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The Halo of the Hero

Chapter-12 Remnants

When my enemies went for Heaven, I remained in Hell- Unknown

Location: Slip-space

Time: Unknown

Ranma opened the hatch and peeked inside, using a small flashlight to see through the dark. Somewhere in the darkness, one of numerous security panels monitoring engine energy flow was located.

They had been in slip-space for almost three weeks now, three weeks that had been spent pulling the ship back into fighting condition. Emilia's manoeuvre had saved them from being turned into molten slag, but it had also fried most of the engines. They did not need them in slip-space, but once they would leave it they would be a sitting duck.

Ranma, being the most experienced person when it came to Covenant technology, had been assigned to fix them with the help of Cortana. He had spent the last three weeks crawling around in vents and small maintenance tunnels, trying to put together and recalibrate the small independent control systems. Systems that couldn't be fixed at the bridge or by Cortana, and had to be calibrated manually.

He had removed the bulky Mjolnir armour to get more space in the cramped corridors, but it was still a tight fit. The smaller maintenance-tunnels had been designed with the 3 feet Covenant engineers in mind, not a seven feet Spartan.

Ranma sighed as he quickly slithered inside the dark tunnel.

"The panel is sixty meters to your left." Cortanas voice came over the small headpiece he was wearing.

"I hear you." He said as he crawled forwards through the tunnels. He stopped the panel a little later, it wasn't hard to miss at it was glowing and blinking red.

He quickly brushed a hand through, his now somewhat longer, hair, before inserting the small datapad containing Cortana's translation program. After checking to make sure that the program worked in order he began the long work of checking an endless mass of files, even with Cortanas help it took better part of six hours before he was finally able to remerge into the hallway.

He flexed his entire body to drive away the stiff feeling after lying so many hours in a cramped space.

He picked up his discarded gear and walked back towards the bridge in silence.

"You have been awfully quiet, even more so then usual, these last weeks." Cortana's voice once again came over the small headpiece he was wearing.

"I have been thinking about things." He answered simply as he stepped inside a small elevator leading to the upper decks. A small hum was the only thing heard as the lift started.

"Oh? And what are you thinking about?" Cortana voice sounded caring, and a second later Cortana's holographic body appeared over the small panel.

Ranma just shrugged.

"Nothing important." He answered the AI simply.

"No, something is bothering you. You haven't been your usual cool sarcastic self these weeks, no offence." Cortana said and looked at the Spartan with a questioning glance.

"None taken, and as I said it is nothing." He answered again.

"Then you won't mind sharing it." Cortana said quickly.

"No, Cortana." He answered and looked at the AI with unemotional eyes.

The elevator abruptly stopped, and Cortana's hologram crossed her arms in front of her chest and then preceded in casting him a cold look.

"I won't start this elevator until after you have told me what it is that is bothering you." Cortana said and simply raised an eyebrow.

"Cortana, it is none of your business if I am troubled or not." He said sharply and looked at the AI with cold eyes.

"It is my business if it affects you combat performance. Chie…. Ranma, please." Cortana said the last part softly.

Ranma looked at the AI with an unreadable expression before rubbing his eyes tiredly. Had she attempted any other way of persuasion she would have failed, and she knew it. Spartans were the perfects soldiers, and as that they always tried to remain at peak performance, she skilfully used that as an argument.

"We are losing control of the situation" He said, leaned backwards to the wall, and closed his eyes.

An uncomfortable silence came after he answered, only interrupted by the steady hum of the ship.

"Could you please elaborate on that?" She asked carefully.

He opened an eye to look at the AI before nodding.

"Reach, and especially Halo. There we didn't have any control, no plans, we just went with the flow." He said and sounded as if he was arguing with himself.

"Reach cost the Covenant dearly, they lost nearly three times as many ships as us, and Halo… The Covenant casualties there were significant, they must have lost hundreds, if not thousands of ships." Cortana argued with the Spartan.

"Yes, but we also lost nearly 14 billion civilians, and irreplaceable ship-docks and research facilities at Reach. We survived Halo only by sheer dumb luck, something you can't always count on as a soldier." He replied.

Once again an uncomfortable silence fell over the elevator.

"I think we have bit off more then we can chew, I have never felt as helpless before. And more important, the Covenant threat isn't over yet, not by a long shot. The Covenant not only managed to follow us from Reach, they also managed to mobilize another, bigger fleet to put up a blockade around Halo." Ranma continued and looked at the AI with tired eyes.

"So, what should we do, if you had the choice?" Cortana asked.

"We lack the space assets to begin a proper offence. Heck, there aren't even enough ships for a proper defence. The only true advantage we have is that our ground-forces are marginally better then the Covenant's. Unfortunately, they negate that by glassing all of our planets." Ranma said while thinking of different solutions.

"So, we are out of options?" Cortana asked the cyborg.

"No, we have just stated that a frontal assault would fail. Covert warfare, hit and run attacks, assassination, would probably prove more efficient. Problem is, we still don't have the resources, nor the time to build them. If we just somehow could tie down the bulk of the Covenant forces, or perhaps make them turn their interest away from us for a moment, we could get the time needed." Ranma said while looking at the AI again

"Halo might give us the time needed, the Covenant are sure to slow down their search after human colonies after the destruction of one of their sacred artefacts." Cortana pointed out.

"Or they might see it as another reason to exterminate humanity." Ranma said.

Cortana didn't answer that.

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Date: 28 September 2552 (Fall of Reach +1 month)

Time: 02.30- SET (Standard Earth Time)

Location: Sol system, planet Earth, UN Main Orbital HQ.

"It is half three in the morning, whoever this is you better have a really good reason for waking me up." Admiral Harper grumbled into the phone.

"It is Colonel Patrick, Admiral. Ten UNSC ships just left slip-space and appeared near the Pluto scrap yards." The familiar voice of one of his newer crewmembers reported.

Colonel Patrick always tried to impress his COs, but in reality, he was just an annoying brat. Right now, the Colonel didn't stand in the admirals good graces.

Admiral Harper had gotten precious little sleep the last week, he and other representatives from the different military branches of the UN had met with the UN High Council for the yearly budget meting. Even with the Covenant presence hanging over them, the High Council had cut funding for numerous important projects.

The military representatives, together with the people in Intelligence, and the Research and Development, had been outraged. The UN High Council didn't seem to understand the threat the Covenant was. General Grant had voiced his obvious dislike, stating that "this is what happens when stuck-up politicians gets involved in military business."

Even with the gathered complains from the military leaders, there would still be large funding cuts in most areas, most noticeable the infantry and research departments.

One of the most anticipated projects, the research of functional shield systems to ships, had been completely removed, since it "wasn't cost effective, and had already risen above the anticipated budget." Admiral Harper had arrived back from Geneva only a couple of hours earlier, and was only thinking about a good nights sleep to rid himself of the stupidity of politicians.

"Earth has three dozen slip-space exits every week, Colonel." He replied a little irritated, trying his best to get rid of the annoying Colonel.

"Sir, this one wasn't scheduled, and when we hailed them the captain on the lead cruiser just says he needs to talk with you immediately, admiral."

Harper just grunted in frustration, before pulling on a shirt.

"I am on my way down now." He answered as he picked up the discarded phone.

The station was fully manned twenty-four seven, and Harper saluted and nodded to the various crewmembers as he made his way through the massive space station.

The Command central was a large room, with rows upon rows of computers and communication stations, fully manned it would have over three-hundred-fifty officers coordinating the defence of Earth. Now only some thirty people were there.

The massive main view screen, ten meters tall and fifteen wide, flickered to life as soon as he stepped up towards were Colonel Patrick was standing.

He immediately recognized the face that appeared on the screen, it was Captain O'Donnell, an old friend, and one of the ship-captains guarding Reach. He looked much older then the last time he saw him, the tired look and black rings under his eyes, showed a broken man.

"Captain? What are you doing here?" Harper asked with a growing uneasiness.

"Admiral, Reach….It's gone."

"What do you mean it is gone?" He asked shocked, but he already knew the answer.

"The Covenant, sir, over eight-hundred ships… We did as good as we could, but we never really had a chance." He said in defeat

"What happened, what of the rest of the fleet… The civilians?" Harper said the last part almost terrified.

O'Donnell eyes just unfocused as he looked out at nothing in particular.

"After we lost our Super-MACs, and lost all hope of ever pushing them back, Admiral Stanforth sounded a general retreat. We initiated Cole-protocol and jumped out of human controlled space before coming here. As for the rest of the fleet, I can only assume that they are either dead or on their way here. The civilians…. We didn't get the time to perform a real evacuation. Most of them were… were still there as the Covenant arrived…" He said the last part almost sobbing.

Harper could understand him, almost every soldier of the UN had friends or family on Reach.

"Captain, I… I know it will be hard, but I need you and your crew to keep radio-silence. If this gets out, we will have system wide mass hysteria and panic. I am calling together the Military branches right now. We will take care of this, I promise." Harper said with strength in his voice he knew he didn't have. Inside he felt numb and cold, his sister had been on Reach…

The Captain seemed to collect himself somewhat as the admiral sounded so confidant.

"Yes, Sir." He said and nodded a little to the admiral.

The screen flickered out, and he turned to the personnel standing around the room. Every persons focus was on him.

"That goes for all of you, from this moment on, this information has security Level-Omega." He said and looked with cold eyes on everyone.

They nodded in unison, and began to go back to work.

"Colonel, get me General Grant on the line." He said and rubbed his eyes tiredly, but sleep was the last thing on his mind.

The screen flickered to life once again, but this time is showed a man, whose face was covered in scars.

"Goddamn, Harper, why the hell are you calling me at this time?" He said with irritation in his voice.

"Reach." The way he said it immediately made the General go quiet. Grant knew it was serious, he had known the admiral for almost thirty years, and he had only used that voice four or five times during all those years.

"Amber Arrow?" Grant asked in defeat. It was the codename used when the Covenant glassed a planet.

"Yes, I got the news less then five minutes ago." Harper said and looked out at the stars through one of the windows.

"Wha… What kind of casualties?" He asked, fear for the answer was evident in his voice.

"Total." He answered again.

"My god…." Grant said back in disbelief.

"Call together the Military heads, Level-Omega security on this." Harper said once again without any emotion.

"I…. Yes, I will do it."

The screen once again went dead, but this time Harper turned his attention from it to the sea of stars spread out in front of him.

During the last twenty minutes he had changed his entire way of thinking. Now it wasn't if they Covenant came to Earth, but when they came to Earth.

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Covenant Holy City High Charity

Hierarch Council Chambers

Time: Unknown

Nosolee walked down the aisle, in full ceremonial armour. The colour wasn't bright gold as the armour that shipmasters and field commanders wore, but instead a deep golden colour that, in low light, could be mistaken for crimson. The armour was that of a fleet-master, one of the highest positions a Covenant elite could achieve apart from being made an elder in the Hierarch council, or attaining the position as Arbiter.

To his right and left, his two war-masters, Hakue and a young, loyal elite, was walking as personal guards, as was Covenant tradition. In reality he didn't need to appoint any war-masters, he had only three ships under his command.

On both sides of the corridor, he could see the High Prophets own personal guard, clothed in their ornamented armour, and holding their long, spear-like melee weapons. With only a quick motion of their hands, the two feet blades at the top would be covered in plasma from hidden plasma emitters, forming a weapon even more lethal then his own ceremonial blade.

The doors to the chamber opened, and he walked in, followed closely by his personal guard.

On both sides of the chamber, there were rows upon rows of talking aliens. He could see on one of the upper rows that the entire gathered elite Elder council was present. They were wearing their silver armour with an ornate helmet, giving them a royal look.

The ceiling of the chamber was covered with thousands of pieces of glass reflecting the light strangely, each coming from a different world glassed by the Covenant. It was an eternal testament of the faith that awaited those who dared to try to defy their covenant.

"Nosolee, Fleet-Master of the seventh and eighteenth Great Fleets, has arrived upon the calling of the honoured High Prophets, Truth, Mercy and Regret." Hakue announced and placed his fist over his heart and bowed deeply, mirroring the bow from his other guard.

The room fell quiet. Nosolee walked forwards and stopped in front of the Prophets before falling to one knee and placing his one hand over his heart and the other on the ground.

The three Prophets looked upon him with indifferent eyes, but small murmurs where heard from the direction of the Elite Elders. The Prophets were sitting in hover-chairs, looking like massive thrones, and they were wearing long deep purple, almost black robes, with a massive ornate headpiece.

"Commander, you have been called here to answer the Councils questions." Regret said royally, catching everyone's attention.

"As you wish, your Excellency." Nosolee said with his head still bowed to the ground.

"Why did the destruction of the vermin's world take such a length of time?" This time it was Mercy who spoke.

"Naelane, former Fleet-Master of the Seventh Great Fleet, lead the assault on the world, Reach. She overwhelmed all the human defences, and annihilated most of their fleet, before the humans began to flee. We where victorious, but not unscarred, the humans MAAK's had destroyed most of our smaller crafts. Naelane and the ships in her personal guard had begun to purge the world, while the rest of the fleet began to pursue the remaining humans to annihilate them."

"So you followed the humans and destroyed them?" Regret said while looking at the elite in approval.

"No, your Excellency. When we were finished with the world and about to pursue the fleeing ships a single human ship emitted a signal, that while filled with static clearly had Forerunner origins…." Nosolee was interrupted as everyone, apart from the three Prophets, began to chatter wildly.

"SILENCE IN THE COUNCIL CHAMBER!" Mercy said loudly to the gathered crowd who fell silent.

"Continue." He said sharply.

"Thank you, your Excellency. As the signal was received, Naelane ordered all ships under her command to forget about anything else and pursue that ship. She also sent some ships to alert Versaene, former Fleet-Master of the Eighteenth Great Fleet, that she was pursuing a human craft with potential Forerunner artefacts on them, and that most of her ground forces were dead. Versaene, as he heard this, ordered his entire fleet to help with the capture of that ship. As we entered the system we found more then a human ship with forerunner artefacts."

Nosolee shifted a little uncomfortably, what he was about to reveal would probably cost him his head.

"Orbiting a gas-giant in the system we found a sacred ring….." The roar from the crowd was deafening, the chatter was livid, anticipating.

