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Spartan III's, Part III
Posted By: FOrunnER
Date: 22 September 2003, 5:20 AM
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(Finally!! Brought to you by FOrunnER and a lot of caffeine)
The Longswords were all destroyed within 30 seconds. They managed to take out 8 Reapers, 7 Shades, 4 Ghosts with them. But they soon lost the advantage of surprise and the combined firepower of Shades and Reapers made short work of them. The Longsword pilots had known they probably wouldn't survive but flung themselves into the battle anyway because they knew in the long run it would help save Earth and the rest of humanity.
The Covenant were shocked for a minute at the surprise air attack when a Scorpion missile was fired. It turned a Reaper into shrapnel. Three more Scorpion missiles were fired, one hit another Reaper and two destroyed the Wraith. As the Scorpions reloaded the Warthogs flew down into the crater, mowing down Covenant infantry with there missiles and bullets, making shrapnel of a few guns themselves. The Covenant were returning fire and they were starting to take casualties.
The Scorpions reloaded for another salvo and fired, taking out all four Creeps, which were had been the only remaining heavy armor. The heavy missiles took out the Creeps and scores of troops surrounding them. The three remaining Shades were quickly taken out early by Hogs, so the remaining Ghosts and Shadows were the only threat. Missiles, bullets, and blue and purple plasma cut across the battle zone. The human and Covenant light armor were actually at a stale mate, both killing at a steady rate, but a few well placed Scorpion missiles gave them the upper hand.
However, as soon as the last Shadow fell, Covenant dropped down from the gravity lift. But the Covenant didn't even have time to gain a solid footing as four Scorpion missiles converged on there position. Nothing survived. But despite this the Covenant dropped more and more waves of Covenant troops down the lift, and each getting oblivated by Scorpion rockets before they could move. They launched down six waves before they finally ceased, the grav-lift splattered with multi-colored alien blood and pieces of fleshy meat.
MC looked over his remaining force. There were only two Hog's left, but that was okay since they couldn't take them anyway, so ground forces total they had 28 ODST'S out of 180 left, and at least a third of them injured. An internal attack on the Covenant ship would be suicidal now, even with the Spartan III's leading it.
Sensing his thoughts, Cortana spoke up, "I'll ask Bankman to send down some reinforcements, from there we'll secure the docking bay where additional troop can be dropped off".
He nodded, "Okay, do it".
He heard Cortana's voice over his speakers "Cortana to UNSC Cruiser APACHE, we request to speak with Admiral Bankman".
A few minutes later he heard, "Rodger Cortana, this is Bankman. What do you need?"
"We've reached the gravity lift and request reinforcements", she said.
"Rodger that, Pelicans Gamma 12, 34, 909 and 604 inbound Cortana"
"Rodger, Cortana out"
It took a few minutes but finally 4 Pelican dropships roared over the horizon, 15 ODST's each. The Covenant ship spotted them, and a giant pulse laser was sent towards them, it engulfed Gamma 604 and vaporized her, and went straight on to knock over a building. The other three touched down, dropped of troops, and took off.
The Chief noted with a certain satisfaction that they were all armed with Battle Rifles and Shotguns, no long rang stuff. It would pretty much be useless, save perhaps a few areas. For the most part is was going to be a close quarters brawl.
They all felt a sense of weightlessness and were pulled up into the Covenant ship where they were met by a full platoon of Brutes, Elites, and Hunters at the grav lift loading bay .............................................. .
Admiral Bankman stared off into space, lost in thought. Not only perhaps three hours ago he and his fleet had been fighting desperately to save Earth. Before the Covenant had attacked, Earth had been a war-house greater even then Reach. There were roughly 300 ships orbiting her at anytime, but there were 600 ships in the immediate vicinity with the ship docks around Mars and the Moon. Orbital platforms had been numerous, at least 50 orbital MAC guns and 20 Shiva nuclear launch stations. In addition to that, a nuclear minefield was set up around Earth extending thousands of kilometers in each direction, they were only deactivated when UNSC ships from other star systems came to Earth. But the Covenant had planned for all this. They came in force, 700, maybe even 800, Frigates, Destroyers, Cruisers, Flagships (the sniper ship on The Fall of Reach), Assault Carriers, and there powerful Juggernauts ( Largest covenant ship known, high ranking Prophets usually command from them).
