Once the blast had done its work and the severed section of the ring stopped spinning, Cortana contacted Keys to come pick them up.
I made sure 343 Guilty Spark was down where he was supposed to be as several Covenant ships jumped into the system. Within seconds, their battlenet was flooded with anger and fury at seeing the ring's current state.
I made sure to keep spoofing the battlenet as well to keep the Covenant from realizing the human had taken one of their ships. Once Cortana and Blue Team were aboard the Truth and Reconciliation, I laid out my plan to them.
"As nice as this tub of purple latex is, the Truth was marked as a ship under assault by the Flood. The second the fleet realizes that they are going to vaporize you. What you need to do is grab their flagship."
I then pointed to the Ascendant Justice on the display.
"That ship has enough space for all of you, as well as enough tech to get you all back to Reach. As a bonus, it has plenty of tech I'm sure ONI would be glad to have."
I looked right at Lieutenant Haverson when I said that, but the spook didn't bat an eye. Keys and Cortana were already going over the details that would even get them close to the Justice, but I could tell Major Silva was very unhappy with everything going on.
"Speak your mind, Helljumper. Before you burst." I said as Cortana and Keys stopped and looked between us.
"Listen, I can understand why we need them," Silva jabbed a finger at Blue Team and glared, "But why the hell is an alien here, alive and talking to us? Especially since the spooks have been hunting him!" Silva then gave Haverson a look.
"Because he's the only reason we didn't all die on that ring," Cortana said bluntly. "I don't know if you've noticed, but before he got here, things weren't looking so good." Silva wouldn't buy it, however.
"Then why didn't he do something before? He's been hanging around the colonies for years! Even I've seen the news that slips past ONI; he's an alien, and should be treated as such." Haverson then chose to speak up.
"Alien he may be, but this alien can fly in space without a suit and tear apart a Covenant ship with his bare hands. I'd rather he be on our side than on the Covenant's." Haverson said as Silva finally calmed down, grumbling a brief apology.
Following that, Cortana and Keys figured out the plan to get onto the Ascendant Justice.
First, Cortana would act like the ship's A.I., calling for help, since most of the crew were dead, but supplies could still be taken intact from the ship. When Ascendant Justice responded, either by docking transport ships or by docking tubes, the various Spartan and ODST fireteams would take the chance to jump onto the Ascendant Justice and start blasting.
Cortana would then block out the Ascendant Justice's comms so that Keys could take control of the bridge, declare the Truth overrun by humans, and blast it to bits. As the Spartans and ODSTs started hashing out their details, I gave Cortana a heads-up.
"I would advise you to clear out anything malignant within the ship's systems before trying to leave. Despite their lack of counter-intrusion software, the Covenant are learning from humanity, loathe it as they do."
Cortana rolled her eyes but didn't say no as everyone got into their positions. As Cortana started, I contacted my own fleet to find out if I'd missed anything.
The Vengeful was, of course, hidden in the system and was ready for orders. Thinking about my ship and the things that were coming next, I ordered her back to the Ark to finish up the project I'd started a few millennia ago.
Despite how awesome my ship was, I wanted one full-size. So I'd commissioned one to be made for me, an exact copy of my ship, just scaled up to 20 kilometers as she should be. Her crew, armament, and complement would, of course, be changed as well, but it should be done by the time Chief reaches the Ark.
The rest of the fleet was not having as good a time. The Frigates had called upon the Monitor of 05 to assist them, but it remained unresponsive. As such, they were asking for permission to fully rip out the section of the infected ring to destroy it.
It sucked, but it had to be done. I authorized the creation of a new index for Installation 05 to be made at the Ark, as the ring itself was torn apart to keep the infestation down. I still wish there was a better way to deal with the Flood, but once it gets to this point, the only thing you can really do is go scorched earth.
The Spirit of Fire was having a much better time, at least. Ander, Tali, and the Builders not working on my new ship were having a blast trying to make an interdimensional portal. To keep them from just jumping into any hole they punched into reality, I made sure they understood the dangers of the multiverse.
Captain Cutter and the Spartans of Red Team were, of course, keeping a close eye on them. The rest of the crew was actually busy being retrained once more. Since the refit, they'd had to learn new systems to command their ship.
Also, not all of them were given treatments to keep them alive and young, as some wanted to settle down. As such, there was a new generation of crew, marines, and pilots that was being put through their paces by the original crew and those who'd opted to stay with Cutter.
I'd obviously given them plenty of tech to play around with, but Serina insisted on using human weapons since the rest of the UNSC was still doing so. I at least made sure they had updated weapons and schematics so they wouldn't be too far behind when they finally met their comrades once more.
I was sure nothing would go too wrong when they met once more, but you could never be too careful when dealing with humans. Oh, look at that!
[Gift from beyond the veil, 1x Random Platinum Ticket] (KingJr66777 gave 6 power stones)
I had Mendicant read off the other reports as I spun the wheel. It was nice to just watch it spin as I tried to guess what I might get this time. If only I got better things...
[Spinning, spinning, spinning, done!]
[Penetrate]
|Elite Ability|
Allows you to augment your abilities with penetration, allowing them to better ignore resistances and bypass immunities. The main use is to bypass immunities. With Penetrate, even a lich can be cursed, and a fire dragon burned.
Huh, maybe I could use this to strike at the Flood hivemind? I don't know if that's even possible with their use of Neural-Physics, but it wouldn't hurt to try in the future.
Speaking of the Flood, 343 Guilty Spark was currently assisting the local Covenant forces on the mining rig to deal with the Flood that had somehow survived. They were like weeds or mold. No matter what, you just about had to bring out the flamethrower to really get rid of them.
I authorized heavier sentinels to be used, but I made sure they were tweaked to only hunt Flood forms and those infected, since I didn't want to give the future Arbiter too much trouble.
By the time I was done doing all of that, the last part of Cortana's plan was already done. I quickly hopped onto the last Pelican that was moving from the Truth and Reconciliation to the Ascendant Justice.
Cortana had already thanked me for the reminder about the Covenant systems; she'd apparently fried something they'd made from a captured human dumb-A.I. That got Mendicant interested for a moment, but I held him back.
If the Builders could barely stand looking at what the Covenant had done to our technology over the millennia, I shudder to think what Mendicant Bias would do when he saw what the Covenant had done to that poor A.I.
Still, I had him flush out the subsystems one last time, just in case, as Cortana began firing on the rest of the Covenant fleet. Two ships were caught off guard, but the others raised their shields in time as Keys and Cortana began their escape.
I watched, grinning, as unsecured marines and other surviving humans were thrown this way and that as Cortana threw the ship around. They quickly figured out what to do, however, as they began securing themselves and any cargo that might fly around and hurt someone.
I helped secure a few things, but I mainly just watched the Huragok go around trying to fix everything in a tizzy. A few flailed their tentacles when they saw my armor, but most ignored me as they quickly repaired the small bit of damage that the ship had suffered.
Eventually I reached the bridge, where Cortana was getting ready to jump back to Reach. Keys was, of course, not convinced they could jump into slipspace so deep in Threshold's gravity well, the planet the ring was orbiting.
She then somehow convinced the Captain to give her a chance, and it actually worked! Keys was amazed, as was the ONI agent who'd followed me onto the bridge. A few Huragok called up from engineering with rather pointed language, but Cortana and I kept that to ourselves.