Halo: Fireteam Phoenix

Chapter 6: Triple Entente

It didn't take long for Sarah and Marie to reach the final cannon. Since Richard's pelican had gone down close to the gun, they only had to cross a stretch of open ground before they had a strong overwatch of the approach to the gun. En route, they had witnessed the frigate let loose the full deployment of longsword fighters. These wedge-shaped fighters raced through the sky, spraying wild bursts of gunfire. Sarah looked up, squinting. "She's not going to...surely not the cruiser?"

On the bridge of the Sunbreaker, the admiral frowned. Upon approach, their contact with the ground forces had been hazy. Sparse, conflicting reports filled her with dread, yet she intended to press on. "Whatever is going on down there, I want eyes on."

Initially, the frigate evened the odds on the ground. Point defence guns were put to good use, tearing up the legions of covenant foot soldiers on the ground. Just as Ball believed she might finally break the lines, a steady thunder of guns disrupted her assault."What was that?" 

"Ma'am, we've got AA from the ground. Single gun,"

"Son of a-I want fire on that gun, ASAP!"

"Negative, no shot,"

"No shot?"

"We're being hit by the battlecruiser. If we stop firing, they'll cut us to pieces." The aforementioned covenant cruiser was already battering the hull of the frigate with high-velocity plasma shells. Throughout the ship, deathly rumbles and deafening explosions were endangering their flight capability. "Get us above the clouds! We need to manoeuvre, and the air down here is too dense with dust."

"Affirmative. Should we launch fighters?"

"Yes. Fighters, dropships, drop pods, whatever you have. We can't take down a cruiser on our own, but I'll be damned if I go down without a fight." On her command, the frigate bays opened wide and all twelve longswords aboard dropped into the atmosphere. Rocketing away from the frigate, they danced through the array of covenant banshees, seraphs and plasma fire.

"Ma'am, between the AA and the crossfire, those fighters won't last out there,"

"I know, I know. Bring us in close to the battlecruiser, and charge the MAC!"

"In atmosphere?"

"What choice do we have?"

"Understood. Diverting power now,"

In the soup of the aerial conflict, the UNSC suffered. Immediately on launch, three longswords erupted into purple flame as plasma detonated on their hulls. The others dipped and weaved, elegantly evading the onslaught, to no end. "They just keep coming!"

"Where did all this come from? How didn't we detect it?"

"Enough! 2-3, 2-6, stay focus-ahhh!" The pilot's audio crackled in static. "2 actual, this is 2-2. 2-1 is down, we're taking hits out here. We cannot go up against the battlecruiser, request you divert fire, over,"

"Negative, 2-2, we're flaming and falling ourselves here. Weather the storm, out."

"Fucker," the pilot spat. Her eyes fell upon the bulbous purple frame of the battlecruiser. Bursts of light ran from cannons on the hull, bursting in the clouds. She ducked low, her engines screeching as the heat of a near-miss burned the hull. As she whirled out of the death-dive, she pulled up into a furious onrush of light. Her fellow pilots didn't even hear her scream.

A break in the clouds illuminated the darkening field. Sarah felt weary. Not tired, her augmented body had more than enough energy left. No, she was weary. Her heart yearned for a cease-fire, a reprieve from the endless destruction. Instinctively, she looked up to the hopeless conflict in the clouds. The battlecruiser was spoiled for prey. The sluggish, heavy frigate, or the nimble, weaving fighters? Since the AA was pummelling the frigate, the battlecruiser leapt upon the fighters like a cat does a rat. Already, it had fired on the longswords and decimated a most of them. Whatever the outcome of the battle, it wouldn't be long before it ended. They needed to hurry.