"Silence." For the first time during the entire meeting Truth spoke. It was calm and collected, but everyone fell quiet. Truth looked out at the gathered crowd and then back at Nosolee.

"You found one of the sacred rings, one of the holy artefacts left by the Forerunner so we could begin the Great Journey?" He said while looking straight into the eyes of the elite.

"And you have brought it under our control?" Mercy continued where Truth left off.

"No, we tried, but I must shamefully admit that we weren't capable to it." He said and waited for the order of execution.

The crowd was becoming angry, throwing insults and request for his execution.

"Explain." Truth said and looked at the crowd, who fell silent.

"Our ground forces found something in a secluded area of the ring, a parasite. Those….abominations spread across the ring as a plague, infecting human and Covenant alike, and when we finally understood the danger they presented it was already too late" Nosolee said and shook his head in anger at the memory.

"WITH THE STRENGTH OF TWO FLEETS, HOW COULD YOU FAIL?" A voice from the gathered crowd roared.

Nosolee closed his eyes, and tried to calm down before replying.

"Most of our ground forces were scattered during the first wave of the parasite, and our ships were useless. We could not fire upon the holy ring, that would be heresy!" He roared the last part back to the council.

"Calm down, Fleet-Master. Continue your tale, for we will judge your actions after you are done." Truth spoke so that everyone in the chamber heard.

Nosolee calmed down before bowing in deep gratitude towards the Prophets.

"I thank you your Excellency. When one of Naelane's war-masters fell in combat I was chosen by her to take his place. Just hours later the Prophets accompanying Versaene and his fleet gave the orders to put up a quarantine around the ring. The twice-damned parasite had at this time cost us almost a third of our battle brothers and sisters, so we had completely forgot about the humans, and that was our downfall." Nosolee said and out of the corner of his eye, he could see the reaction of the council. They were angry beyond belief, but he could understand it, a sacred ring had been lost before the Prophets could unlock its secrets.

"The humans fought their way inside their crashed space ship and managed to detonate the reactors. We were the first to notice the rising energy levels of the space-ship so we managed to make our way from the rings atmosphere. The others headed our warning to late and perished in the unholy flames from the humans' ship."

Murmurs was once again heard as the elite finished his tale.

"And the sacred ring, Halo, what happened with it." Regret asked anxiously.

Nosolee could see that everyone was gazing at him attentively, listening to every word he said.

"It was also destroyed by the humans' hands." He sighed and bowed his head in shame.

The room was completely quiet.

"By simply stating that I have enough reason to execute you. Tell me why I shouldn't have you executed for heresy?" Truth said slowly, looking at the reaction of the elite in front of him.

"I have merely said what I have seen, your Excellency, not what I wish to see." Nosolee said and bowed his head deeply in shame.

Truth looked at the elite with an indifferent look, before turning back to look at the other prophets. He nodded before turning back towards the kneeling warrior.

"Your answer is satisfactory, you may return to you duties. The loss of Halo was the former fleet-masters' error, and would they be among the living they would rightfully bare the blame. The council has decided that you are not in anyway responsible for their actions, you may go." Truth said and nodded to the warrior to rise.

"You shall however, return here tomorrow, so we may discuss this in more detail. The hierarchy might have some important duties for you, Fleet-Master" Truth continued as he saw the relief on the face of the elite.

"As it is the Prophets will." He said and bowed deeply.

Truth didn't reply, he just turned around and hovered out of the chamber followed closely by Mercy and Regret.

Nosolee stood up, and then with a raised head walked out of the chamber. He felt a small amount of relief, he still had his head on his shoulders… For the time being.

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Location: Slip-space

Time: Unknown

Ranma stepped out of the elevator and walked the short distance to the bridge. The corpses', blood and empty shell-casings were all gone, the only sign that there ever had been a battle were the black scorch-marks from the Covenant plasma weapons. He was feeling a little better since his talk with Cortana, they had stayed in the elevator nearly an hour thinking and debating different approaches to the entire war.

Not that anyone would listen to him, but it eased his fears somewhat that he had plans to go back to if something happened.

On the raised platform he could see Emilia and Major Silvia talk to each other. They were probably going through the different systems to familiar themselves with the ship.

"Chief, what's the status on the engines?" Silvia yelled and waved her hand to get his attention. He put down the various tools he was carrying before walking up to major.

"Well, I've managed to fix most of the engine regulators, but without a real piece-by-piece maintenance check I can't really promise how long they will work, especially when I don't know what half the things in the engine does." He said and shrugged his shoulders. It was easier to be around people when he wasn't wearing five hundred kilos of metal, and he didn't feel as alienated anymore.

"I thought Cortana said you were the Covenant tech-expert?" Silvia said a little jokingly.

"My expertise in Covenant tech is to how to successfully blow it up, not how to put it back together." He said fully serious, but a small twitch of his lips gave him away.

Major Silvia was about to answer, but a life-size version of Cortana's hologram flickered to life on the platform.

"Well Chief, I am running simulation tests on the engines, and I can get them to thirty percent maximum speed, good work."

"How is the rest of the ship?" Silvia asked as she turned to the AI.

"Well, Sergeant Johnson and his team has managed to fix most of the pulse-laser pin-point defence. Both batteries of plasma torpedoes are fully operational, but we only managed to fix one of the three plasma cannons. I also managed to do some improvements in the magnetic fields holding the plasma torpedoes together, all I needed to do was change some subroutines in the system."

"Why hasn't the Covenant done these upgrades before this?" Emilia asked as she turned away from her holo-panel.

"We always suspected that the Covenant were imitative and not adaptive, just look at their primitive software and tactics. I suspect that the Covenant copied much, if not all, of their technology from Forerunner equipment, but only managed to do so on a basic level. This ship has so many obvious flaws from their unsuccessful attempts to duplicate Forerunner technology it's scary." Cortana said while looking at the gathered humans and one cyborg.

"Why am I not surprised." Ranma said and looked back at the AI.

"If we could get this ship into a dock we could perform some basic upgrades that would increase this ships performance with almost ten percent." Cortana continued, as if Ranma hadn't said anything.

One of the doors leading to the bridge slid open and Sergeant Johnson and a small group of mixed UN-personnel walked inside. When the Sergeant saw the gathered group of the people who was running the show he walked changed his course and walked up the ramp leading to the platform.

"Cortana, we followed your instructions and have fixed the shield-thingy. I ordered the rest to begin to fix the circuits throughout the ships after they get some sleep."

"Understood, and it is a shield circuit emitter, Sergeant, not a shield-thingy." Cortana corrected Johnson.

Johnson just shrugged his shoulders.

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Date: 27 October 2552 (Fall of Reach +2 months)

Time: 13.30- SET (Standard Earth Time)

Location: Shuttle T-342, Survey of orbital defence capabilities.

Harper gazed out at the different installations surrounding Earth. Smaller shuttles and ships were transporting maintenance-personnel to the different ships and stations.

The UN High Council seemed to become more cooperative as the news of the Fall of Reach reached them. They had given the military unrestricted funds, but Harper knew it was probably already too late. What few people knew was that Earth had lost the position as biggest manufacturer of warships over three-hundred years ago to Reach.

While Earth still had the largest orbital installations, they only produced civilian-crafts and smaller military support ships, not the lumbering capital-class ships that Reach was famous for.

Earth had only seventy percent of the military constructional capabilities Reach had. It would take at least a decade to build the infrastructure to allow Earth to achieve the same production Reach had, especially with the system lacking any larger quantities of metal due to five-hundred years of constant mining. And Harper knew, they didn't have a decade. By that time most of the ships in the fleet would either be destroyed or to old to continue active frontline service.

There was also another reason to motivate the UN-councils decision, on stellar scale Reach had been only a few steps away from Earth, and now with the Covenant at the doorsteps the aliens weren't that far away threat anymore, they were extremely real.

A steady stream of both civilian and military ships had arrived at Earth, hundreds of evacuation vessels and smaller military crafts, together with fifty-two capital-ships from the Reach space fleet.

The stream had become smaller the last week, and the ships that now arrived were considered the stragglers.

They went public with the destruction of Reach two weeks ago, and thanks to the preparations there weren't any larger incidents of panic. However, the fighting moral was down the drain, especially with the legendary Spartans among the dead.

He, together with the other Commanders in Chief, had been ordered to put together a plan that would insure the continued survival of humanity in the event of a Covenant assault on Earth.

They had analysed every bit of data about the battle at Reach, and working from there had begun to device solutions to the more obvious flaws.

Harper had decided to get a first hand look at the defences, both to get a more proper look of the situation, and to raise the moral.

First and foremost in the defence of Earth was the thirty Super MACs' in geo-sync orbit around Earth, firing a 30 000 ton solid tungsten round at one-seventh the speed of light.

They would annihilate any smaller crafts hit, and inflict tremendous damage to larger ships.

All MAC's were placed in battle-clusters with three in each, and the crossfire the Admiral anticipated from placing them in such a way would hopefully slow down the Covenant.

Apart from having almost the double amounts of MACs' around Earth then Reach, there were an additional three in lunar orbit, two around Mars, and four around Pluto.

Apart from the MACs', there were also numerous hundred and fifty year old, badly maintained orbital missile defence stations that the past decades had served as storage for ship parts.

He had put a great deal of UNSC-technicians to repair them and make them fit for battle, and the repairs were being done, but not without incidents. Most of the equipment was old and needed to be changed, but most of the modern equipment was incompatible with the old one, so it took time to make the adjustments.

Apart from the orbital missile defence there was also a land-based one. That one however was considerable older then the ones in space, it had been built more then four-hundred years prior, and consisted only of nuclear weapons. All of the missile-silos were marked as sites of historical value after the sixteen-minute war back in the 22nd century, and as such had been maintained many times better then its orbital counterpart.

Had it been under different circumstances Harper would have laughed at the fact that the weapons that their ancestors had built hundreds of years ago, and had caused one of the darkest and bloodiest chapters in human history, today would be used to prevent their destruction.

With the liberty to use all of the UN tactical nuclear reserves, General Grant had the brilliant idea to use the massive ancient robots to be equipped with prototype Ares-warheads.

Admiral Harper had been sceptical at first, but those robots were the only ones large enough to actually carry the Ares-warhead. Thirty of these prototype warheads had arrived from Reach six months back, but the robot to carry them hadn't been fully developed yet, and now they would never be. The relic-robot, as many of the involved engineers had begun to call it, were the only way to actually make use of the Ares-warheads.

The debriefings had shown that most of the Super-Mac's at Reach had been disabled because of the destruction of the planetary reactors, so the normal defence force had been increased if the Covenant tried the same tactic again, which was almost guaranteed, the Covenant always used the same tactics.

General Grant had assured him that he would be able to fight off an equal number of Covenant ground forces.

If worst came to worst, they could call in an air-strike from one of the many fighter/bomber wings in space.

The true problem came when he reviewed the fleet.

Even if he counted the damaged ships from Reach he still only had 256 capital-ships, and that was too few to put up an effective defensive perimeter around Earth. The gathered military heads had argued over that over the course of numerous hours. In the end, the answer had come from the ensign that had served the coffee.

"Admiral, you have already ordered that two outdated defence systems be brought back online, why not continue with it and take a look around the Pluto scrap yards?" The ensign had asked when he had poured the admiral a new cup.

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Location: Slip-space

Time: Unknown

Ranma settled down in his own corner of the bridge, and began to eat the meagre rations they had been served today. Even thought the ship's canteen was well stocked, and Cortana said that the elites and humans had similar eating-habits, no one wanted to try the food unless they had no other option.

Ranma munched on the last of his protein-bar and gulped down some water. One of the ODST looked at him, and then stood up and walked over to him.

"I see that you were a Helljumper once." He said and motioned to the half-concealed tattoo on Ranma's arm.

Ranma nodded and rolled up the sleeve to show him the entire tattoo, he had no reason to hide it. It would just be another thing that would convince people that they simply were highly trained soldiers that had joined an elite force, and not genetically enhanced humans that had been trained since they were children.

"So, were do I have to sign to get an armour like yours?" The helljumper asked with a smile.

"You don't." He said and avoided the question.

"Oh?" The Helljumper asked confused.

Ranma mentally sighed before he replied.

"I was recruited, but if you ask me what chart they followed when they picked us I don't know." He said honestly, and it wasn't an complete lie either.

"Oh." He said a little dejected.

The conversation continued a couple of minutes, staying mostly with the helljumper's, and the occasional curios question about the Spartans. It all ended when the soldier had to end his break and continue his work.

He stretched a little before laying down on the couple of blankets that was his bed. Being a Spartan didn't make him immune to the effects of fatigue, so with his assigned workload done, and no more interruptions he was about to go to sleep.

As he was about to close his eyes however, an irritating feeling that didn't go away feel over him. It continued to grow steadily, increasing in strength for every second that went by. It was very vague, he had no idea why and were it came from.

He stood up and walked around the bridge, trying to clear his head of the feeling. The more he tried to rid himself of it the more it gnawed in the back of his head.

He stepped up to the raised platform, and he could see that Emilia was running the checks on the sub-light engines Cortana had asked her to do.

Then something happened, had Ranma tried to explain it he would have described it as someone stroking a guitar string in his head, it was like a long vibrating tone in the back of his head.

"Cortana, we just left slip-space." He said without knowing how he knew that, and turned to the small hologram on one of the screens.

Cortana didn't get the time to reply, because a second later it seemed like the entire sub-structure of the ship groaned. He didn't get time to ponder why, because the entire ship shook violently, and the entire bridge seemed to lurch at least sixty degrees to the left. Even with all his superhuman reflexes he didn't manage to stay on his feet, he began to slide down the platform but managed to grab one of the pillars supporting the holo-screens.

With the other hand he managed to grab collars of Emilia who was about slide past him.

There was no up or down in space, so even if the ship decided to tilt to the side there wouldn't be any gravity to alert the crew of the change in direction. The only logical explanation to their situation was that either they had crashed into something that had a large gravity field, or the systems that powered the artificial gravity had gone bonkers.

Emilia meanwhile, had managed to crawl to one of the panels, and began to try and get an assessment on the situation, something that was made considerably harder with the fact that she had to hold onto the screen as not to fall down.

