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The Platoon Leader called out to the men and women of Able-Alpha.
"Alright, you sorry shits. We're gonna wrench our rock back from those damned monsters, and we're gonna look real damn good doin' it, too! They have stepped foot in humanity's home, but they are not welcome visitors! Let's show these Covie's how to really kick some interlloper a**!"

The whole platoon jeered at the cusses and insults about their most deadly foe, instilling within themselves perhaps a false sense of hope. "HOO-RAH!" They all shouted at the PL's lead, and Angel finished patching them all into squad, platoon, then company-wide communication channels.
"Get in those pelicans, team!!" The platoon filed into the awaiting dropship, along with three other platoons; Omega, Lambda, and Upsilion.
Peering over her shoulder, the pilot and her co-pilot checked that everyone was inside the doors. Over the comm, "Alright, Marines! Sit down, buckle in, shut up and hang on!" The Peli rose above the deck, and along with the rest in its flight, out of the hangar airlock. Buckled to the bottom of the aft engine platform was a Warthog assault jeep and two Mongoose scout bikes.


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meanwhile...
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Aboard the Shanghelii Heavy Cruiser, Heart of the Blade: Low orbit over Earth.
Tenth Age of Deceit and Shame, Royal Calendar of Shanghelios

Shipmaster Quan-Vrek jostled in his grav chair as another plasma round splashed and burned through more of the ship's luminescant shields. The reverse-engineered Forerunner technology was serving them well, but unfortunately, so was it too for the b*****d Jiralhanae.
His caramel-red armor was dented and burned from a repelled boarding party of Kig'yar and Yanme, and a sizeable bulk of lowly and treacherous Ungogy. His plasma-sword, passed down to him from 18 generations of his fore-fathers, had killed many of the demons. Yes.... the new demons.

He thought back to when "demon" meant a tall, green-clad 'monster' of death, one whose presence meant certain demise for all his foes. And his minions? Those short, fleshy bipedal creatures who were somehow his kin. No longer. The prophets had decieved them long enough, and would do so no further. The humans themselves were weak and hardly battle-worthy, any sensible Shanghelii could see that. But they learned fast, faster than his own kind did, it would seem. They had seen through the Prophet's lies and tales from the beginnning, it appeared, and had walked the path of truth, the path of their fathers, the mystical "Forerunners". All while they, the supposedly noble Shanghelii, had done blasphemy upon them.

No more, he thought to himself, will our women and children live in the shadow of deceit. No more will we walk the path of shame, and only fools can deny that we have done so. We must all bear a mark of shame. Quan-Vrek tenderly touched his bleeding cheek, his left eye missing, along with the slight external protrudance for his left ear canal. His mandibles were badly cut, but they would heal within minutes. He would not, however, tend to the wounds on his head: he would bear his disfiguration with honor and plain candicey, for it was the least he could do to repeal his personal sins agianst the humans.

His blood boiled with hate anew for the b*****d Jiralhanae, and he felt his resolve soar to a new-found height. This was their time to prove they would defend against the horrid beasts who had once called themselves Prophets ("San 'Shyuum!" Quan-Vrek spat, repulsed by the mental image of the wrinkled things, fat and lazy in their chairs), who the Shanghelii had once believed in entirely. He was ready to make amends. He was ready to kill every one of them.

"Spin up the energy projectors!" He commanded, his deep and clipped voice resounding from the metallic hull of the bridge, deep in the heart of the Heart of the Blade. It was well protected, but even so, slight damage was accumulating.

"Yes, Shipmaster. Lateral plasma nodes are charged and full, as are the Lancer torpedo sheaths." Called Jariv. His second-in-command, Throsh-Jariv, was a good soldier and a dear friend, and Quan-Vrek trusted him with his life.
"Very good, fill the sheaths with an exceedingly hot batch, and link them to our main Intelligence." At its summons, the ship's Intelligence, Garn Kun-Jirr, an ancient Shanghelii warrior who wielded arcane sharpened bars of metal and old leather armor, appeared inside the holo-tube that dominated the bridge.
"Coordinates acquired, esteemed Shipmaster. Shall we send them to oblivion?"

