital facilities and weapons platforms Kerrigan had left intact above the planet’s surface. The crossfire was intense, and two fighters succumbed to the sheer volume of destructive energy laid against them during the transit, but the rest made it through largely unscathed. Before Kerrigan’s armada could seal the fissure, all that remained of Vulcan focused on the area, a solid cone of ships and withering firepower.

Occupied with yet another flock of Scourges, the Millennium Falcon was the last Alliance vessel to the breach, and was forced to weave through a concentration of Allied vessels to rejoin the battle. As it skirted the head of the pressing cone, the Enterprise opened a line to the freighter.

“Captain?” Han Solo prompted, his voice now more curt and serious. The first Alliance loses of the battle had not escaped his notice.

“General Solo, Zerg resistance has been more effective than we anticipated.” Picard also sounded strained. “My battle group will be able to open a path to Earth, but casualties are severe, and I’m not certain how long we’ll be able to hold this position.”

“We’re giving this all we’ve got, Picard,” Solo replied. “Addel’s fighters are tied up with the inner perimeter, and the Falcon can only be in so many places at once. There are too many Zerg contacts, and I don’t have the guns to take them all. Maybe if you could give me a ship worth hitting…”

“Yes, I know. The cerebrates. I just received a target profile from Group Earth. Tassadar thinks he’s located one of the main coordinators of the enemy fleet.”

A combat tag and a set of coordinates flashed into the Falcon’s computer. Solo looked them over quickly, and then turned his sensor towards the designated area. It was a patch of space below the main grid of combatants, occupied by a thick knot of warships. There were enough of them to pose a formidable threat, but not so much to warrant special notice. His tactical display matched the transmitted tag with a relatively small, sleek vessel at the center of the formation.

“That’s quite a nest of trouble, Picard. Think you can soften it up a bit?”

“Negative, General. I need all of my ships focused on that breach. You’ll have to handle them alone.” The captain’s tone softened momentarily. “Well, not quite alone. I suggest you take a look at the cerebrate’s squadron again. Picard out.”

Han stared at his silent comm-unit for a long moment, taken-aback.

“Hell of a time to be so damned cryptic,” he muttered at last, turning his attention back to the simplified sensor display. “No wonder they were losing so badly before we showed up.”

The Corellian was about to make another comment or two to himself when he noticed that the cerebrate’s vanguard was beginning to drift apart. There was no obvious threat to the group, and yet its component ships were slowly moving out of formation, as if engaging in prolonged, clumsy evasive maneuvers. Han stared at the scene in puzzlement for a while, unable to comprehend why the ships were scattering. A few even looked as they were sizing each up as potential threats. It was as though something was interfering with their sensors and communications systems.

Then Han remembered how the cohesion of the Zerg forces had collapsed after the death of the cerebrate at Bajor. Tassadar had tracked that mind, too, but it had been destroyed almost as soon as it was located. He had had little time to do anything but mark its presence. What if the Protoss templar’s abilities weren’t limited to perceiving the Zerg consciousnesses? Simple perception certainly hadn’t saved him from Darth Vader during the rout of Sullust.

Whatever the cause, Picard’s meaning was now clear enough, and there was an opening the General couldn’t refuse.

“Chewie, get back up here!” he called over his shoulder towards the gun well where the Wookiee copilot waited, and then took the ship into a sharp dive, straight for the disoriented and unsuspecting cerebrate.

Behind the Millennium Falcon, new etchings of lethal light and blinding conflagrations marked the blackness as the Allied fleet pressed forward with redoubled force. Earth was in reach, and the Allied stratagem was about to take shape.


Through the eyes of her servants, Kerrigan watched as the sixth battle group began to pour through the gap under a torrent of cover fire from the Allied front. As the ships approached Earth’s thermosphere, she settled back into a black throne, a thin smile on her stained lips.

[Vehrec]

Excellent chapter. So the Sixth group is landing forces? And Tassedar is wasteing his energy to split the control of the Zerg forces. I hope, despite all evidence to the contrary, that Jacen's balls will drop and he'll live up to his Legacy soon.

[Master_Baerne]

Is Jacen in the landing party? He and the Chief would be wasted in space combat.

[fusion]

Nice, we need to see some ground action now!!!

[The Vortex Empire]

Excellent work, Ire!

Chief should be making his next appearance in the ground invasion, right?

[Darth Ruinus]

Fucking sweet, cant wait for the next update.

Keep up the good work!

[Vehrec]

Say, quick question. In the Haloverse chapters, are they just going to ABANDON the Forerunner Keyship and Mendicat Bias? It's the only thing I can think of that might be able to stand up to the ISDs.

[Darth Ruinus]

Say, quick question. In the Haloverse chapters, are they just going to ABANDON the Forerunner Keyship and Mendicat Bias? It's the only thing I can think of that might be able to stand up to the ISDs.

I'm not sure how strong Forerunner ships are, but assuming they are ISD level, what happens to the Covenant when their gods ships are destroyed in combat?