They had entered system just behind Jupiter so they weren't visible immediately. They had moved towards Earth but stopped once they sensed the minefield. They had sent an electric message to the mines automated computers to self destruct before they could take any of them out. With that threat out of the way they had continued further. The UNSC fleet had been severely battered. When it was almost certain that Earth would fall, reinforcements came. A fleet Halcyon X cruisers, one of ONI's experimental ships, jumped in system. The sleek black ships had the basic honeycombed design of Halcyon cruisers, but with upgraded weapons and defense systems. It supported two of the triple-fire MAC guns that the Pillar of Autumn had sported along with 500 Hornet missiles and dozens of overlapping 50mm Auto cannon tracers for point defense. However it also sported shield systems, very brittle compared to Covenant ones but still strong and an upgraded engine which required no coolant, it automatically stored waste heat and energy into weapons systems or other parts of the ship.
250 of them had arrived in system and managed to beat back the Covenant force (which had also taken heavy damage). But that was the least of ONI's new starships, Admiral Bankman was the leading military officer in the UNSC and had unrestricted files to all of ONI's spook projects. The Halcyon X's had been kept in a shipyard on a distant planet, called Siliver. No ship had coordinates to this planet as it had no civilian population and served as an exclusive ONI station, the only person who had the coordinates to Siliver was the President of Earth himself. They had been kept there with two other types of ONI ships, the Hybrids and the Stalkers.
The Stalkers were stealth ships. They were around the size of Corvettes and there were currently 50 in service. They had covenant cloaking devices which made them near invisible, it gave off no heat and made no sound. It was invisible to radar, or any type of detection gear for that matter. It did carry a few missiles, but it was not meant for combat, it was not meant to be seen. They had been extremely effective on gathering data, and had even managed to find a few distant Covenant outposts but no Covie planets had been found, which was why the Spartan III program groundside was so important.
They Hybrids were just that, perfect Hybrids. The Halcyon X's used some Covie technology such as shields (though weak), artificial gravity, ect. But it used only human designs, the Hybrids used human and covenant designs. It was about twice the size of a normal cruiser, and also had the honeycombed design (which ONI was starting to favor). The ships sported two triple fire MAC guns with plasma cores, over 600 hybrid missiles with plasma cores, 4 plasma torpedo launchers, and over twelve large pulse lasers for offense. For point defense it also had Autocannons with plasma coated bullets and smaller pulse lasers. The ship also carried 200 Dagger single fighters with hybrid missiles.
The ship itself was amazing. ONI had managed to come up with accurate calculation for Slip space jumps, meaning they could now navigate through slip space as easily as the Covenant. But also like the Covenant, it required all there energy reserves so they would basically be 'dead' in space for two minutes after a jump. It required no coolant and redirected waste heat and energy towards other systems like Halcyon X's. They had figured out the atomic structure of Covenant ship armor and combined it with the atomic structure of titanium A so even the armor of the ship was hybrid. The ship had three meters of the stuff, and a half-meter of special energy reflective armor covering the outside similar to the Spartans suits. It also had a shields, though twice as strong as the Covenants.
However the Hybrids had not been called to Earth. The Admiral had asked, hell, he practically begged the brass to pull in the Hybrids, but they stubbornly refused. They wanted to keep them a surprise for the so-called inevitable counter-attack.
'Not if they get us first', the Admiral had said. In the end he managed them to fork over the Halcyon X's, a lower class project than the Hybrids but still ranked the highest level of ONI classification. But it had been close. The seventy eight vessels that remained included the X's that had been sent over. The Admiral was in a regular marathon-class cruiser that was the current cruiser in service. However the Admirals cruiser, the APACHE was in bad shape. Over 60% of the ship was breached, the reactor was badly damaged and two of the super-conductant magnets needed to be replaced. One of there two single-fire MACs was destroyed by a pulse laser, only C-F rows of Archer missiles were serviceable, and the navigation dish was destroyed. Not that they would be going anywhere, all ships had been called to defend Earth. All ships were grounded.
He was brooding over the ship diagnostics running across his screen when the ships AI, Jjaro, spoke to him. Jjaro had he look of a young skinny boy, his smile made him look feminine.
