Chereads / Awakening in the stars / Chapter 33 - 32-LONG NIGHT OF SOLACE-END

Chapter 33 - 32-LONG NIGHT OF SOLACE-END

(A:N)-I am currently sick so I'm gonna slow down for a few days and update when I can, been coughing up a lung gosh darn it šŸ˜”

As the Sabre touched down on the top of the landing pad of the covenant corvette, Jamie took a moment to get his bearings before popping open his cockpit and grabbing his assault rifle and sidearm, as he jumped out he saw Noble Six already out and waiting for the him and the other pilots, once they were all ready they dashed towards the thin energy shield that let down into the corvette, with Jamie and Six leading the way, the elites and grunts in the room below were quickly neutralized before they could sound any alarms. Once they reloaded they sprinted down the corridor towards the hangar bay killing several grunts and two elite minor, and once they reached the hangar the elites and grunts inside had somewhat prepared themselves for a fight, but it didn't matter, it was one thing to fight a single spartan being controlled behind a screen, but its a whole different ball game when you got two spartans and a bunch of marines ready to die for something, and even though the covenant had an engineer shield the two elite majors in the bay, they still put up little resistance once Six got within punching range with Jamie watching from the corner of his visor as and elite was beaten to death with its own plasma rifle.

After clearing the room of all the covenant and clearing out the jackal reinforcements that joined halfway through the fun, Jamie went up the walkway and lowered the hangar bay shield so that Jorge could bring in the pelican from the Savannah that had their slipspace bomb on it, he also brought a fresh squad of marines and some more ammunition along with other useful items. After touching down and raising the shield once again Jorge came out of the back of the pelican "Alright, now that everyone is here we can start the next part of the plan, Six you and Noble seven are going to go to the bridge of the corvette and put this ship of a refueling track with the supercarrier, while the marines and I set up defences around the slipspace drive and prepare it for remote detonation, try and be quick about as theĀ Savannah andĀ Everchanging can only hold out for so long out there so try and destroy and turrets that you can as well, good luck." with that Jorge turned around and started giving instructions to the marines to set up defences while Jamie just looked at Six for a few seconds before walking over and taking the rocket launcher that Jorge brought with him, as he turned and saw Six looking at him still with what he could have swore felt like a raised eyebrow, "What?"Jamie asked Six "It might come in handy." Six just nodded and grabbed a pair of frag grenades before turning and walking away with Jamie close behind.

After they finished grabbing other things from the pelican Jamie and Six made their way to the bridge they were right about to go into the corridor before Jamie remembered that down this corridor there was a squad of grunts and two Elite Ultras, he remembered struggling to get past them on higher difficulties and so he turned to Six, "let's take the side passages they might be setting up for us in the main corridor." he said while walking to the passage on the left but before Six could say anything in reply the center door opened and a squad of grunts appeared, without a word Six jumped in the midst of them punching one and slamming another in the face with the but of his DMR, by the time Jamie finished killing one Six had already gotten the other three, with no further words they ran down the corridor to the left of the door that the grunts came out of and sure enough, there were the two Elite Ultras, before Six could fire on them Jamie quickly swapped to the rocket launcher and took aim the the elites feet and fired, despite both elites and grunts in the room immediately turning to them due to the noise there was nothing that the elites could do as the rocket slammed into the floor right next to them, blowing them to pieces as the grunt started panicking and running around as Six opened up on them instead. Once they were all dealt with the two Spartans turned and ran down the next corridor of smooth purple and blue metal not having to go far before they emerged in a large room that seemed to be where the turrets were located, with several elites manning them firing barrage after barrage on the two UNSC ships outside, as they jumped into action they heard the Savannah calling for help over the comms.

"This is theĀ Savannah, we have multiple hull breaches on multiple deck and several fires, we have to disengage!" the officer sounded frantic "This is Noble Five, we have made it inside disengage Savannah, let everchanging take the heat." Jorge said trying to help, and before Jamie could say anything a new voice sounded, "This is theĀ Everchanging, Savannah send as many personnel aa possible to the lifeboats we got space on board, and if possible send all your pilots and marines to their pelicans and fighters so that we can save everything we can." said Captain Magnus is a hurry as the Everchanging took the place of the Savannah before the next plasma salvo could hit it, and it seems that they had listened as soon several lifeboats and other things were seen leaving the Savannah, and not a moment too soon as a few minutes later the engines overloaded and the Savannah exploded into a huge ball of flame with bits of battle plating streaking red hot through the void. "This is theĀ Everchanging we are going to pick up survivor from the lifeboats and continue jamming the signal from the corvette but beyond that your on your own Spartans, good luck."

As Jamie and Six watched all this happen they were also busy killing elites that tried to storm the turret bay, but after they failed the two Spartans began slapping plasma grenades onto the turrets and when they ran out, grabbed more from the dead elites. After they were done with destroying the turrets the two spartans turned and ran down the last corridor before they reached the bridge of the ship. Once they slipped inside the bridge they saw that they hadn't been noticed yet, switching to his rocket launcher Jamie saw that he had one rocket left, he turned to Six and nodded towards the captain of the bridge, in its ornate armor, Noble Six nodded and soon after a rocket suddenly made its presence known in the bridge by violently flying and exploding itself along with the captain. Chaos was immediate as grunts ran in every direction while elites tried to corral them with a few noticing the two SpartansĀ and with fierce roars ran at them to gain the honor of killing a 'demon'. As Jamie and Six fought through the bridge crew, suddenly the air shimmered and a Spec-ops elite raised its blade behind Six, without a thought Jamie threw himself at the elite and the two grappled while Six held off what was left of the crew, Jamie and the elite were evenly matched warriors but with a desperate push Jamie managed to punch the elite in the face and ribs before drawing his combat knife and stabbing it right though the eye into its brain.