"Were we attacked?" She yelled to the hologram of Cortana who was flickering in and out of existence the entire time, the speakers must have been damaged because they could only catch small bits of words from the AI. The ships sub-structure was still vibrating madly, and he could hear the groan of metal as it was bent.

Ranma crawled over to where Emilia was standing and moved her aside to get a better look at the damage. He quickly went through the different systems, most systems had malfunctioning software, so the search for the cause of everything still eluded him.

"Cortana, can you hear me?" Emilia yelled over the sound.

Cortana's hologram flickered out once and then on, but this time she remained, she had a frantic expression.

"Chief, the slip-space engines went unstable when we entered normal space, and I can't cut the energy flow. Worse, the cooling systems is overloaded and has begun automated shutdown, the reactors have already reached dangerous levels, full reactor meltdown in less the three minutes. Get down their and vent the entire engine system NOW!" She sounded hysterical as she yelled the last part.

Ranma let go of the panel and slid along the floor.

He jumped down an open door and took off with full speed down the tilting corridors. The light over the door at the lift glowed red, but he slammed his shoulder as hard as he could against it, and with a loud bang it flew open. He jumped through the door and slid down the shaft.

He counted the decks he slid past, and as he came to the one with the engine room on it his arm flashed out and clutched the small ledge. He gritted his teeth in pain as his arm was dislocated at the sudden stop.

He pulled himself up with the other arm and swung a leg over the edge. The door flashed red, and then green, before it opened.

"Thanks." He said to the ever-present AI as he continued to run down the corridor.

"One minute twenty seconds left. Ranma, please hurry!" Came the frantic reply.

He stumbled forwards as the gravity corrected itself, but his body reacted on instinct and instead of bracing himself he let his momentum carry him into a forwards-roll that ended with him on the feet again.

He hastily looked down the three corridors before taking off down one of them.

"This is the wrong way, you can't pass…" Cortana began.

Ranma ran through an open door into one of the large maintenance shafts that made it possible to move larger pieces of equipment throughout the ship. On the opposite sides of each other was a catwalk separated by the twenty-meter wide gap.

Ranma didn't even slow down as he with a quick jump planted one foot on the railing, and then with a giant leap flew over the bottomless chasm.

"Shortcut." He simply said as he landed and left a massive dent in the floor.

"here…." Cortana trailed off unbelievingly.

As he ran through the door he had a straight path to the engine-room. His body became a blur as he sprinted down the corridor.

"Thirty seconds!" She yelled over the comm-system.

He looked around the engine room quickly for any sign of the panel or switch.

"Three catwalks up!" Cortana screamed as the Spartan hesitated a split second.

Ranma didn't even look around for a flight of stairs, instead he ran straight towards the wall, and jumped up. It looked like he ran a couple of steps straight up the wall before he kicked off as hard as he could. He flew upwards while making a backwards flip, and with a loud crash, landed on the catwalk opposite the wall.

"Big red glowing button, press it now!" He heard the AI yell.

He saw the object in question and ran as fast as he could, stopping only to touch the button.

The panel's light flashed once and changed from red to green.

The vibrating became less violent, and the entire ship seemed to sigh in relief.

"Dumping all excess plasma." Cortana's now much calmer voice said.

A loud humming was heard, probably the plasma being redirected. The humming increased in pitch, until he could hear a loud screech coming from his right. It definitely didn't sound like anything good happening. He took a step back, but that was all he had time to do, because the wall exploded outwards and the blast pushed him over the railing.

Everything seemed to go in slow-motion as he fell backwards down to the floor. He didn't have anytime to braze for impact, so he slammed into the metal deck with full force.

He could only look in amazement as the upper part of the engine room exploded in a ball of blue fire, the explosion seemed to start a chain reaction that went from the top of the bottom.

He had enough time raise his arm in front of his face before the shockwave reached him, throwing him through the entire room like a human cannonball, before finally slamming into a broken piece of machinery. He slumped down and had time to see the entire engine explode in a storm of plasma and shrapnel, before the explosion hit him and everything went black.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Covenant Holy City High Charity

Hierarch inner sanctum

Nosolee walked through the massive door guarded by half a dozen of the Honour Guards.

As the door closed behind him he fell down into the traditional bow of respect, not daring to speak before being spoken too.

"Ah, fleet-master, good of you to join us." He could hear Regret say.

"It was your orders, honoured hierarch." He stated simply, head still bowed.

The Prophet didn't answer that.

"I wish you to meet Zimmae, fleet-master of the Second Great Fleet, and Tartarus, chieftan of the brutes, and fleet-master of the Thirty-First Great Fleet." Regret continued, and Nosolee raised his head to look at the persons in question.

Zimmae looked at him in arrogant indifference, while Tartarus looked at him as if measuring him up. He stared back with the same look. Tartarus crossed his arms over his chest and nodded an almost unperceivable nod, and then huffed in respect. Nosolee then turned to look at the other elite.

"I thought that Nyaeven commanded the second Great Fleet." He asked the other elite.

"She has joined her ancestors in the halls of the dead, her age finally defeating her. I was appointed as her replacement as commander of the fleet, while the mentor Narmia has shouldered the burden as Head of the Council" Zimmae said and bowed his head in respect to the memory of the dead leader.

Nosolee nodded in understanding, Nyaeven had been old, even for a elite.

"Tomorrow her cremation will be, and as a Fleet-Master you are allowed to the ceremony." Mercy said.

"She has for generations been a role-model for young aspiring warriors, so it would be a great honour to personally witness the ceremony." Nosolee said and looked at the Prophet with respect.

"Now, while the burial of fleet-master Nyaeven is important it was not the reason we called you here." Regret said and motioned for them to step closer.

"We are here to deal with one of the problems that has been a thorn in our side for a long time, the humans." Mercy continued where Regret left off.

"Noble hierarch, we were unable to attain the position of the human homeworld, all their ship…" Nosolee began, but Truth raised a hand to silence him.

"We have attained that knowledge elsewhere, the battle at Reach was just to cripple their already meagre forces." Truth said to the elite.

Nosolee bowed in understanding.

"Noble hierarch, may I then ask why we haven't eradicated that vermin yet?" Zimmae asked and sounded disgusted as he said vermin.

"They are vermin yes, but it would not be above them prepare a trap. This is what the entire war has been about, destroying their worlds was a way to ensure that they fought with all their forces, otherwise they may have only used a handful and concealed their through strength. Reach was the final test, the humans revered that world almost as much as their homeworld, Earth, and they would have tried anything as not to let it fall." Mercy said as he explained.

"The fact that it did fall, and the fact that even though we lost almost an entire fleet, we still were victorious, has made us certain that they do not have any special ships or weapons that could turn the tide of battle into their favour. We have anticipated that Earth will be as well defended as Reach, but the cost in blood is more then enough payment to see their empire in ruins." Regret continued for Mercy.

Nosolee nodded in understanding, as did Tartarus, Zimmae however, didn't seem to appreciate the advantage the decision had given them.

"Now, fleet-master Melaene, commander of the twelfth Great Fleet, has begun the path that will ultimately lead to the end of the human heretics and their heresy. He and his fleet has split up and begun the journey to the last of the human worlds, and he has the orders to set fire to every single one, every one except Earth. When he is finished he will return here, and when that happens, you will set out with every single ship under your command and assault the last of the humans worlds." Truth finished the

"As it is your orders, Noble Hierarchs." The three chorused and placed their closed fists over their hearts.

"You shall however, claim this world in honour of our Covenant intact." He said to the gathered warriors.

"Noble hierarch…." Zimmae began, but was cut off before he said another word.

"Are you questioning our decision?" Truth said calmly to the elite.

"No, only voicing my concern, the humans are filth, a plague upon this universe, why spare them?" He asked, his voice filled with religious zeal.

"The reason we spare that planet is only for us to know, but rest assured fleet-master, they humans will be punished for their defiance, a faith worse then death awaits them." Truth said regally.

"Go now, and prepare your ship-crews and you warriors. Commander Nosolee, stay, we have further things to discuss." Mercy said as the three warriors bowed deeply and was about to leave.

Nosolee nodded and turned back to the Prophets.

The doors behind him slid close and the dark room was only illuminated by the light coming through the massive windows cowered by long banners, all decorated with exquisite symbols and runes.

"I see something is troubling you, speak what is on your mind." Mercy said and nodded to the elite.

"I… Is it appropriate to entrust such a mission to them?" He said and spoke up.

"You doubt their faith?" Mercy said slowly.

"No, faith they do not lack, what I doubt is their capability." Nosolee said.

"Oh, you think you are more capable to lead this assault?" Mercy said and looked at the elite with an interested expression.

Nosolee shook his head in negative.

"No, I do not deny the fact that I am inexperienced as well, I only have my position because I was the last war-master left after Halo. My warriors needed the firm leadership of a Covenant Commander after the devastating loss of moral caused by the destruction of the Halo." He took a pause to collect himself, and to organize his thoughts.

"Tartarus is a brute, and it is no news that elite relations with the brutes has been… strained, so my accusations may be biased. Brutes are known to disregard rules and the code of honour to achieve their goals, and I do not think Tartarus is an exception. He seems like a competent leader, but I have yet to see him in combat so I will not say anything yet." He took a pause again to think about his feeling for the younger elite, Zimmae.

"Tartarus has followed and obeyed every order we have given him, and your assumptions about his leadership qualities are right, he is indeed a fine soldier.

"Then my pre-justice against the brutes was false, and for that I apologize."

"You have simply seen you faults, a quality a commander will need to be successful." Regret said to the elite.

"Thank you, noble Hierarch."

"Then please continue, this discussion has been… enlightening."

"Zimmae… Is hard to explain… I think he lacks the real experience." Noslee said and thought of someway to explain it to the council.

"He is inexperienced, yes, but his fate doesn't falter like so many others. We have the hopes that he will become a symbol for coming generations, as Nyaeven was a symbol for the current and past generations." Mercy said and explained for the elite.

"I understand, that was all that was on my mind, noble hierarch" He said simply, but mentally a small part of his mind doubted the wisdom of the council for a second.

"Now then, with that settled you may wonder why you will participate in this assault, when you currently only have three ships under your command." Mercy began.

"You have proven yourself worthy to be our eyes. In the council chamber you spoke the undeniable truth, even at the risk of being called a heretic. You told us the facts, and nothing more, letting us make our own judgement based on this. The council would normally condemn such behaviour, but with the severity of this situation you did as good as you could, that not saying that we are pleased with the destruction of halo, and you still have a long way to go before you and your warriors may be blessed with our favour again." Regret continued.

"As a step on the way to redeem yourselves, you will stay back and monitor the battle for us to review later. We wish to see how effective Tartarus will be against the humans, the brutes still hasn't fought any battle of this scale." Truth finished.

"I will prepare my crew for the upcoming tasks." He said and bowed his head in acknowledgement to the prophets' orders.

"Before you go, you may want to know that while you don't need any major ship numbers for this kind of mission, three ships are still too few. Thirty ships have been added to your command, but the crews you have to find yourselves." Mercy said to the still bowing elite.

"I wish to thank you, noble Hierarch, for your generosity." Nosolee said and bowed deeply in gratitude.

"Now be gone, we have much to discuss." Truth said and dismissed the elite.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXx

Location: Pluto, orbital scrap-yard

Date: 5 January 2553

"So, how are things going?" Harper asked as he looked out of the window at the old ships sitting side by side. To his right the main maintenance officer of the orbital scrap-yard was standing. With all the cuts in funding they had about as much personnel as to make sure that the ships didn't float away, any form of regular checks of the ships were only made in someone dreams.

"Bad, most of the ships look fine from the outside, but inside they are a mess, we have to change both computer systems, and wiring. Changing the wiring isn't hard, any half-assed engineer or technician can do it, but changing everything in a ship that is one and a half kilometres long and have more then a hundred-thousand meters of cable and you see the problem." He said and nodded to the few ships that was moving to Earth of own engine.

"How many of them are space-worthy?" Harper asked and looked out the window again.

"Well, the nine halcyon-cruisers are in best shape, but then they have only been here for five years, and the six Athens-missile battle-cruisers are working with sixty percent. The rest, we will need time to get them working." He said and brushed some sweat away from his sot-covered forehead.

"And how long will it take to get a ship working?" Harper asked the man.

"Well, with the personnel that you gave me, I might get one, perhaps two ships a week into good condition, but didn't get your hopes up, these ships were ancient even during my great-grandfathers days." The man said and shook his head.

"And what condition does a ship here have when it is considered good?" Harper asked the technician.

"That they don't explode during their trip to Earth." He said serious, and the grim face made the admiral certain he wasn't kidding.

"And what with the work on the E-one to E-four?" Harper asked the technician again.

The man looked at the admiral with an unreadable expression before he answered.

"I can't say for sure, they are still checking through it to see where to start, no one has been inside those crafts the last four-hundred years, and the work needed to be done seems to be more extensive then we first thought. It might take two months, it might take a year, I can't say for sure yet." He said and closely watched the admiral, and as the admiral closed his eyes, he decided to speak up again.

"Admiral, do you really think they might be needed, that there is no hope?" He said to the admiral in a worried voice.

"They will be our absolute last line of defence against the oncoming onslaught." He said and sighed.

"And son." He said to the technician.

"Yes, sir?" The man answered back.

"This will be left between the two of us." He said and turned back to the window, where another of the halcyon-cruisers left for Earth.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXx

Covenant Holy City High Charity

Mausoleum of the Arbiter

Nosolee slowly walked in the funeral-procession with the rest of the elite elder council, and the gathered fleet-masters. As it was only elites allowed to the funeral, Tartarus wasn't present. Instead of the ceremonial armour, they were all wearing long white robes.

They were chanting, the voices echoed throughout the massive chamber, and it sounded like a thousand voices hymned the sacred melodies. The stretcher with the body of Nyaeven was slowly carried to the centre of the chamber, in front of the pillar in which the armour of the sacred arbiter rested. The placed the stretcher on an ornate dais made of a black, scorched metal.

The chanting became stronger, the words in an almost forgotten language, praising the arbiters and then the pain they felt for the loss of a warrior such as Nyaeven.

