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Legacy Part Three
Posted By: Havok<Tactical_Havok@hotmail.com>
Date: 24 April 2003, 10:39 PM
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The troopship accelerated toward the drop zone, nimbly dodging hills, strange looking trees, and the occasional winged creature. The troopship flared its engines and dropped to the ground. The rear hatch opened and a hundred Spartans poured out. As I hopped out, I scanned the air. The sky was swarming with troopships and support craft. The low rumbling of munitions detonating on enemy positions reverberated through my feet.
I called up a map with up-to-the-second tactical information. As according to plan, my ground forces had landed on both poles of the planet, and on several positions around the equator. In the bottom left corner of the map, the total number of ground troops committed so far was flashing. It read five hundred thousand and was steadily rising. The thirty troop transports assigned to this operation were almost fully unloaded, their troopships on their way to the surface. Enemy contact was sporadic; it looked as though we had caught them unawares.
My Spartans were engaged in several light skirmishes with Covenant, grunts, jackals, and elites. There was no word as yet on any hunters. Though they posed a moderate threat to my troops, the Spartans had the training and the equipment to dispatch them with ease.
The field commanders were meeting and sharing tactical information on the command channel. My suit patched me into the conversation as I thought about it, translating thought into action.
"...verything is going as planned and even exceeding projections. There is one area that I am concerned about. The South Pole seems to be a major military installation of theirs. I am requesting additional units to reinforce the southern pole contingent."
I interrupted their conversation. "Commander Imbu, I suggest you send in a recon team to scout the base. If their might be any information useful to us, then we will take the base. If there is no sign of any, then we should destroy it from the air and not risk any troops. Warfare in closed conditions is always costly, and I would like to avoid casualties as much as possible."
The Commander thought for a moment. "Yes commandant that would be a prudent choice. I will send the orders immediately."
I listened to some more of the conversation, and finally closed the connection. The commanders were brilliant in their own fields, and my interjections would only slow things down. I strode over to where my mobile command post was being erected. I went inside and watched the main holoprojector displayed updated information on several fields of engagement.
Fierce fighting enveloped the Covenant world. There were three major population centers on the planet, and those were summarily destroyed by air and ground forces. I had a fleeting sadness for the doomed covenant on this planet. There was no information on whether the covenant had a civilian population, but looking back on how many hundreds of billions of humans that were slaughtered, Forerunner forces showed no mercy. After all, humans were the Forerunners' brothers, born of the same planet. The Covenant had committed a horrible crime, and now they would pay. The last opposition was rooted out and in seventy-two hours, the planet was under Forerunner control.
In the following months and years, the Covenant slowly disappeared. Planets were assaulted and captured, and in the covenant's place, Forerunner civilization sprung up. They built upon the ruins of the Covenant civilization, constructing glorious cities with spires that reached for the sun. System after system was assaulted by Forerunner warships under my command. Just as I had anticipated, the Covenant forces always fought to the last ship. It was almost as if they knew why we had come, and chose to die fighting instead of an alternative. The Covenant Empire, which stretched as far as the Human Empire once reached, was whittled down by the unstoppable force of Humankind's guardian, the Forerunner.
In the closing year of the Covenant-Forerunner war, my fleet, now a few ships less, closed in on one last planet. The Forerunner had built another civilization from the rubble of covenant worlds, but this world would not get that second chance. This planet was the only exception because this was the home of the Prophets. The Prophets had given and order of genocide, commencing the annihilation of the human civilization, and had glassed the birthplace of the Forerunner and Humankind. For this crime, their world would be completely and utterly destroyed. The Covenant armada defending their last planet was worn down to nothing, just as the human fleet guarding earth had been destroyed. Encircling the Prophet's homeworld was the Forerunner fleet, under the last human's command. With a trembling hand, I gave the order to fire.
The world began to blacken under the onslaught. Atmosphere was burned away under the torment of Forerunner weaponry. The surface of the planet began to bubble and expand. The world stretched and twisted and finally blasted into a billion red hot fragments that were hurled out into the black void of space. Humanity had been avenged.
Suddenly feeling very tired, I sat heavily into my commander's chair on the bridge in the midst of Forerunner jubilating at the victory. Very slowly, I took off my helmet, which had rarely left my head during the entire war. The matte black finish was worn and scuffed, faded from the light of many suns. I stared off into oblivion, into the void where the covenant planet had been moments before. Now there was only silence, and only silence there shall remain forever.
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