"Hold your fire, Garn. Let us fire for efficiencey. There shall be plenty of time to give them all ample tastes of oblivion, but later. Weaponmaster, loose the lateral lines! Keep overcharging the projector!" The ship's lights dimmed slightly as the magnetic guidance coils squeezed the super-hot, electircally-charged Hydrogen flouride gasses throught the meshed conduit, into the targetting coils, and out of the Lateral Nodes. All 16 nodes fired, 8 on the portside hull and 8 on the starboard-side hull. The starboard-side hull's lances of plasma made a wide arc around the ship, and rejoined with the portside lances, though only a few hundred kilometers behind them. The ship rocked again, this time from a decompression in the portside outer hull. There would be minimal casualties, but each was as a son to him, and they were dear and would be sorely missed.

"Shields dissipated, Shipmaster! Plasma burns through outer deck layers, 3 deep! Artificial gravity has been lost in the outlying zones, Shipmaster!" Hullmaster Dorrav-Jek reported, a slight film of sweat dripping from the inside of his mouth and eyes, some of the few places a Shanghelii could sweat from. "By Shanghelios, they've coallesced a firing group of five additonal ships, Shipmaster!"

He smiled wryly to himself. "Good, then they are even odds. Let us burn them all as we have done so many before them!" The Heart of the Blade sped forward into a cloud of obscuring ionized atoms and melted alloys, and the violet colors that they cast upon the ship made it appear to glow with a transcendant light as it neared the pack of Jiralhanae ships. "Above" them, the human's homeworld, Earth, was a diseased mottle of glass, ash, and death. Quan-Vrek's stomach turned as he thought of Shanghelios in such shape, and he stood from his chair, stretching his arm out, Plasma-blade extended. he made a swipe through the holo-tube, "cutting" the Jiralhanae ships to ribbons, but as the holo-tube re-configured the calculations for the interruption, the display returned to as it was.

"BLAST THEM TO WHATEVER HELL THEY BELIEVE IN!!" He let loose a roaring battlecry --"HWROOOAAAAAGH!!!! KEK-VANNIR, GROGGUTAK SHAN! JROVB BROSH-TAU GRON DA-JIB!!!!"-- as the torpedo sheaths sped from their tubes, their pockets of explosively-condensed plasma burning like quadruple Suns as they tore towards the woefull Jiralhanae.
The first wave of plasma lances splashed against the remaining shields of half of the Jiralhanae ships, dissipating them with a visible pop!. The second wave of plasma lances ate through more than half of their ship's hulls, and one particular lance cored their light cruiser from aft-starboard to aft-port, clean through their Engine cores. The ship began to spin lazily as hot plasma and atmosphere vented, and it soon collided with another ship, though that one was far less damaged. Not for long, you sons of bitches! Quan-Vrek thought sadistically, as the Plasma Torpedo sheaths neared their group.

Once they had penetrated their perimeter, the sheaths detonated, more or less in the center of the formation. All of the ships were blasted and propelled out of formation, a growing bubble of confused and disoriented, not to mention damaged, ships. But they were quickly sucked back in towards eachother as the imploding slip-space drives, the core of each exhuberantly-expensive torpedo, created a gap in the local dimension. The ships all collided in a mass of hulls, miniscule frozen bodies and flash-frozen blood, and steaming plasma.