Her replacement as head elder, Narmia, slowly walked up to the dead, and all chanting stopped. He took tone were the others left off, and he sang out the deeds she had done in her life, the battles she had fought, the enemies she had slain, and the warriors she had trained.

He asked the arbiters to watch over her soul until the start of the Great Journey, and to prepare her as best they could. Narmia then fell to his knees next to the dead, and carefully removed a green-blue crystal imbedded in the chest of Nyaevens armour, and then placed it into his own.

The chanting began once again, and increased in strength.

Every member of the council pulled out the hilt of their ceremonial swords, and ignited them.

The twenty councillors surrounded the stretcher, and then plunged their swords deep into the podium, fuelling the machinery within. Bright blue flames appeared on the podium, and began to burn the body of Nyaeven.

Soon only her armour remained, and after only awhile, even that disappeared.

The council members deactivated their swords, and the flames flickered out, leaving only ash on the podium.

The ashes were carefully gathered in a small ceramic urn, which was handed to everyone present.

Nosolee covered his fingertips with the ash, and then smeared it out on his white robe, around his heart. The small urn with the ash would then be placed in the halls of the elder, not as grand final resting place as the mausoleum of the arbiter, but almost as much respected.

Being cremated in the mausoleum of the arbiter was a privilege only the most honoured of warriors were allowed. He looked on Narmia whilst he was chanting, and knew that he would be a good replacement for Nyaeven, he had been given the unofficial title of the mentor by the lower ranks, as an act of honour to recognize the amount of famous warriors he had trained, which he was one off.

The changing of the head elder, was always followed by a purely formal meeting, but this time the questions of his continued role as leader of two of the Great Fleets would be brought up.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Location: Unknown

Time: Unknown

Ranma slowly opened one of his eyes, and then gritted his teeth in pain as he looked straight at some lights. He groggily tried to recall what had happened , and some blurry images of a explosion came to his mind. He tried to stand up, but a sharp stab of pain in his abdomen quickly stopped all movement. He was sitting with his back against a wall.

He raised his hand to wipe away some blood from his lip, and he could see that the sleeve on his jumpsuit was slightly scorched, but not enough to have been fatal. He had been hit by the shockwave, and the air had probably been heated by the plasma. If he had been exposed to plasma directly there would have been more damage to his jumpsuit, heck there wouldn't have been a jumpsuit, nor a Spartan left for that matter.

He quickly checked his arms for any sign of injury, burns of any kind should be treated at once.

Happy with finding no damage he began to check the rest of his body. As he moved his head a sharp pain flared in his neck. He prayed that he hadn't damaged his spine, or injured his air-pipe, or had cut a major artery.

As he moved his hand up to the place where the pain originated from he could feel a long, sharp piece of metal dangerously close to his neck. He moved his head slowly away from the piece of shrapnel, and as he looked at it he could see that it had buried itself deep into the wall, if he had only been a couple of centimetres more to the right the thing would have cut his head off.

Another stab of pain in his abdomen made him lock down, and he cursed at the sight.

Another piece of shrapnel had buried itself into the wall, but this time it hadn't missed him.

It had stabbed him through his stomach, and was buried deep into wall behind him, making it impossible to move without further aggravating the wound. The piece of metal must have been in close proximity to the plasma, because Ranma could see that the metal had cauterised the wound. Normally people wouldn't be to happy by being impaled by a large piece of burning metal, while Ranma didn't consider it good, he considered it less bad, he wouldn't die of blood loss at least.

"Cortana?" He asked out, hoping that some of the comm.-equipment had survived the blast.

Nothing but an eerie silence greeted him. He picked up his headset that had fallen onto the floor and tried again.

"Is anyone alive?" He croaked out.

He heard a low moan over the short range frequency.

"Respond, is anyone in the area surrounding the FTL-engines?"

"Ugh, Yeah. What the hell happened?" The familiar voice of Sergeant Johnson came over the radio. He sounded dazed, but then again having the entire ship shake like crazy could do that to a person.

"We had a critical failure in the main plasma conducts regulating the FTL-engine." Cortana's voice said over the radion.

"Once again in English." The Sergeant said, still pretty dazed.

"Large engine thing go BOOM." Ranma responded and groaned in pain.

"Oh." The Sergeant said.

"Sir, are you alright? Most of the sensors in the comportment are down, I can't get a stable reading on you." Cortana said over the comm.

"No, I need medical treatment, call down a couple of men…." He said and carefully touched the piece of metal shrapnel.

"And make sure they have some cutting equipment." He added.

"Affirmative. Johnson, you are closest, get down there while I send some more people to you." Cortana said over the comm.

"Okay, on my way."

"Cortana, what happened?" He said and tried to take his mind from the offending piece of metal nailing him to the wall.

"I don't know, there was a large surge in slip-spac…" Cortana began but then stopped.

"Everyone, I need to shut down all power throughout the ship, I need absolute radio-silence." Cortana said quickly, and then everything in the ship just turned off.

One after another the ships systems began to shut off, computer, sensors, weapons, shields, lights, and then finally gravity. Ranma could feel his body becoming weightless, and he made sure not to make any sudden movements to further aggravate his injuries.

He switched his radio to passive, and then just leaned his head backwards and waited.

He couldn't really say how long he had waited, it could have been minutes, it could have been hours, in the darkness it all became the same. He just sat silent and listened, he could hear the occasional groan of the substructure as the metal corrected itself after the ships violent movements.

After a while he thought he saw distance flashes of light, but dismissed it as his imagination.

He closed his eyes, he was becoming increasingly more tired. He was about to fall asleep when a voice woke him up.

"Chief? Are you alive in there?" The voice of sergeant Johnson said and his voice echoed through the empty chamber.

"Yeah, I'm here." He coughed out, but the echoes made it impossible to pinpoint the voice.

Ranma could see the sweeping light from a flashlight, and as it began to move away he quickly grabbed one of the emergency lights, and bent the piece of plastic.

The chemicals mixed and then emitted a ghostly green-yellow light that made it possible for Johnson to find Ranma.

"Christ! What the hell happened?" He exclaimed as he saw Ranma.

Ranma didn't respond as his body seemed to become more and more sluggish. He could see as Johnson kneeled next to him and began to attend his wounds, carefully removing the jumpsuit with a combat-knife to get to the wound directly. He could see as two others hastily made their way into the engine-room, walking around the piles of debris littering the room.

He recognised one as a marine, and the other being the medic in the small group of helljumpers' that survived.

They began to help Johnson in treating his wounds.

"Shit… serious…" He could only hear bits on their conversation, the rest just became background noise.

"Right through…body… shock…" The medic removed a small flashlight, and lifted his head carefully up so he could see his irises reaction to the exposure to light.

The man carefully lowered his hand to make sure he didn't make the wound on his neck worse, but Ranma's head didn't fall forwards, it stayed up looking over the shoulders of the three men performing emergency treatment of his wounds.

"fully opened… no reaction… light…losing…"

Standing behind them was a group of what appeared to be children, no one could have been older then ten, they were looking at him with friendly and honest smiles.

Even though their faces were young, and there eyes didn't show the same tiredness, pain and coldness from war, he still recognised who they were.

They were the Spartans, or the Spartans as they had been as children. He quickly looked over the gathered group, looking at the faces of friends thought long gone, faces of people that had been dead for years.

But as he looked over the people he noticed that some were some gaps in the otherwise perfect lines they were standing in, and soon he realised that not all the Spartans were present, a noticeable part was absent.

He looked questionable at the gathered children, but they only smiled back mysteriously.

One of the children stepped forwards, and Ranma recognised the child as Fred, one of the soldiers in his group, and one of his most trusted friends. He had been one of the team leaders that had been sent planetside on Reach.

But he didn't have the countless scars of battle, or the cold piercing green eyes he had the last time he saw him, he was smiling, and his eyes was twinkling in happiness. Ranma slowly raised his hand, and in response Fred raised his.

Their fingertips touched, and the dark hollow feeling that had grown the last years diminished considerable.

"Find them" Fred mouthed to him, then took a step backwards back into the lines.

One after another they began to fade away, waving their hands farewell.

"Who?" He mouthed back, trying desperately to move the rest of his body to make sure that they didn't leave him again, that they didn't leave him all alone.

"Find them" Fred mouthed again.

Soon the only one left was Fred who also began to fade away. He waved farewell as Ranma desperately tried to move his body, but failed.

"Bye bro" Fred mouthed before finally disappearing.

As Fred finally vanished Ranma let his head fall and darkness once again engulfed him.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Location: Geneva, Earth

Date: 29 January 2553

"….Hanover, Rein, Bretagne, Constantinople, Rhodes, all in all 19 colonies completely annihilated by the first wave of Covenant ships, all within the span of 20 hours. All military experts agree, the Covenant must have captured navigational data, and these attacks are only to probe our defences. If the accounts from the ships from Reach are accurate the remaining Covenant ships from Reach alone would be able to take out all the colonies in only a few small attack waves." One of the captains said to the rest of the assembly.

"We lack the resources to send aid to any colony, everything we have is needed here." Another said.

The argument had gone on for hours after the first report of the destroyed colonies reached the UN's ears.

"Captain, how many human colonies are there left?" Admiral Harper decided to speak up, he had been sitting quiet the entire time.

"Seven hundred and thirty four colonies, most of them are of the inner circle of the inner colonies, sir." The captain said solemnly.

The admiral nodded, he already knew that, but it was a good way to stop the bickering that had plagued this meeting. But hearing the number spoken out loud was still shocking to him, he remembered only twenty years prior when the inner colonies had numbered close to 2500, and the outer colonies many times more.

Now the vast intergalactic empire that humanity had built over the course of over 500 years was only shadows of its former glory.

"I must shamefully admit that there is no chance to aid any of these colonies, but we can still not let them be mercilessly slaughtered." He said softly, but the quiet in the room made it perfectly audible for everyone.

"Then what to you propose we do?" The captain asked.

"A full scale evacuation of all the colonies." He said and by the shocked looks nobody thought that was what he would say.

"But we lack the assets to evacuate everyone." The captain countered.

"The scrap yards around Houston, Corsica and Rome, and our own around Pluto have already been notified to bring all ships, but most importantly warships back into space-worthy condition. All warships have been redeployed here, while the civilian ones have been left without orders. I suggest that we issue a 253-D to take direct command over all civilian ships with FTL-drives, get them to pick up as many colonials as possible, then high tail it out of there. We will not be able to save everyone, but we will be able to save a good part." Harper finished and looked at assembled military.

The others nodded in resignation, everybody knew that this was by far the best alternative.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXx

Location: Colony Brazil, High Orbit, freighter Colonial-4367-Alpha

Date: 5 February 2553 (Evacuation of human colonies + 2 weeks)

"Cap'n, cargo bay, 1, 3, 7, and 14 are done, and we will have 13 and 9 done in a couple of hours." A man in oil covered overalls said to the only other occupant of the small office.

Captain Reistadt looked up from the terminal he was working at and nodded in understanding. He wasn't a Captain in the UN, and it was years since he was in the navy, only a civilian, but owner and captain of the vessel C-4367-A, one of three ships in the small family business.

As the message about a full 253-D from the UNSC arrived, and their orders to take as many people with them as possible, he hadn't hesitated a single second to flush his entire cargo of computers out into space, and then head for his designated coordinates ASAP.

To him it was about god damned time the UN began to think.

When he had arrived at Brazil he had encountered the largest assortment of different ships he had ever seen, it appeared that the UN was ordering every thing that could fly to act as rescue boats.

The coordination of the fleet, or rather lack thereof, had been hindering the evacuation, no one knew how long they would stay on the ships, so some ships only had a few people with them, while others, including Reistadt, tried to get as many people aboard as possible.

There had been a large disagreement among the ship-captains, and it had ended when Reistadt had been forced to physically threaten a couple of others with throwing them out the airlock if they didn't try to get as many people as possible of the planet.

That act had somehow led to him becoming the unofficial commander of the small fleet, it had been small at first, just asking for advice in regards to the evacuation, but three days since the beginning and after only a few ships had managed to get an acceptable amount of people aboard they had stated that they needed his help.

The first thing he did was to use the planets interstellar communications facility to make contact with Earth to relay the problems.

Had someone three weeks ago told him that he would be using top priority channels to make contact with the UNSC's Military High Command at Earth to complain he wouldn't believed them.

The UN had assured them that they would contact the other colonies to make sure their was a proper and efficient chain of command, and as the one with enough guts to call them, and as a graduate of Reach Naval Academy he had been given the dubious pleasure of making sure the fleet at Brazil made it to back to Earth for further orders with as many people as possible.

He looked out the window as another shuttle made its way towards the ship, it would then dock and quickly make its way back to the planet were it would pick up another round of people.

He looked down at the terminal and could see that his ship alone carried almost sixty times more people onboard then what should be possible. All the nonessential people that only took up space where then herded into one of the thirty four cargo bays in the ship were they would be placed in cryo-sleep, another idea that had been suggested by his brief chat with admiral Harper.

Cryo-tubes was a relatively simple technology, and rather common even among the civilians, so it hadn't proven to hard get enough tubes to fill all excess space aboard the ship. He had done a brief trip down to one of the cargo bays and it was filled to the brink with cryo-tubes, lying next to each other, hundreds in a row. People would then place themselves inside, there had been a couple of people that were sceptic, but noting serious. Once an entire row was occupied, another row would be placed on top of the first one, and so it continued until there was no more space.

Apart from the rag-tag fleet, the planet being one of the inner colonies also had a large number of the B-302 rescue boats, unfortunately they had nowhere near the number of ships to evacuate the entire planet, and Reistadt didn't know if he would have the guts to leave an entire planet to fend for itself.

Worse, he could only imagine the amount of hysteria planteside, he had been able to see one of the few news reports before the entire global communication had fallen apart. In less then a week a prosperous and organized system had been turned into an anarchistic war zone, the only thing people cared about now was getting off the planet.

Reistadt sighed and let his head rest on the cold desk surface, Brazil was just one of a thousand colonies being evacuated, her could just imagine the chaos in one of the larger systems.

There was a knock on the door and a second later the same dirty clothed man stepped in.

"Cap'n, another group of B-302's has left the planet, the boys down there say that they should be finished in another day or two, maybe three if the fighting down there gets worse." He said and looked down on the small notepad in his hand.

