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Legacy Part Three
Posted By: Havok<snayperskaya@hotmail.com>
Date: 18 April 2003, 4:19 PM
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I stood on the bridge of the FSC Razorback, the flagship of my fleet. I looked out at the panoramic view of the stars. The black of night flashed with coherent light as the battle raged. The ships the Forerunner had presented me with were absolutely stunning. Their armor was virtually impenetrable, and their weapons were like nothing the covenant had ever seen. My flagship, the Razorback, was larger than six covenant cruisers. The covenant plasma torpedoes left mere scars on the impenetrable armor, and the Razorback's weapons were formidable. The ship wields six beam cannons, cannons that fire coherent laser energy in a controlled pulse that can core a ship with one shot.
The Covenant were coming out in force to meet our assault. The holotank projected a radar image of the hostile contacts. Four hundred seventy-five Covenant cruisers, frigates, destroyers, and carriers. And they were attempting to stonewall my fleet of nearly two thousand Forerunner warships. A force like this had never before been seen in one place at one time, and it probably would never be seen again. The overwhelming force was astoundingly unnecessary, but this first strike against the Covenant would strike fear into their alien hearts and minds.
I watched as the space battle played out. The Covenant always fought to the last ship, and I doubted this battle would be any different. My force was spread out over almost three million kilometers, and was circling in for the kill. The covenant ships' lateral lines built up with an ethereal ruby glow as they powered up their weapons once more. Before they could discharge their weapons, six hundred beam cannons scoured the Covenant fleet. Ships were seared in half, reactors flaring and fires burning. Shields burned pure white for an instant, and were holed through by the immense power of Forerunner technology.
The covenant fleet was completely decimated with the first volley. Then the Forerunner craft launched their fighters. They looked remarkably like Longsword interceptors, but were a hundred times as deadly. Each were capable of launching anti-capital ship missiles with the most volatile anti-matter warheads made.
The fighters, named Erinyes, fell upon the remaining Covenant ships with fierce decisiveness. Missiles streaked in toward their targets, and blue energy radiated away from the impact points, taking with it large pieces of the covenant ships.
The battle was over in a matter of minutes. The Razorback pulled ahead of the rest of the fleet, drawing nearer to the green planet. A covenant world. The ships could have bombarded the planet from orbit, but that would be just another charred world, utterly useless for their purposes. I left the command of the ship in the capable hands of Ankara, the Forerunner who had been assigned to teach me all there was to know about Forerunner technology. I took my leave of the bridge and took the elevator down to the lower decks of the great warship.
The elevator opened and I strode into the main hanger. The room was a good kilometer across, and every inch of space was taken over with Forerunner troopships. Swarming over the troopships with amazing speed were the ground forces that were going to take this planet. A Spartan near the elevator spotted me and snapped to attention.
"Commandant on the deck!" he barked through the com system.
Every Spartan in the hangar faced me and stood to attention.
I patched into the main com system with my helmet. "All right Spartans, listen up. As you no doubt have heard, we have decimated the covenant fleet defending Aires Prime. I am giving the green light or the invasion. You all know the battle plan, so let's get moving!"
The soldiers cheered and raced to finish loading the munitions onto the troopships. The war had begun.
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 my end of 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.
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