With a last jab of his sword, Quan-Vrek motioned to the Weaponmaster. "Energy Projector, fire!" The bridge's lights went solid-black as they tried to compensate for the massive loss of available power: the entire time the Heart of the Blade had been attacking, all excess energy from the Engine cores had been shunting towards the energy projector. And what a glorious light it was. The single, infantismally small beam of solid energy, purified plasma, really, shot through the night sky of the human's homeworld, and burned the Jiralhanae ships with a fiery hate that none had witnessed before. The spear of energy then moved about their compacted formation, moving only a few hundred meters to either side, and still it struck and cut every single ship in the 6-ship formation. Nodding with amusement, Quan-Vrek noticed that the path the beam traced through their ranks drew a temporary Mark of Shame. They had an exceedingly sadistic Weaponmaster, that was for sure. Quan-Vrek made a mental note to commend the Weaponmaster on this most amusing insult to the Jiralhanae.

The beam sliced the ships apart like a Plasma-sword through snow, melting the hull around it in a 30-meter swath to all sides, even though the beam itself was, at its thickest, one centemeter in diameter. Thus was testament to the mighy power of the Forerunners, fathers of the Humans.
"Cease fire! Shunt the remaining energy back towards re-charging our shields!. Hullmaster, speed us towards that fleet of human ships, we shall lend our aide there."

"Shipmaster, a new contact, sir. The human's tracking data they lent us identifies it as their ship, the Monterey, sir. It has materialized higher up in orbit, sire." Quan-Vrek considered the options.... The human's "Monterey" was in far better condition, and safer, than the rest of their fleet.

"They can make do without us for now, Hullmaster. Continue pre-deterined course! Let us burn a path by which all may see the truth!"

Seth waited silently, next to Karr on the Pelican. He checked his BR55, pulling back the hammer and releasing it, leaving the safety on.
He heard some chatter on the COM and let it continue, but he took no part in it.

Seth got up from his seat and walked around to each of the five Pelicans in their area, there was a long line of them, 27 in the hanger bays total.

Seth walked up and down the bay, checking in making sure they were all loaded up. He took a deep breath and felt the calm before the storm. "We'll ride into battle on a Pale Horse. Woe to those who stand before us, that they may know fear and regret... We who will be known to them as Death," Seth looked out a large reinforced window-from a distance- from which he could see the planet earth, "That they may be laid to rest-and our hands made still, forever in their blood." He said the rest of the poem with a sigh.

A friend of his had been a poet, long dead and frankly, not very good. But Seth had his own way of remembering the long dead.

The Pelican's engines began to roar. Seth jogged back to his bird and climbed in, "Pelican bay Two-Four-Seven is good to go." He reported over a command channel.

Seth's leg began to twitch and he gave Karr a thumbs up. Now or never.

--- Two Days Ago ---

Lee stared at the one-way glass, not wanting to believe what he had just heard.
"The pole, why is there no mark that it was ever there?
Why is there no scar?"
The voice laughed, it's voice slightly condescending as it cleared it's throat in preparation for a lengthy explanation.
"The metal shaft that skewered you, Captain, was cut in half by your stomach acids, which should have killed you within ten minutes of your injury on the installation."
Lee looked down at his stomach again, as if double-checking that the shaft was indeed no longer a pin in his vital organs. And again, his fingers passed over smooth, though slightly pink, rawer skin. The thought of his own gastric acids consuming the rest of his abdominal organs and causing a slow painful death made him almost shudder. He looked again at the glass and spoke to it, staring not at his own image reflected in the mirror coating but rather at the shadows of figures behind it.
"Why wasn't I eaten from the inside out? Did one of my men seal me up with biofoam?"
The voice sounded almost enraptured, delighted to answer now. Lee made a mental note to stay away from whoever it was that was speaking behind the glass when he finally got out. The person whom the voice belonged, to however, didn't seem like he would want to let Lee go anytime soon.
"No, nothing so bland. No, Captain. Your body sealed you up by secreting large amounts of mucus, normally only found lining your stomach in order to keep the acid from consuming your flesh. This wouldn't be surprising, normally, seeing as how the human body secretes mucus to cover up small holes in the stomach and intestinal tracks, but the quantity of liquid that you secreted can only be qualified as monumental.

Enough to fill a coffee cup and a half, in fact. You body then began manufacturing large quantities of Stem Cells. Building blocks of the human body, if you will.