"The ships already in orbit?" Reistad asked, and rubbed his eyes.

"Seven to ten days, 'cause the lack of any larger type of shuttles is seriously hindering the evac." He said and quickly looked through a couple of notes.

"Okay, notify me if anything changes, I will hit the sack now." He said and nodded to the crewman.

"Aye, aye, skipper." The man said and left.

Reistadt turned back to his desk and pulled out a half full bottle of whiskey, seventy five years old, and poured himself a glass. He just hoped he could live with himself after this.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXx

Location: Unknown

Date: Unknown

Ranma once again opened his eyes, but was only met with blurry shades. He blinked a couple of times and he could see the blurs slide into focus.

"Careful sir, don't move or you might aggravate the injury." The medic said and carefully moved his head a little.

"How long?" He half groaned, half gasped.

"Only a short time, forty five minutes, we managed to get that shrapnel out of you, and are moving you to the bridge." The medic responded.

"Johnson, which way?" A man to his left asked the sergeant who was carrying the flashlight.

"I think it is this way, but it is hard to say in zero gee and without real lights." He said and motioned down a corridor with his hand.

"What happened?" Ranma asked and looked around. He was strapped to a stretcher, and the medic was slowly guiding the floating stretcher and Ranma through the ship.

"Don't know, there has been complete silence for close to an hour now, as far as I know we might be the only survivors, that was one hell of an explosion." He said while slowly floating down the corridor.

"Shhh, listen." The medic suddenly said.

Everyone stopped and listened, at first there was nothing, only silence, but then they began to hear something. It was low groans of metal. Ranma noticed that they seemed to float towards one side, and he could see pieces of dirt do the same, they had an almost unnoticeable trace of gravity.

"What the hell is tha-" Johnson said but didn't finish.

A loud BANG sounded throughout the ship followed by a sudden shudder

It sounded like something very large hit the ship, but they didn't get time to question the event, because they were forcefully thrown across the corridor, pined down to the wall.

Gravity seemed too had gone haywire, it shifted the entire time, throwing them across the hall and back. Only Ranma seemed to recognise what was truly happening. He managed to manoeuvre the stretcher he was strapped to so it stuck between two pieces of protruding metal.

"The ship is spinning, grab into something until it stops!" He yelled and forcefully grabbed the piece of metal.

He didn't know how long it lasted, but soon the violent motions slowed down until they finally stopped altogether.

"What the hell happened?" Sergeant Johnson asked while rubbing his forehead were a nasty bruise was forming.

Ranma, still stuck between the pieces of alien metal responded slowly while shaking away his dizziness.

"Something must have hit the ship to throw it into a spin, something large." He said.

"How large?" Johnson asked and gritted his teeth in pain, small droplets of blood were slowly floating away from the sergeants forehead.

"Large enough to have noticeable traces of gravity, but we can't have hit it particularly fast, or the impact would have killed us and destroyed the ship." He said and tried to get himself and the stretcher free.

It didn't work so he simply removed the straps and floated away. He made sure not to move anything beneath his chest, or he might reopen the wound.

"Shouldn't Cortana make sure we don't hit anything like that? I mean something that's larger then this fucking ship can't be that hard to notice." Johnson said angrily while rubbing his forehead.

"She must have killed every system on this ship, including all sensors." Ranma responded while floating around.

"Why the hell would she do something that stupid?" He responded and looked at the Spartan.

Ranma looked at the sergeant.

"Can't tell for sure, but there is a large chance it has something to do with the FTL-drive." He said and began to manoeuvre himself towards the bridge, closely followed by Johnson and the others.

It took them a good forty minutes for them to make their way through the ship and to the bridge. They didn't find a single evidence of any systems of the ship being online at all, only complete darkness and silence, only interrupted by the occasional groan of metal from the substructure of the ship.

Sergeant Johnson and the medic pried open the last door and they stepped inside.

The bridge was lit with chemical flares, and the small hologram of Cortana looking like she was deep in thought.

Ranma pushed off the wall softly and twisted a little in the air so he began to float towards the elevated platform.

As Ranma moved in front of the hologram Cortana opened her eyes.

"Cortana-" He beagn but was cut off.

"Sir? You alright?" She said worriedly.

"I've been better." He said and rubbed his stomach and the wound carefully.

Ranma noticed that Cortana was staring into infinity, she wasn't focusing on anything.

"What happened?" He asked the AI.

Cortana shook her head before she replied.

"Covenant, a lot of Covenant." She said.

That immediately caught Ranma's attention.

"Don't worry, they haven't noticed us." She continued.

"Whoa, you're losing me, start from the beginning." He said quickly.

"The surge in slip-space was a Covenant fleet, normally the surge would have been unnoticeable, but the engines where already damaged, and that small wave was the drop that made the metaphorical goblet to flow over. The engines shut off and threw us out into normal space, and not before long a Covenant fleet came after." She told the cyborg.

"Then why did you turn off all the power?" He asked.

"We only have one third power to the engines, it would be senseless to try and run, and suicide to stay and fight, especially in the middle of a Covenant fleet, better to play dead." She explained.

"So instead of being an active unknown Covenant ship, we are a dead unknown Covenant ship, in either case they will still investigate. I simply don't see he logic in that." Ranma said to the AI.

Cortana was still staring out into infinity, probably because no eternal sensors were online.

"Normally yes, but they managed to bump into us at Reach, and there is pretty much only one thing left out here, shipwrecks, one frigate more or less wont be noticed." She said to Ranma.

"We are still here, so I guess it worked." Ranma said and focused on the AI.

"Only thing I didn't count on was one of their last ship to re-enter normal space to appear less then a kilometre from us. Had it only hit us a couple of times faster then the 3km/h it hit us with we would have been debris now. I suspect that they were as surprised as us, but at least they had their inertial stabilizers online, so they couldn't have felt more then a light shudder at most." Cortana rambled on.

"What about the Covenant?" Ranma said to cut the AI of.

"The fleet is large, but without active scanners I can't tell how large. At least my passive scanners are having better results, I am just happy that the Covenant never had heard about encrypted data streams. Their entire battle network is a joke, fully open frequencies as soon as they think they aren't watched, I just wish I could do some real scanning…"

"Cortana..." He said warningly.

"Opps, sorry. Well, I can't tell you anything significant, we will just have to wait for the fleet to leave, until then we are running dark.

Ranma nodded, but Cortana didn't see.

"How is the rest of the crew?" Ranma finally said after a moment of silence.

"Large amounts of bruises, a few broken bones, but fortunately no dead. How about yourself?" She answered tiredly.

"I'm out of the fight for the time being, not to be partial but the wound looked pretty bad." He said and scratched his neck absentmindedly.

"What happened?" Cortana asked worriedly.

"I had three feet of solid metal showed through my stomach that nailed me to the wall." He answered.

"And you are up and running?" She asked astonished.

"Until the painkillers wears off." He answered.

"I was afraid we lost you, it was close with the FTL-drive, to close." She said sadly.

"When it counts." He answered simply.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Location: Colony Brazil, High Orbit, freighter Colonial-4367-Alpha

Date: 12 February 2553 (Evacuation of human colonies + 3 weeks)

"…for the love of God, you can't leave us here…"

The rest of the transmission was cut off by the crewmember manning the communication station, their was no one onboard the ship that wanted to hear the planets last desperate pleas for help, for they would surely haunt their nightmares.

Reistadt looked out over the thirty or so people in the bridge, making eye contact with each and every one.

"Prepare for a message to the entire fleet." He said and looked as the small light on terminal changed from red to green.

"Prepare for immediate departure, we are sending the jump coordinates now." He finished the message with adding the large file of jump calculations to it.

Thirty minutes later the first ships began to accelerate before disappearing in a quick flash, the rest soon joining them.

Left behind was a colony thrown into anarchy.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXx

Location: Reach

Date: Unknown

"Ma'am?" Cortana asked.

"Do it." Silvia answered.

Silence filled the bridge for a moment

"Commencing flash-scan." Cortana said with an unemotional voice.

They could hear the ship power up for a second before it shut down again. Ranma listened for anything out of the ordinary, waiting silently for the sound of plasma torpedoes and pulse lasers to hit the unprepared ship, tearing through its armour and either incinerating or exposing its occupants to the cold void of space.

Ranma, who had put on his armour once again, for there where still some of the automated healing chemicals left in it, closed the last of the air-seals, even though it would only buy him another 30 minutes if the ship was destroyed.

He was slightly nervous now, but as usual it didn't show, there was absolutely nothing he could do now that could be of any help.

"Processing data." Cortana said.

An entire week had gone since they came back to the very place it all had begun, Reach. Two days later the passive scanners had detected a large amount of slip space ruptures, but not enough to give any kind of number to the ships in the fleet. Another two days later there was another slip space rupture, and once again they couldn't get any kind of number on the fleet size.

They had waited three days without any kind of sign from the Covenant, and Cortana had proposed the idea to do a quick scan of the area, hopefully quickly enough not to be noticed by any potential Covenant.

"Initial scans show only a couple of radio echoes, but not a single trace of any Covenant." Cortana answered with relief in her voice.

"Then power up the area to do a full sweep, I want to be completely sure there aren't any squid-jaws out there." Silva answered.

He could hear the ship once again power up, but this time it stayed that way.

The bridge once again remained still.

"Everything is green, no Covenant." Cortana answered.

A collective sigh was heard through the bridge.

"Good, then let's see about starting up this girl, and see if we can find anything to get us home." Silvia said.

"Aye, aye ma'am." Cortana answered back.

"Chief, I need you down in engineering, but don't worry, no vent crawling this time." Cortana said a little teasingly.

He only nodded in reply.

"I am turning artificial gravity back on." The AI said to the crew.

Ranma could feel a slight shift in the air before he began to slowly drift downwards. He landed softly with a slight sound of metal against metal, and around him he could see others do the same.

Then at once the weight seemed to increase at insane speeds, and he feel down to one knee, a little more dignified then the others who landed on their asses.

Being without gravity for a week had made them unfamiliar with it, and they felt heavy and slow, even though it was what they had lived with for most of their lives.

Only moments later everyone were back on their feet, some looking at the AI a little irritated.

"And then there was light!" Cortana said and her hologram snapped her fingers.

The lights in the bridge turned back on.

"I always knew you were a megalomaniac." He said silently with a tinge of humour in his voice, the external speakers off making sure no-one heard their conversation.

"I heard that." The AI said with a feigned pout, talking over their personal frequency.

Ranma's mouth twitched almost unnoticeable.

He turned around and was followed by a couple of others who also was assigned to engineering.

A trip with a functional elevator followed by a quick walk led them to the engineering bay.

To both his right and left the two massive gravimetric engines stood silently.

The lights flickered for a moment and the engines began to quietly pulse. It took them the better part of six hours to start the engines according to the Covenant schematics, Cortana didn't want to risk blowing them up without a good reason.

"Engines at 15 and all systems are green." The chief of engineering said, formerly a simple ensign.

"This is the bridge, Master Chief, we need you here ASAP." Emilia said over the comm.

"I am on my way." He answered.

He quickly made his way through the ship, and stepped through the door as they automatically opened.

He quickly walked over to the raised platform, but people who knew him would realize he was favouring his right side over his left, he was no where fully healed from the accident with the FTL-engine yet, but the suits painkillers made it seem like he was okay.

"Chief." Major Silvia said with a voice that made him straighten his back. He was going on a mission.

"Ma'am." He answered back.

"Cortana, our situation." Silva said and turned to the AI.

"Right now we are in no immediate danger, the ship is working fine, however we lack the ability of interstellar flight, so for the time being we are stuck here."

"I understand." He said simply.

"However, we do have the advantage of having the largest spare ship part depot in the universe at close hand, we are as we speak entering a stabile orbit around Reach. We will scan the ships in the area to look for anything that might be of use. We can't however, fly around with the Burning Justice looking at every piece of potential salvage, that would take to much time." Cortana said to the chief.

"What do you propose?" Ranma asked.

"You leave this ship and take a look around the areas that will have large concentrations of downed ships. We need to either find a UN ship in acceptable condition, or a Covenant frigate with a functional FTL-drive, the former being more appreciated because of the time needed to change the engine." Cortana said.

"I see one large problem with this plan, we need new fuel cells for the longsword, it's running on fumes." Ranma said to the AI.

"You won't be using a longsword." Cortana said.

"Oh?" Ranma answered back.

"Apart from two damaged short range U-shuttles, we also have two phantoms troop transports, and one seraph fighter in our inventory, the three last in mint condition, your pick. Apart from Emilia, who needs to stay here to fly this thing, you're the only qualified pilot we have." Cortana said to Ranma.

Ranma looked at the Major and Cortana and nodded.

"Call Sergeant Johnson back from wherever he is, I need a co pilot that know about Covenant tech." Ranma said to Major Silva and Cortana who both nodded in approval.

Ten minutes later the sergeant walked up the ramp and looked at the small group. He was quickly briefed about the situation, and he grunted in approval while muttering something about getting out of here and being tired of working like a damn tech-boy.

"Now you can give us a crash course on how to fly a phantom." Ranma said.

"I suspected you would take the seraph, it has better armaments and better manoeuvrability." Cortana asked the Spartan.

"I am a graduate from Reach Naval Academy, I've read the known specs about the Covenant ships, and the phantoms have better scanners. If we end up in combat it doesn't really matter which ship we fly, we still wouldn't be able to take on more then two, perhaps three ships if we are lucky." Ranma said and the AI nodded in approval.

Sixty minutes later Ranma and Johnson were seated in the cockpit of the alien craft, Ranma wearing his Mjolnir armour, and Johnson a policed UN spacesuit from the longsword, usually worn by fighter pilots. They where both listening to Cortana as she went through the different controls.

After making sure they knew everything important, she began the launching procedure.

The seemingly solid armour of the ships hull parted slowly in front of them, using force fields the entire time was problematic, it was instead used when fast launches and landings were needed, most often when inside planets atmosphere.

The engines of the craft started up and he could feel as the clamps holding the ship in place released. The ship hovered in the bay for a moment.

"Everything looks fine, you are cleared for launch." Cortana said over the speakers

"Roger that." He said and shifted the controls and the craft flew forwards.

