Spartans Never Die

For the Covenant

"I'm reading just over 50 bandits heading back to the carrier. We're going to need to find the craft carrying the Tesseract and exclusively focus on it. The group'll reach the ship's shield perimeter in under a minute at max speed." Jorge announced, activating his Sabre's thrusters and opening fire on the Phantom in the center of the group. Seraphs and other Phantoms began to either break formation and move toward the Spartan's ship or throw themselves in the path of his fire to reduce the damage it was taking.

"I think you guessed right, Spartan," Iron Man noted, now a bit less casually, as he blasted into the center of the formation to make it difficult for the Covenant ships to fire on him without risking friendly fire. "That ship's faintly radiating particles that match the signal produced by the Tesseract. Lighting it up now," the Avenger continued, sporadically hitting the Phantom's hull with his suit's lasers. While his lasers didn't make much progress against its armor-plating, they did attract the attention of someone who could.

Streaking through the sky nearly as quickly as the lightning he wielded, Thor broke the front line of the Covenant with a flash of light and crack of thunder, shattering the Seraph he landed on before hopping to the next and breaking its shield with a single swing of his hammer. One more leap would have landed him on his target, but second Seraph's the pilot reacted quickly, shifting its trajectory down into the bay and away from the Phantom that carried the artifacts.

"This unflinching dedication to their cause is almost admirable... if it weren't so inconvenient at the moment!" Thor thought in shock as he tried to quickly find the Phantom again before it escaped.

Jorge, who'd been pushed back by half a dozen Covenant ships who'd veered off and intercepted him, shouted into the comms, "They'll reach the shields in fifteen seconds! Hit them now!" before blind-firing a barrage of missiles at the Phantom's rear-section, hoping to damage its propulsion systems. However, another of the Phantoms fell back, collided with the missiles, and began to plunge into the bay.

Meanwhile, Iron Man had pushed forward and caught a hold of the Phantom's right flank. His path there hadn't been easy and his suit was beginning to lose functionality from its battle-damage, but he wasn't about to let up at the final stretch. Priming the last of his suit's rockets, he fired one wave toward the Phantom's nose, causing it to tilt and wobble slightly off-course. As he prepared the second wave, however, he realized that he was holding onto a shiftable hatch. To his left he saw emerging silhouettes of several aliens resembling the one he'd fought on the rooftop, only these sported more intricate armor and a shimmering purple shielding, as well as some object that he couldn't identify floating behind them. Unable to immediately spot the Tesseract, Stark took aim at the nearest row of the invaders.

"Gentlemen, I'm gonna need the glowing cube." Tony quickly deadpanned before releasing his missiles at the row of Zealots. To his shock, their shields held out against the force of his volley, and the nearest one, wearing milk-white armor, ignited a glowing sword that resembled a large punch-dagger, shouting "Burn, human filth!"

"Since when can they speak English?" Stark thought in surprise as he blasted backward. He was unable to totally evade the Zealot's thrust, however, and as the blade pierced the armor-plating of his left shoulder he lost that arm's functionality. Before he had time to charge up a repulsor shot in his right arm, another Zealot, this one in crimson armor, shouted "WORT WORT WORT!" before smacking Iron Man in the chest with a heavy, thrusting kick, knocking him back and out of the Phantom.

That kick coincidentally put Stark in the path of Mjolnir, which Thor had thrown at the Phantom just moments before. Furious, Thor knew he had no choice but to mentally arrest his hammer's momentum to stop it from smashing through Iron Man to reach the airship. Thus, the Phantom carrying the Tesseract passed through a gap in the now-visible shield-bubble that the Long Night of Solace was producing, followed by the majority of its escort before the starship's shield closed and shimmered back to its invisible state. Behind him, Thor heard a hatch slide open, as he was standing on the Seraph that had flown onto the waterline; he'd since damaged its propulsion system, so it now was weakly floating on the water. Out of the hatch emerged its heavily-injured pilot.