"Admiral, outpost Zima 7 has reported approaching ships"
The AI could not feel emotion, but the Admiral on the other hand felt shock, then a rush of adrenaline. "How many, what position?"
The AI took half a millisecond to triple check the transmission from Zima 7, then replied, "50 Covenant Assault Carriers with 20 escorting Destroyers, mark 000017 by 00056"
The Admiral was puzzled for a minute, then understood. If there were no orbital platforms the Covenant could easily defeat the fleet in orbit right now. But the platforms made all the difference, they would most likely be made short work. But they didn't want to destroy Earths defenses, only to launch more troops and support for the ground invasion on Earth, which would explain the all the Carriers
He turned to his com officer, Lieutenant Streets, "Streets, inform the fleet and UNSC HQ on Earth of Covenant visitors, Carriers and destroyers. Tell the fleet to launch any and all single fighters. Tell HQ to prepare ground to air defenses and most likely more troops".
"Yes sir", he replied. He was visibly shaken, scared, but he would do his duty till the very end. A true soldier.
He turned to his weapons officer, Lieutenant Daris, "Prepare are MAC, remove safety's from are Archer missiles and Shiva warheads, start a warm-up cycle for the engines, and get those Longswords out in the black".
"Yes sir".
He looked around. All his crew was scared, but they were determined. So was he......................
"AAAHHHHH", yelled the Elite. Dozens of bullets punctured his head, chest, and waist. He fell in a pool of his own blood, the sound of battle raging around him. The master Chief grabbed his fallen Needler and unleashed a volley of pink destruction at the group of Grunts beyond. They fell with there envoirment suits spraying methane. By now the invasion force had pushed there way through many non-vital masses of the ship and into the docking bay. They needed to secure it so the dropships could come in to drop off more troops. By now they had been reduced to 20 ODST's and the Spartans. The bay was small, ten dropships and 20 Banshee's were docked. It had the basic layout of the T&R's docking bay, except the outer doors were metal instead of energy doors like on the T&R. They were on the third walkway up, hundreds of plasma bolts aimed at them from below and dozens of Covenant poured in the doors around them.
"Cortana, open those damn doors, were getting slaughtered here", MC said over the sounds of twin grenades detonating. A group of Jackals had been advancing, most were taken out by the explosion, but a few were left only to die by gunfire.
"I'm working on it, I'd like to see you and try and de-encrypt a 12,000 kilo-byte alien door code", she said, annoyed and frustrated.
The marines and Covenant were exchanging fire like the redcoats. One incredibly brave helljumper, or maybe just insane, stuck a plasma grenade to himself and rushed a startled group of rookie blue Elites. However his advance was cut short. A half-dozen Brutes had taken position on the far side of the walkway, they were using there sniper rifles to chip away at there forces. One of them spotted the human with the grenade stuck to him and fired. A dinner plate sized hole was torn through his chest. The plasma grenade detonated with a blue-white BANG! All that was left of the brave trooper was flecks of red blood. Fox returned fire on the Brute who made the shot with her CP. The bullet cracked through the aliens shields and out the back of his head where red-black blood flowed freely. Three of his fellows returned fire, forcing Fox behind a support pillar.
Another trooper was fighting hand-to-hand with a Jackal. The marine punched the alien in the face and blood sprayed from his mouth. The Jackal gouged his eyeballs with his sharp nails. In rage the marine tackled the Jackal and they both tumbled off the walkway, screaming until they splattered three stories below.
Inferno launched a fireball which ignited a Grunts methane rig, which in turn ignited several nearby plasma grenades, clearing off a good number of hostiles and friendlies. Eventually they fought until only 2 Helljumpers and the Spartans remained. At this time the door opened and twenty Pelicans came in. They opened up with there chain guns and missiles. The Dropships and Banshees exploded in there ports and dropped, crushing Covenant below them with there husks. The Covenant on the walkways were either punctured by bullets or were engulfed in the explosion of missiles. The Covenant they were fighting were distracted by the ships and all the grenades they had, not to mention a few handy-dandy rockets from Hunter, took out the bulk of them. Finally they secured the bay, the ground floor black and cratered, the lower walkways destroyed, and the upper walkway splattered with human and Covenant blood. 350 ODTS filled the bay...........
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