After making his way two kilometres or so from the ship he made a sharp turn and began to fly around the Justice to get a clear look at her and to familiarize himself with the controls.

He made a couple of runs around the ship, keeping her within visual range, using nothing more then his eyes to navigate.

He made a couple of sharp loops, pushing the alien crafts to its limits, before flying past the Justice and wiggled the crafts wings in the usual air force greeting.

"Hello to you to, Chief. But you should stop playing around and get to the nearest area to begin the search." She said with humour.

"Just making sure your eyes are on me now." He said back simply.

"Don't worry, I'm here to hold your hand. Now the nearest area has bearing 2-0-5" Cortana said her voice filled with humor.

"Bearing Two-Zero-Five, Roger that." Johnson said and smiled behind the visor at the AI and Spartans antics.

"If you need anything I'm on this channel, standard navy freq. I am going to try and bring some of the remaining UN satellites in the area online, see if they can be of some help, Cortana out" Cortana said and a second later there was a quiet click as she shut of her transmission.

They continued forwards, Ranma keeping his eyes from the charred remains of Reach the entire time.

"Damn waste of fine men and women." Johnson said after a long moment of silence. The normal smartass humour wasn't anywhere in his voice, he sounded tired.

"This entire war has been nothing but one long waste of fine men and women." Ranma replied solemnly.

Silence fell again.

"So, in all honesty, do you think we will lose this war?" Johnson asked and looked out the window.

"Perhaps we will, perhaps we won't, whatever outcome I now one thing for sure."

"And that is?"

"Victory will come at a great costs, neither we or the Covenant will go down without a fight." He said.

Silence one again fell over the cockpit, only the occasional beep from the controls the only sound heard.

They zipped past numerous pieces of molten ships, only the spectral analysis made it possible to determine the different pieces of molten metals origin, part was Covenant but most were UN. Whatever the ships origins their was not a single piece worth salvaging there.

They continued their sweep, flying within visual range of one of the massive Orbital Super MAC's, it appeared undamaged, the massive counterweight almost at the top, meaning it had been reloading and had been about to fire.

The station had been taken out of action not by the Covenants ships, but by their ground forces destroying the planetary reactors.

They made a couple of fly-bys to look for any superficial damage, but found none.

"Mark her on the nav-map, I want to take a closer look later."

They continued their search around the orbit of the planet they had decided to search today, but they only found, apart from four other intact or semi intact MAC guns, molten debris or small pieces of ships, at most they had found a tenth of an entire ship, but that had been the tail section of a UN frigate.

"Cortana, we are on our way back, no luck yet." Johnson said over the comm.

"I hear you, we can begin to search another section of the planets orbit tomorrow, I will see about sending out Emilia on a run with either you or Johnson, would be good if we had two crews out there scouting." Cortana said over the speakers.

"Acknowledged, Cortana." Ranma said.

They began to head back and zipped past the MAC guns and skimmed the planets atmosphere to achieve a straight path back to the Justice.

"…frzzk…answ….frzzk" The speakers came to life.

"Say again Cortana, we are having bad transmissions." Johnson said over the comm.

"Whatever you heard, it wasn't me, we have a clear transmission without static." Her voice came over the speakers."

Johnson and Ranma looked at each other.

"Affirmative, we have an unknown contact, I am trying to pinpoint where it came from." Johnson said and began to tap a different keybord, with little success.

Meanwhile Ranma was slowing the craft down and began to fly in circles in the general area that they had received it from.

"frzzk…lp….frzzk" The speakers burst to life again.

"The general area the message is coming from is…" Johnson began but stopped.

"The surface…. But there is nothing down there but glass, nothing could have survived that." He finished.

"It is a large possibility that it is simply an automated emergency signal, from an intact radio, as the sergeant said, nothing could survive that." Cortana finished.

"Well, something is down there. Johnson, give me some coordinates." Ranma said and peered out of the cockpit at the scorced planet below.

"Yes sir." He replied.

"Cortana, what is the surface condition?" He said and began to shift the controls.

Cortana sighed before she replied.

"The entire crust of the planet has been molten and hardened into glass, but the temperature has dropped within manageable levels, 70-80 degrees Celsius, however, there is virtually no atmosphere, at most small concentrations of carbon dioxide, nothing your Mjolnir suit can't handle, however comm. Will be severely hindered if you enter the atmosphere." Cortana replied.

"Affirmative, thanks for the warning." Ranma answered back, and shifted the controls so that the craft began to descend.

The descend went much smother then with a UN craft the same size, and Ranma just hoped the tech guys back on Earth would do something worthwhile with it once they got back there, like develop their own gravimetric drives, or perhaps plasma weapons.

The surface shimmered like a sea underneath him, but he wasn't fooled, it was just the light playing across the glass surface.

"We have to fly north, about twenty clicks" Johnson said and was looking down at the alien nav-map.

The ship lurched forwards and began to circle the area for any sign of the mysterious transmission.

"Should be around here, but I don't see anything except glassed hills, and more glassed hills."

Ranma nodded but continued the search. He was about to quit after having flown over the same area at least twice, when he noticed a dark spot on the otherwise shimmering surface.

He flew over it a couple of times before he finally settled the craft down a hundred or so metres from it. Johnson and Ranma unbuckled from their seats and then lowered the back hatch down to the ground.

The glass cracked under their feet as they walked the short distance.

"It's a hole." Johnson stated simply.

Ranma leaned over the edge and looked down.

"It's a hole in the ground." Johnson continued.

"No, look at the edges, it's an elevator shaft." Ranma said and pulled out a flare and lit it.

He threw it and both looked at it as it fell down the shaft, before finally disappearing somewhere down the abyss.

He stood up and walked back to the phantom, followed by Johnson. He started up the craft and slowly hovered the small distance to the shaft, and then looked out the cockpit window, but he couldn't get a good look.

"Wait…" Johnson said and began to type away on the alien keyboard, looking up at the screen at the translation software Cortana had installed.

"There." He finished and the front window flared, and instead of a barren landscape it showed a transparent 3D image of the craft and its surrounding area.

The head of the Spartan turned around to look at the sergeant.

"I was looking through this thing during one of our endless scans, came across this neat little feat. At the time I wanted music, but it appears the Covenant designers didn't put in a stereo." Johnson explained.

"Superior technology my ass." The sergeant muttered to himself.

Ranma only shook his head and turned to the image and began to manoeuvre the craft.

"Only twenty or so meters to spare, not exactly much room for anything else but falling straight down." Ranma said to the sergeant who nodded in return.

He turned the ship around and then began the descend, making sure his hands where on the controls steadily, he didn't want to hit one of the walls.

They hadn't even descended a meter before the screen flared red and began to beep wildly, making Johnson curse and type furiously on the keyboard.

"Close proximity alarm, goes off when we are getting to close to something. The thing is showing red on all sides." Johnson answered the unspoken question.

The sound and flaring stopped, and Ranma could once again concentrate on manoeuvring the craft.

The descent went slowly.

The first couple of hundred meters the walls were covered in solid glass, but after that more and more of the metal plating underneath began to show.

"What is this for place?" Johnson asked after awhile.

"It's a deep core titanium mine, or rather was before they were abandoned for asteroid mining, there were four such mines on Reach, one caved in completely back in 2467, another was used as testing grounds for nuclear weapons, the last two were built to house underground UN installations." Ranma answered.

The sergeant nodded.

"Sounds like a good fallout shelter." Johnson said.

"They are, these things are dozens of miles deep, and could probably survive even the most intense bombardment." Ranma answered.

Silence fell again.

Suddenly one side of the ship got stuck by a broken metal beam and threw the ship out of control.

The ships swung to both sides and slammed into the walls around it before Ranma managed to get it back under control.

"Shit that was close." Johnson swore loudly and Ranma nodded in affirmative.

They decelerated a little and it took them the better part of five hours before they finally hit the bottom.

Ranma and Johnson once stepped out of the craft and took in the small area illuminated by the ships lights.

He prodded the remains of his flare with his boot before walking and taking a look around the area.

Johnson strode toward the only other piece of machinery besides the ship. He leaned over it and began to carefully look it over. Ranma stepped up as he finished his sweep.

"So?" Johnson asked the Spartan.

"Nothing more then a slight scratch to the paint job." He said and looked at what Johnson had been looking at.

"A GCD-Nokia-37D, standard infantry communication relay, I'm surprised we managed to get the signal at such an altitude." Johnson said and Ranma nodded in reply.

Both stepped away from it and looked at the massive blastdoors that were slightly opened.

They both peeked underneath but were met with complete darkness. They made a quick trip back to the phantom and took a pair of Covenant flashlights, and one loaded plasma pistol each.

The dark caverns underneath the surface of Halo that housed the Flood where in both minds, they wouldn't go into such an area unarmed. The humans natural fears of the dark had gripped their hearts, they had defeated it yes, but it was still their.

Both quickly made their way back and rolled under the door, Ranma gritting his teeth slightly, before turning on their flashlights.

The Covenant equipment cast a ghostly purple light over everything, but it chased away the immediate darkness. Both raised their weapons and slowly crept forwards.

The next set of massive doors where the first in a series of airlocks, but the giants were closed and with no power they would have no chance of budging them.

However, the small personnel airlocks were opened and unpowered, both stepped inside and once again scanned the area.

The next set of doors was closed, but they could open it manually.

Lying on both sides were a large amount of gas-tubes containing oxygen, and they quickly sorted through the ones with anything in them. They strapped three onto their belts and continued forwards.

Ranma was constantly keeping an eye one both his oxygen supply, and the external carbon dioxide levels. Everything was way past what any human could survive in.

They made their way through empty halls, power completely offline. Dust was covering everything, and the entire atmosphere sent chills down their spines.

They made their way into what was once a small infirmary, and looked around.

"No one is alive down here." Johnson said and shook his head in defeat.

"Look." Ranma said and motioned to the cabinets lining one of the walls.

"I see a couple of shelves, a desk, normal things in an infirmary." Johnson answered back.

"There are no supplies, everything is gone." Ranma answered back.

Behind the visor Johnson's eyes widened in understanding.

The search continued, they systematically checked every room.

They were moving down a corridor when he saw a shadow in front of him move slightly.

"DODGE!" He yelled and dropped the flashlight to present a harder target to hit.

Johnson reacted the same way and threw himself behind a steal beam.

Tracer rounds filled the hallway and both Ranma and Johnson instinctively leaned around their cover to return fire. He fired a quick succession of green plasma down the hallway, putting up suppressing fire first and foremost.

As Ranma leaned back to let his pistol cool down he snapped back to reality.

"CEASE FIRE!" He roared out.

Johnson seemed to return to reality and stopped firing.

The tracers continued to fill the air, and Ranma changed his radio to all freq and all channels.

"Cease fire!" He roared again.

The firing stopped, but he didn't stick his head out, he wasn't completely sure if they had listened or just paused to reload. He managed to get his pulse and breathing down before he peeked around the corner. He couldn't see anything in the dark.

Across the floor he could see Johnson breath rapidly, even through his suit it he was able to see it.

"Standard fleet freq." He said into his radio, and the changed his radio settings once again.

It took a while before he got a reply.

"You're the rescue party?" An unsteady voice asked over the comm.

"Something like that." Johnson said before Ranma got time to reply.

Ranma stood up and once again peeked around the corner, this time he could see a bunch of people wearing similar attire as Johnson walk into the circle of light cast by the Covenant equipment on the ground.

"Sorry about that, we thought you were Covenant." The man in the front replied.

"Not in this life." Johnson muttered through the radio.

"Sorry about that major." The soldier said as he spotted the sergeants suit rank.

"Its Master Sergeant, it's a policed suit." Johnson answered back

"You know you can be court marshalled for wearing inaccurate insignia." The soldier asked Johnson.

"Same thing goes for shooting on fellow soldiers." Johnson replied acidly.

Johnson turned around as the Spartan had remained quiet the entire time.

"Chief?" Johnson said.

"Here." He grunted out in pain, all the rapid movements had reopened his wound.

"Corporal, where is your HQ, I can hardly believe you have been running around in pressure suits down here this entire time." He said and stepped out of the shadows.

The man stammered a little before nodding.

"First level had some breaches so we moved down a level." He said and motioned down the corridor.

He could see as the man changed the freq on his radio and talked to someone.

He changed the freq once again.

"I just told the others to get back to the airlock, you tripped a silent alarm on the way in." He said and Johnson nodded.

They made their way through a maze like complex of corridors and rooms, there would have been no chance scouting the entire area even with the extra oxygen.

They stepped through a quick series of airlocks and then used a small elevator to go down a level.

Johnson removed his helmet as the others did the same. Ranma looked around and then pooped the air-seals on his helmet too. He needed to smell something besides the metallic smell of his re-breathers, even if it was stale dry air.

Everyone except Johnson looked at him in fascination, he had already seen Ranma outside his armour, and besides another foot in height he wasn't anything out of the ordinary.

They stared transfixed at him the entire time before they realised what they were doing and quickly looked away. He hung the helmet on his belt and then took a deep breath of air.

The men took a quick peek and realised there wasa human in the armour, and not some freaky machine. Their interest quickly disappeared and they turned to the door as it slid open.

Standing around the elevator entrance was a bunch of assorted personnel, all cheering wildly as the unknown soldiers stepped out.

Both men snapped a crisp salute as they recognised the man standing in the front of them, Admiral Stanforth.

"At ease." The admiral said and genuinely smiled at them.

Both relaxed their posture somewhat and waited for the admiral to continue.

"Please come with me gentlemen." He said and began to walk away, the crowd parting as the admiral walked through.

They stepped into what once could have been a small supply room, but now was acting as office. The admiral sat down and motioned to the others to do the same.

"I was giving up hope anyone would come and rescue us." He said to the soldiers.

"We received a transmission on our way back from a scout run in the area, and the Chief decided to check it out, sir." Johnson explained to the admiral.

The admiral nodded.

"When can we expect more people down here?" The admiral asked.

"Sir, that's the problem, we don't have anymore people to spare, everyone is needed to keep the ship in orbit together." Ranma said.

"You aren't here on orders from Earth?" The admiral asked.

"No sir, we haven't been close to any human controlled space since we left Reach, we are here on our own accord." Ranma said.