As he took his knife out of the elites skull and looked around, Jamie noticed that Six had already cleared out the rest of the bridge, apparently running out of ammo judging by how the last few bodies has plasma burns on the and Six now had a plasma rifle instead of his earlier assault rifle. As Six hit a button on the control and the ship began limping back to the supercarrier that was visible. As the two were leaving Jorge suddenly began talking "Noble Six and Noble Seven get back to the hangar bay now, we are getting attacked by covenant and the slipspace drive might be in danger if the fight gets any closer." without a word the two Spartans began running down the halls back towards the hangar, as they reached the turret room a squad of covenant came out of a room in front of them, barely even taking time to throw grenades they were off again with the panicked squeals of grunts being hear a split second before a loud BOOM was heard from the 2 grenades they had thrown in a hurry.

As they reached the hanger bay they quickly took stock of the situation, jackals covering from high vantage points with more shielding grunts and elites who were busy with Jorge while the marines were taking shots when they could. Thinking quick jamie turned to Six "I got the snipers you help Jorge keep the slipspace drive safe." he quickly told him before running up the walkway to his left towards a pair of jackal snipers, reaching the top he shot the first one in the head and bashed the other than tried to grapple with him before taking a fallen needle rifle and picking off the other snipers in the room. While Jamie was doing that Noble Six trashed the place, throwing a grenade into a cluster of grunts and jackals and without even stopping to watch them try to run he dashed to an elite that was getting too close to the pelican and jumped on it, stabbing at the base of the neck with his combat knife before providing cover fire for Jorge.Ā 

As Jamie finished up the snipers and saw the aftermath of Sixs rampage, he was glad that he was on their side,Ā but before he could do anything else he saw a door on the lower level open and out came four Elite Ultras. "We got Ultras, farside!" he yelled over the comm as he started to shoot at the ultras forcing them into cover. As Jorge and Six moved to try and pincer them, Jamie saw the fuel cells laying around where the ultras were taking cover and decided to try something that helped him get through the Legendary difficulty of this mission. "Five,Six hold back for a second i'm gonna blow those tanks." as soon as noble five and six stopped Jamie shot at the largest of the fuel cells, perhaps sensing what he was trying one of the ultras popped its head out and tried to shoot at me before Jorge forced it back into cover, and after three quick shots that cell started sparking and right before it blew up, two of the four ultras leaped from their cover spraying plasma to buy them some time, the other two weren't so lucky and were caught in the blast as the largest cell blew up taking three others with it.

As soon as that was done the three spartans focused on the last two elites and had little difficulty taking them out. Once that was done with Jamie got down from the walkway that he was perched upon and walked over to Jorge and Six who were looking at the slipspace drive along with the three surviving marines that had came with them on this perilous journey. Reaching them he could see them all pacing about and looking at the drive, noticing his arrival Jorge turned to him "I got good news and bad news. First off the pelicans thruster gimbal took enough fire so now its toast so the only way of this slag heap is gravity." Fearing that despite all his effort the worst would still happen Jamie hurriedly asked "And the good news?" "That was the good news." Jorge said, it was just as he had feared, even after all he did, the pelican and the drive still took too much fire, "The bad news is, the timer is fried so I'm gonna have to fire it manually." Jorge continued while Jamie's head started to spin, "That's a one way trip." Six spoke up for the first time since they boarded the corvette. "We all make it sooner or later." Jorge replied before a new voice arrived "Sir, we would like to be the ones to detonate the bomb." said one of the marines, now suddenly looking more nervous with three 7 foot tall Spartans staring at him but he didn't back down. "Sir with all due respect, the three of us joined this knowing that we wouldn't make it back and we are ok with that, our families already evacuated and the rest of our platoon is dead and if our deaths mean that one more spartan gets to live then we're happy to go out with a bang." he said as it suddenly dawned on Jorge that although Jamie and Six could survive re-entry, the three marines would die the second they left the corvette. As the other two marines nodded Jamie walked up to them and took their dog tags, vowing to remember these brave men who went into the void and would be leaving this mortal plane with a bang.

With one final salute to the three marines that they promptly returned, the three Spartans turned and leaped from the corvettes hangar bay, falling through the void was a weird experience for Jamie but he was still able to angle himself to be near the other two and managed to flip himself around to see the covenant supercarrier, The Long Night of Solace. A few moments later a bright blinding flash and the slipspace bomb detonated, taking three brave marines and a good chunk of the super carrier with it. The shockwave from the blast rattled him to the core and threw his against Six who got thrown into Jorge, with them all hanging onto each other before separating and letting gravity drag them down back to Reach, where they had a fight to finish.

Lower atmosphere of Reach

Not long after the destruction of the supercarrier, multiple systems gave of reading os dozens if not hundreds of slipspace rupture appearing below the Orbital Defence Grid, with officers scrambling to send reports to their superiors as everything flew into a panic from the sheer size of the covenant fleet that had appeared.

Sgt Matthew Bard, Pvt Michael Reed, Pvt Alan Philips šŸ«”