And with these building blocks, it made it as if your little bout with insect collection had never happened. In fact, your body's in better shape and regenerating faster than that of a growing child. Within day, your body is capable of healing almost any superficial bodily harm, with internal healing taking but a day more. Captain, using your body as a blueprint, we could cure disease, stop aging.... Even bring people back from the dead."

Lee didn't like where this was going. The voice was obviously over-ambitious, and the worst thing was it seemed to be intent on dissecting him.

Warren felt the pelican take off and stomach began to shake horribly, he never minded flying or landing. It was the taking off that go him every time. " Is it to late to go back to the installation, being put into cryo -sleep doesn't sound that bad anymore" Warren said. He really hated taking off.

Karr gripped the pannel as the Pelican began desending into the atmosphere. The ship was rocked by blasts of plasma from oncoming Scarab fighters.

"I need some over on my bird here!" Karr said into the COM for the squadrons of Longswords to acknowlage.

Suddenly, the scene of the New Mombasa ruins came into view. The once proud city now lay in its tomb in the dirt. The aft engine began to overheat and he could feel the ships underbelly began to rumble.

"SIR! We're coming in to hot! The clamps to the troop bay are failing!" Said the co-Pilot.

Anthony's mind stopped to wrap itself around what he had just said. "s**t! Open the back doo-" But before he could finish, the monitor screamed at him, and the troop bay fell from the Pelican. Luckally they were only 20 feet from the ground... but still, he had just lost 12 men, including his own Lieutenant.

"HOLD THIS THING STEDY!" He yelled while the bird began to plumit out of control.

His mind began to race and his body matched what the Pelican was doing, he felt almost helpless as the 5 ton hunk of metal was flying through the air as if someone had chucked it.

Anthony was able to look behind him at the door when he saw it was empty, as in the blast doors were completly gone, and he could see the horizon mangled with the sky.

Without thinking he snatched his rifle, and leaped for the doorway. He could feel gravity begin to take hold of him as he fell through the air. His eyes watered and his body burned.

The Pelican came to rest finally a click away, both pilots dead, and the Pelican totaled. Anthony, landed on the ground in a heap, his mind slipped into a lockdown as he began to recover from the fall...

"Karr?! Anthony! Come on man their coming!"
But I dont want to get up.
"NO! ANTHONY! You need to get up now...
Go away...
"Anthony, lets go! Get up Marine!"
Why are you bothering me?
"That was an ORDER..."
Fine...

The sky filled his vision. He was on his back. From what Anthony could tell, he was still alive. But to what extent?

He sat up, and opened a COM frequancy with the Lieutenant.

"Lieutenant? This is Karr, whats your Status?"
All that answered him was static.

Anthony threw his helmet down at the ground in frustration; his COM was dead. Which ment the only way to get to them was to find them.

About a click to his left, was the ruins of a building. WHat building it was he couldn't tell. Out of the dirt, an advertisement for the new 'Hog All Purpose vehical was sticking out. the billboard was pasted with holes... and bodies.

The Sergeant approched the sign. His Rifle slung around his back and his HE pistol drawn and leveled downward as he moved slowly towards the delerict sign.

He quickly popped his head behind it, and saw 6 Marines. They looked to be about 6 months old due to their state. Half of the flesh was picked from their bones by animals, and from what was left of them, whatever had attacked them, did it in close quarters; which opened up the possibility that they were POW's of the Covenant.

He reached down, and serched for a COM, and their Dog-Tags. After the first 3, Anthony found their tags, but came up empty on a COM. But the 4th one, was a COM officer, and carried a COM-Relay Pack on his back.

"Thank god..." Anthony muttered to himself, and relived the corpse of his Tags, and his COM equipment.

Switching the COM to all open channels, he broadcasted a message.
"Lieutenant? Do you copy, this is 1st Sergeant Karr. I dont know where you guys are. Come back, Over?"