The admiral nodded.

"So we can't expect any large rescue operation." The admiral said.

"No sir, and we need to get back to the ship to report, as far as they know we are looking for an emergency beacon. After we have reported I will make sure we will use every resource available to get you out of here." Ranma said.

The admiral nodded once again.

"Sir, we can take sixty people with us on the way up, but it will be at least another twelve hours before you see us again." Ranma said.

"I will begin preparations for the sixty people to go along with you at once, but it will take at least an hour." The admiral said.

"Sir?" Ranma asked.

"Yes." He answered.

"First and foremost could you see to it that they are navy? Preferably any people with bridge, engineering, or other ship maintenance experience. When I said we don't have any spare people I wasn't exaggerating, we are forty people, mostly from the infantry, running a frigate, Sir" Ranma said to the admiral.

The admiral looked at the Spartan and then nodded.

"I don't think you have to worry about that, we have survivors from a wide arrange of ships here. Anything else?" He asked.

"How many supplies do you have?" Johnson butted with the same grace as a scorpion tank.

"Enough to last us another year." The admiral answered, if he seemed insulted by both of the soldiers seemingly taking charge he wasn't showing it.

"Tell them to pack as much food and medical supplies as possible, we are out and about to begin to eat our boots." The sergeant said and Ranma nodded.

"Everything will be ready in two hours, your dismissed." The admiral said.

They both snapped a salute and the walked out of the room.

"Before you leave." The voice of the admiral halted them.

He looked up at both soldiers.

"Take a walk around the area, make the people see that there someone here to save them." He said and both nodded in reply.

They both stepped out of the room and then looked down both hallways.

"So, where are you going?" Johnson asked and looked at the Spartan.

"Infirmary, I need for someone to take a look at this." He said and tapped his fingers quickly over his stomach.

"Need any help?" Johnson asked.

"No, I will manage." Ranma answered the sergeant.

"Okay, I will do as the admiral say and take a look around, see if they have anything besides freeze dried rations. See you back at the air-lock in an hour." Johnson said walked down the corridor.

Ranma shrugged and walked down the corridor in the other direction.

He stepped up to one of the massive maps of the area that was strategically placed at the larger intersections, and looked for the infirmary.

After memorizing the location he quickly made his way through the halls, greeting the people as he went past. Most stopped and took a good look at the Spartan, for they had never seen one without a helmet.

The infirmary was open, and except a single occupant sleeping on one of the beds it was empty.

Seeing as there was no one there he shrugged and walked over to one of the cabinets and began to remove various items.

He moved to a secluded part of the room and moved the drapes to give him the needed privacy. He placed all the instruments he thought he might need in a neat row.

He was about to remove his armour when he heard someone enter the room. He stood up and walked up to the drapes to pull them apart, but someone was faster. He recognised the face that blinked in shock immediately.

"Ranma?" Dr Catherine Halsey said and took a step back.

"Ma'am" He answered simply.

She regained her composure, and then looked him over.

"So you are with the team that finally found us?" She said and noticed the various pieces of medical gear.

"Yes, we received your transmission by sheer luck." He answered back, bu a little happiness that she had managed to survive crept through.

"Are you injured?" She said and motioned to table with all medical supplies.

"Yes, I was about to rewrap the wounds." He answered.

"Show me." She answered and motioned for him to sit down.

He carefully removed the every piece of armour above his waist and then removed the skin-tight vest he had borrowed from one of the helljumpers. His own jump-suit had been ruined in the accident.

Dr Halsey then carefully removed the completely red wrappings and then grimaced at the sight.

"You have had this how long?" She asked with a grimace.

"A week, give or take a day." He answered and gritted his teeth in pain as she began to prod the area with her fingers.

"Luckily it doesn't seem to be infected, but I want to take an X-ray to see why it hasn't closed up."

The following hour was spent with taking an X-ray that revealed a small piece of metal still inside him, and then with Halsey removing it.

"Fight with a Covenant?" She asked and held up the purple piece of metal into the light.

"Accident." He answered as he was putting on his armour.

"I don't want you to do anything in a while, that wound needs to close up." She said and walked back to where he was sitting.

"I need to pilot a ship back into orbit." He said and looked at the watch on the wall.

Halsey looked at him with stern eyes.

"As long as it isn't any strenuous activity it's fine by me." She said and removed the plastic gloves she had been using.

Ranma nodded and then began to stand up.

"And Chief" She said to the Spartan seriously.

"Ma'am?" He responded.

"I'm glad you made it." She said and gave him on of her few smiles.

"Likewise." He answered back and his eyes softened a little and his mouth curved upwards into an almost unnoticeable smile.

Halsey looked at the Spartan somewhat strangely, they weren't famous for showing much emotion, but 117 just had.

The silence was interrupted by a new presence.

"Ma'am, the admiral sent me, you have ride out of here…Sir?" The voice began but trailed off as she took in the other presence in the room.

"Kelly?" Ranma almost stammered out.

"I thought you died." Both said simultaneously.

She looked him over once again and took in his appearance.

His helmet and a Covenant plasma pistol hung from his belt, and his armour was dented, scratched and scorched in numerous places, it looked like he had fought the entire Covenant army.

His hair wasn't the standard short cut hair every other Spartan had, his was at least 4 centimetres, he could be taken for a civilian if not for the armour and posture.

The strangest thing however was his eyes and face, his eyes went through a wide range of emotions before settling in their normal ice-blue, but a small bit of relief shone through.

His face looked somewhat haunted, he had bags under his eyes and it looked like he had lost great deal of weight. His face that usually was unnaturally pale had now taken a sickly shade of grey, only broken by the dark rings under his eyes.

It looked like he had been to hell and back.

She could see in his posture that he was favouring his right side over his left, and the blood covered tissues and instruments on the table behind him clued her in on the rest.

"Spartan, report." He said after awhile.

That brought her back to reality and she snapped him a crisp salute, and the turned to Dr. Halsey.

"I am here on orders from admiral Stanforth, ma'am he told me to get you and tell you are going on the first shuttle out of here. Gathering at the airlocks in an hour." She said and the turned back to the other Spartan.

"Sir?" She then asked Ranma.

He looked her over and then motioned for her to come with him.

He stepped out of the office and said his farewells to Halsey, before walking down the corridor with quick, long strides.

"Are there any others?" He said as he had gathered his thoughts.

"Yes. I can take you to our quarters, sir." She said as she walked besides him.

"Lead the way." He answered.

She nodded and took a turn to the right and began to lead him through the maze-like complex.

She was looking at him and wondering why he wasn't wearing his helmet, and he noticed this and seemed to realize what she was thinking.

Without a word he removed the helmet and threw it to her, and she caught it easily.

She ran her hands over the equipment and noticed that it to was covered in scratches. She noticed the small burn on one side near the optics, a part that was notorious for its malfunctions. There was also a puncture in the helmets neck, it didn't look to have been caused by any kind of plasma or ballistic weapons, rather by an extremely thick needle or a thin dagger. It had been repaired, but it was still visable.

She silently handed the helmet back to Ranma who just attached it to his belt again.

They made their way through the complex and then stopped at a door that slid open as they moved closer. Kelly quickly walked through the door and took a position to the side and snapped a salute.

"Officer on the deck." She barked out and all the Spartans attention turned to the door.

They walked up to the middle of the aisle and stood in two perfect rows facing each other, and then snapped a salute. They where expecting the admiral.

Ranma stepped through the door, and all heads turned towards him.

Everyone seemed to straighten their backs even more if it was possible, and then repeated the salute.

He didn't say a word, and slowly walked down the aisle, taking note of who was present, and who wasn't. Counting their numbers. He stopped at the end of the double line and faced away from the Spartans.

Thirty-four.

Thirty-five with him.

35 survivors of 75, forty dead.

He mentally sighed and then turned around.

"At ease." He said and the Spartans let their hands fall down to their sides, still standing at attention.

Silence followed.

He looked over each and every one of them.

"James, John, Kelly, report." He said and James was the first to step forwards into the middle of the aisle.

"We dropped into what the HQ had said was a clean area to aid Chief Petty Officer John-118 already groundside. The report turned out to be forty minutes old and we landed in an area swarming with Covenant. We were pinned down by enemy fire and with heavy loses unable to reach the generators. As the situation became intolerable we retreated towards the mountains and regrouped with a large number of ODST. We were working out a counter offence when we got a scrambled transmission that the generators had fallen and the Covenant had begun to glass the northern hemisphere. We called in evacuation and was picked up by a few remaining elements air-force in the area. We didn't have time to leave orbit so we headed here, were we been since." James said to his CO.

He stepped back into the line, and John stepped out.

"We managed to hold the reactors with help from the local garrison, things seemed to go our way a while, but then the HQ messed up drop zones, and the reinforcements from orbit, both or own men, and the troops from the 105th , landed on top of the Covenant. We managed to hold off three assaults before they managed to get their artillery online. They hammered our position close to an hour before they attacked again, we barely fought them off, but then the artillery started up again. When they attacked again we were swarmed, constant fire from all sides, outnumbered and with no ammo, we called for a nuclear strike and evac. The Covenant made their way to the reactors through the wide gaps in our lines, and then detonated a bomb that took the reactors down. We called in for an evac, but the area had too much AA-fire for HQ. In the end it was Kelly, Sam and five other pelican crews that disobeyed orders who got us out. As soon as we get back to Earth I will recommend every single one of them for the colonial cross." John said and displayed an unusual amount of anger, a bit at the brass, but mostly at the Covenant.

"Fubar." Ranma said and everyone nodded.

Finally Kelly stepped up.

"After we left the station we received their evac call, and we decided to get our men out of there. We didn't get time to get back into orbit so we headed here." She said and then stepped back.

Ranma nodded and looked at them again.

"John, Kelly." He said and both nodded.

"You are coming with me as we take the first group back into orbit, I will need your piloting skills." He said and both nodded.

He turned to James.

"You keep things down here in order, it might be some time before we get everyone out of here."

James nodded. He walked down the aisle and was about to step out of the door when he stopped and caught everyone's attention.

"It might be of little comfort, but know that Reach has been avenged." He said and then left.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The crowd, all wearing pressure suits, carefully made their way through the complex, Ranma in the front flanked by Kelly and John to his left, and Johnson to his right.

The slowly rolled under the half open door as not to damage their suits and then got a look of shock at the Covenant craft.

Ranma patted the pistol at his hip.

"We had no supplies, so we decided "borrow" anything we might need, we have a full Covenant inventory." He said and stepped towards the craft.

He opened the hatch and walked inside, followed by Johnson. As no burst of plasma came the others followed suit.

The Spartans quickly threw all the gear inside, and then as last, stepped inside."

They secured everything tightly, and then everyone buckled up, happy that the inventory was built with the elite in mind, for they were the race most similar to humans.

John and Kelly joined the others in the cock-pit, taking the last two seats and then they started the engines.

This time he didn't take it slow, he pointed the nose of the craft straight up and then increased the power to the engines. They cleared the shaft in less then twenty minutes, and then headed for orbit.

"Chief, Its been close to ten hours!" Cortana said in relief as they cleared the planet and had a clear comm. again.

"Cortana, we are inbound now, we have some guests." Johnson said.

"Please repeat that." Cortana said.

"Our ship is full of survivors, with more on the planet." Ranma said this time.

"Okay, I will have Major Silvia down there to great them." Cortana said and then shut of the comm.

They passed the last of the orbital MAC guns and then got within visual of their ride.

"Shit, you weren't kidding when you said you had a full Covenant inventory." Kelly said as they moved up to the ship.

"The Covenant didn't want to give her to us, so we had to use humanities legendary persuasion-ability to make them give it to us." Johnson said as the phantom slowly floated inside the hangar bay.

"I bet you did." Kelly answered back.

The clamps connected with the ship and he powered her down.

He opened the cock-pit door, and walked through the small compartment. The hatch opened, and if everyone had seemed hesitant to the phantom they seemed downright scared of an entire Covenant capital-ship.

Ranma and the others made their way through the bay to the waiting form of Major Silvia and two ODST in full combat gear.

He snapped her an crisp salute. Kelly, Johnson and John did the same, all waiting.

"Report." She said simply.

"We have found survivors in one of the old titanium mines, they are currently waiting to be picked up." He said simply.

"How many?" She asked.

He looked at Kelly and John.

"Ma'am, close to twelve thousand." Johns said and stepped up.

Dr. Halsey stepped up, but she was looking around everywhere, trying to see everything at once.

"How long will it take to get them all here?" Silvia asked and looked at Ranma.

"Weeks probably, we can't have more then one ship at a time, the shaft isn't large enough for more." He said and looked to the other who nodded in confirmation.

"That's to long, we can't wait here for so long, we need to get back to Earth." She said.

"Major?" Dr Halsey said.

Silvia looked her over quickly and noticed she was a civilian.

"Most Covenant ships usually have a stationary matter transporter, or a gravity lift to deploy supplies to the surface. We could use that to quickly transport the people here, but we would have to go into orbit to do so." She said to the major.

"Who are you?" She asked simply.

"Dr. Catherine Halsey, one of the leading UN scientists in Covenant technology." A voice said over the speakers.

A moment latter Cortana's hologram appeared on a small pedestal on the right.

"Cortana, would it work?" Silvia asked the AI.

"Probably, but the gravity lift has limited range, if my memory core isn't corrupt I would say that the shaft is about the maximum range of the systems. We must deploy the landing dish to get a stable connection, and that can prove somewhat of a problem." Cortana said over the speakers.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXxx

The Burning Justice had entered the atmosphere and was now hovering over the elevator shaft. It had been close to twelve hours since they had arrived back to the ship, and during that time Ranma had managed to get some rest.

Cortana and Dr Halsey had worked out the small problems in the plan, and had then requested the help of the three Spartans.

They were currently standing on the dish, waiting for the floor to open to let the dish out of the ship.

Normally, when near the ground the dish would be hovered down to the surface with technicians constantly checking the uplink, it could only be done manually while on the dish.

If in high orbit they would use a large ship to drop it off at the wanted location, problem now was that the ship in question wasn't in the hangar bay, they had to do it manually.

The floor hissed once and then slid open, followed by the muted clinks of clamps losing itself from the dish.

The beam between the platform and ship appeared and they began to slowly drop towards the ground. Once they where certain the dish was exactly above the elevator shaft they contacted Cortana.

"Okay, powering down beam now, prepare for freefall." She said and then the light began to dim until it was hardly noticeable.

"Why did we have to do this?" Kelly sighed as gravity finally had its course.

Gravity finally had its course with the dish and they fell straight down, the connection with the ship making sure it didn't spin out of control.

The Spartans felt a large lurch in their stomachs, and gripped whatever they used as hold tighter, they were now weightless.

Ranma gritted his teeth tightly, his side was hurting as hell.

He could see the other Spartans keeping an eye on the equipment, the translation software built and provided by Cortana was making the entire thing possible.

"1500 meters…" Johns said over the comm.

"800…." Kelly said shortly after.

They weren't slowing down.

"Cortana." He said a little stressed.

He didn't get an answer.

"500…."

The lift suddenly lurched, and had they been normal humans they would have loosed their footing.

"400…" John said visibly relived, they had begun to slow down.

Three minutes latter the dish finally touched ground, and the three soldiers jumped off and began the preparations to activate the lift according to Cortana's instructions.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

He looked as the lift discarded another large pile of equipment and a small group of personnel in the spacious lift bay.

They quickly moved the crates and such and piled it against the walls, were additional personnel began to carry it away to place it in the places Cortana had ordered.

Thirty minutes later the ship's lift flared to life again, and discarded all of the 75 Spartans, 35 of them standing in full mjolnir-armour next to the 40 black body bags containing the fallen warriors.

The UN had made a standing order to make sure that the superior Mjolnir Mk.V armour didn't fall in the enemies hands, so they had brought the armour and dead bodies back.

He walked forwards and began to help to move the bodies towards the large room that had been turned into a provisory morgue.

Not a single word was said as the bodies was moved through the corridors, and the UN personnel they met stopped what they were doing to salute.

The door slid open, and the small amount of vapour in his visor instantly froze as he entered the freezing room.

The bodies were placed in neat rows inside the room, along with the bodies of other people that that had died on Reach that had been recovered.

He opened the body bags one after another, to remove the dog tags of each and every Spartan, and while he wasn't religious, said a short prayer for each and every one. He then walked back to the door.

He didn't look back once as the doors closed behind him.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Cortana was keeping her eyes on the ascending ship, but once they broke the atmosphere she turned her attention to other matters. She quickly made an uplink to one of the few remaining defence satellites, and then tried to access the UN battle-net.

Hopefully something would be left so she could get a better view of the system.

She smiled in success as the interface changed from the standard Covenant colours to the UN ones, but then frowned as her senses were assaulted by error messages.

She began to sort through the different messages in attempt to find anything that had some kind of power and sensors.

She shuddered as everything finally was sorted out, and all the data was transformed into a landscape, as far as she could see there was only destruction.

The remains of ships, stations, everywhere there was only the remains of the horrendous battle. The last desperate transmissions from now dead crews screaming for help and reinforcements, unfinished status reports from ship computers predicting the destruction of them and their crews, everything was echoing around on the battle-net, chaos reigned everywhere, for an AI with emotions like Cortana it wasn't only a battlefield, it was Hell itself.

She pulled herself together and began to search through the endless wreckage, more then once stopping and whispering prayers as she came across something especially horrifying.

She more then once came across the bodies of AI's, but not a single one was "alive" their data cores had been destroyed and only the imprints on the battlenet remained.

She walked past the destroyed form of a scorpion tank and its dead crew, representing one of the many tank battalions that had been on Reach.

She just shock her head and was about to continue one when she heard was what could be considered a gurgling breath.

She quickly turned around and began to head to the origin of the noise.

She came across the badly damaged form of an AI, and she kneeled to the side of the body to see if she could help.

The AI didn't react to her presence, not even when Cortana placed her hand on the temple of the other.

She got a small zap of information and the AI's breathing became more and more shallow.

The AI wasn't alive, it had just copied a part of itself into what remained of the battlenet, the personality and neural pathways were nonexistent.

Apparently it had known that its destruction was imminent, and had tried to send as much vital data as possible before that happened.

Apparently the ship AI and its crew had been left after the Covenant had left, and had received numerous requests for help before the ships internal structure gave away, the AI had wanted to pass the information along.

She looked down on the now dead AI, and then closed the eyes of the contruct.

"Would Spartan 117 and 118 please prepare their flight crews for immediate departure."

She would be damned if she didn't get every living soldier in this system back home."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Ranma stepped inside the now crowded bridge.

It had taken them close to two weeks to sweep the entire system for survivors, and potential parts to repair the ship.

Apart from finding personnel on some of the larger space stations and intact MAC-guns that the Covenant had thought of as deserted, they had also been forced to go planet side again as John's patrol found survivors in the other underground UN installation.

The ship quickly became overcrowded, but that was solved as Cortana placed the entire ship in one of less damaged dry-docks for a full overhaul while the scout parties looked for spare parts.

As for salvaging any ships, the scout parties had found four good objects.

To the left of the Justice the Covenant cruiser Ascending Purity, who been taken out by sheer dumb luck, was being overseen.

The ship had taken a Super-MAC round through a non-vital part, but a computer malfunction had stopped one of the doors to the bridge from sealing up, and the crew in the bridge and surrounding areas had been exposed to hard vacuum. A small Spartan team, with the help of the same translation-program that was used in the Justice, had managed to manoeuvre the ship into dry-dock.

To the right of the Justice, the UNSC destroyer Serenity was being repaired, the ship had lost all power thanks to a lucky hit, but had been in a relatively good condition apart from that, and it had been fully rearmed, full storages of archer missiles and MAC rounds.

To Serenity's right, the UNSC heavy cruiser Athens, who had suffered the same fate, was being rechecked by the crew., it however had taken a full hit in the FTL-drives.

The wreckage of another covenant cruiser provided spare parts and hull plates for the Purity and Justice, the latter's weapon systems and engines had finally been restored to 100.

Reach, even if it had fallen, had managed to muster one final fleet

"Sir." Ranma said and saluted the Admiral.

"Anything new?" He asked.

"No, the patrols have searched everything, and have started from the beginning." He answered, and mentally wondered how he had been given the command of the small group of pilots, he was a ground-pounder.

"Cortana?"

"The Athens is already finished, apart from the FTL-drives that will take months to repair, the same goes for the Justice. The Purity is almost finished, the crew are driving out the kinks as we speak, the Serenity however will take another weak to repair their FTL-drives, everything else is green. I am currently trying to go true everything we have gathered on the Covenant." She replied.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXx

Nosolee stepped out of the private council chambers, followed shortly by the other fleet-masters and council members. He had been allowed to remain in command of the two fleets, the biggest reason was because of the fact that it lacked ships, many thought it a fitting punishment.

The thirty ships he had been given by the prophets had been re-assigned from the different fleets, and because the fleet-masters didn't want to lose anything important had been supplied with the oldest ships, often ones that had been about to be scraped.

The small group of ships had been delivered, and the small crews had then left to rejoin their respective fleets.

He had thirty ships without crews, and had to fins them quickly.

He was standing outside the chambers, waiting for Narmia to exit. The old warrior soon did, and Nosolee could see that he, as often since the death of Nyaeven, was in deep thought. He was constantly brushing his fingers over the crystal in his armour, and always looked saddened when he did.

"Head Elder, I would wish to speak to you." Nosolee said and stepped up to the old warrior.

Narmia looked at him in the eye, and then nodded.

"Walk with me, warrior." He said simply.

They made their way through the crowd, and then began to walk towards one of the many memorial parks in High Charity.

"Speak." Narmia then said.

"You have noticed my new command, and my lack of warriors?" Nosolee said and motioned to the runes on his armour.

"You are looking for warriors?" He stated, it wasn't a question.

"Yes, Head Elder, of what use are my ships without warriors to man them?" He said.

"Not many will want to be led by a disgraced Fleet-Master such as yourself." He stated, but his words lacked the feeling of loathing the others used.

"Even more reason for me to ask you for help." Nosolee said and bowed his head in shame.

Narmia turned around to look the other elite in the eye, and then nodded.

"I can only offer you the names of warriors, who such as yourself, has lost the favour of the council."

"As long as they follow my commands, and are capable." Nosolee stated.

Both fell into silence as they walked through the beautiful gardens, built to honour the Forerunner and their Prophets.

Much times passed, and both warriors could feel a strange sense of peace.

Narmia suddenly spoke.

"What are your thoughts on the holy ring?" Nosolee suddenly said, interrupting the silence.

Narmia didn't say anything at first, slowly collecting his thoughts.

"I fear we have awoken a demon on that ring, a demon that might be the undoing of us all." He said.

"The parasite was destroyed." Nosolee said simply.

"It was not the parasite I was talking about." Narmia said to the other elite.

"But the humans…" He said and trailed off.

"For all their faults are stronger then we suspect." Narmia finished.

"You sound as you respect them." Nosolee said, but he wasn't joking, he was serious.

"They haven't been blessed by the knowledge of the forerunner, yet they fight our finest warriors with unyielding force. It shames me to say that they humans outclass our warriors on the ground.

"But we always win, our fleets has yet to be defeated." Nosolee said, he didn't argue about it, the Elders words were true.

"Our fleets that discarded the warriors honour and slaughtered the humans peace-livers? The humans are not vermin, they fight and die like warriors, and yet we disregard our ancient oaths that define the way to fight enemy warriors." Narmia said with a slight tinge of anger to his voice.

Nosolee only nodded in understanding and shame, elites such as they lived and died by the warriors code of honour, and by the ancient oaths they should only be able to wage war against the warrior caste. The Prophets had been able to disregard that by stating that the humans were nothing more the vermin, and not to be considered equals.

The humans would have made a great addition to the Covenant.

Perhaps, guided by the Prophets, they had been blinded by the sins committed.

Whatever thoughts he had on the matter was irrelevant, humanity would soon be extinct from these stars.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Cortana was slowly going through all information on the Covenant that the scanners around Reach had picked up, she wanted to make sure the people at Earth knew what waited them.

She slowly replayed the entire event, the assault, and the signal she had sent with Keyes authorisation to draw the Covenant away from the retreating fleet, and then she continued forward, the hours after they had left.

Space was filled with frantic cries for help, but no help ever came. One after another the signals stopped, as the occupants ships went out of power or food. They had more then once come across people who had starved to death during their sweep, only the larger installations with storages of food had any real chance of survival.

Soon everything became static, static that lasted for more then six months.

Her sensor registered the faint signals of a slip-jump, which was when they arrived.

Only moments later she saw as the Covenant fleet materialized, the gathered signal was much stronger.

She managed to track their drifting vessel, as they were rammed by the cruiser.

The Covenant were hardly silent, were only static was before there was now livid communication.

It was mostly the standard Covenant fleet chatter, religious chants between the superiors, and simple requests for some kind of equipment or other, simple chatter that was needed to keep the fleet going, between the lower ranks.

Then everything went silent as a longwinded religious lecture, from what she surmised was the lead vessel, began.

It was said in a much more accented, or older form, of the standard Covenant language, and she couldn't translate some of the more abstract words, but she understood the gist of it.

However, one sentence particularly caught her interest, she could only translate two or three words in the entire sentence.

"Nyal'ver senerv'el jilva'renya sche'livi'ye shav'la' sen'every' le'sch' E'rrt." She replayed the sentence over and over, hoping to finally understand its meaning.

She noted the raised voice and hints of anger in the voice of the speaker. A creeping suspicion fell over the AI, and she quickly turned her attention towards the only other she knew that held any knowledge of Covenant language.

"Chief."

She let her hologram appear on the bridge, next to were Emilia and the Chief was going through the specs on and data from one of the flights.

He turned his attention to the AI and noticed the worried look.

She quickly played the part over the speakers, and it caught the attention of the admiral.

"What do you think?" She asked the Spartan.

Numerous emotions, unnoticeable by any human, noticed by the AI, flashed across his face.

"There is one word there that doesn't sound like normal Covenant grammar and doesn't follow their usual sentence structure, E'rrt."

"Earth." Cortana answered the unspoken question.

"Admiral." Cortana said and turned to the man in question.

"Tell the others, get us there now."

The lights in the bridge changed colour.

"Too all personnel, set condition one through all ships. Prepare for departure within an hour. This is not a…

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXx

"…THIS IS NOT A DRILL. I REPEAT, THIS IS NOT A DRILL. TOO ALL UN FORCES, SET CONDITION ONE, ALL PERSONNEL TO THEIR ACTION-STATIONS, PREPARE FOR COVENANT CONTACT."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXxxx

Author Notes:

HA! I'm not dead…. Just been in hibernation. Took me longer then I wanted, but school has been taking almost all of my time… That and I finally ditched my modem to upgrade so I've been busy…. Then there was that damn virus…. Anybody have an idea who "General Error" is? And what the Hell is he going on my computer……

I'm not fooling anyone, am I?

Okay, okay, I've just been rather lazy lately.

But I have about half of the next chapter of Changing Path done, more vampire action coming up.

60 pages is a bit long, I wanted to stop by 40, just had to add a scene or two, and that went a little out of hand and became another 20 pages. Not much action in this one, but more of a trap up to the next chapter

As you can see I have reverted a "bit" from the story of Halo 2, making it more Earth-centric. I've decided, even before the release of Halo 2, to give the Covenant a larger part in the story, and the game gave me a lot of reference and insight in Covenant society. Does it appear believable, is it a pile of crap, or should I just go back to write the Covenant like a faceless bunch of religious nuts?

I've also decided to expand a little on the other characters, especially Cortana, and Sgt Johnson (He's just too badass for his own good.)

So, what are your opinion on the outcome of the Battle of Reach, are the humans going to win, are the Covenant going to win, or is 343 Guilty Spark going to kill the universe with his annoying chatter?

Anyone have a good idea how a space-battle of this scale would look like? My E-mail and messenger is the same, I'm having problems with my E-mail, but my messenger is working fine, so just send me a quick line.

Review people!

And by the way, I've had this chapter done for a week now, but I haven had the time to proof read it, so if you see a larger amount of spelling mistakes then normal that's the reason.

Xerxez, signing off and deciding to go do something constructive with his time.