Foxtrot 024 joined Hotel 037 at the rendezvous point. Then came another Pelican, and another. One by one the ships swept in from their scoutings and made ready to attack. This mostly consisted of drifting around aimlessly over the trees chattering about inane, irrelevant things over the radio. They were all in generally good spirits. Delta Squadron had confirmed the destruction of two Banshees and a general state of chaos amongst the Covenant soldiers, so they were all confident this would be fairly straightforward.

"Form two wedges," instructed Captain Eddy. "Alpha wedge will fly east-to-west, Beta will come in south-to-north right after. Give 'em hell."

"Aye aye, Cap'n!" the pilots chorused, and the flock of Pelicans began to organize. It went a little slower than usual because of how vague the instructions were, but the pilots were starting to get used to that with Captain Eddy.

And so the two wedges of Pelicans descended on the unsuspecting Covenant crash-site with guns blazing.

Needless to say, all hell broke loose on the ground below.

-----

The Elites who were inside the ship all jumped in alarm at the sound of gunfire peppering the dorsal surface of the craft, and then had to fight their way against the tide of panicking Jackals and Grunts charging in from the outside. And then, once they managed to get out onto the ship ramp, they found themselves to be under attack as well.

Kula 'Kajramee was, well, exactly how one would expect him to be feeling. The Elite's arms were trembling ever so slightly and his eyes were slitted in rage as he scowled out the door, standing just far enough back to avoid the hail of fire. If looks could kill, 'Kajramee would have just destroyed half of the vegetation around the ship with a glance.

The real trouble was that there was absolutely nothing he could do about this whole situation. Being totally helpless did not suit most Elites, and it fit 'Kajramee like a fluffy pink sweater fit a Humboldt squid.

"What shall we do, sir?" asked 'Galimee, nearly tripping over a gibbering pack of Grunts that came charging up the ramp into the ship's belly.

'Kajramee thought, and didn't come up with any new ideas. Both Banshees had been destroyed and it was just a waste of ammo and lives to go out and shoot at the Pelicans.

Wait a minute. Shooting at the Pelicans.

'Kajramee remembered something very, something very important. This was a ship. Ships had guns. Guns were for shooting at things. Not only that, but it also had shields on it somewhere.

Maybe, just maybe they could turn this around.

"Vak!" 'Kajramee barked, seizing the Jackal roughly by the shoulder as the smaller alien was moving past him. Vak tried not to wince and only succeeded halfway.

"Yes, Excellency?"

"Get down to the shield generator. I want that back online five minutes ago," 'Kajramee ordered, giving Vak a shove to be off and on his way. It was actually a shove in the wrong direction, and it also hurt, but Vak was smart enough not to complain. He turned and set off at a sulky trot deeper into the ship, muttering defeatist remarks to himself.

'Kajramee didn't notice and was beyond the point of caring what Vak did as long as the job got done.

"'Galimee," he said, turning to the other Elite. "Get all gunners to post now. Tell them to destroy as many enemy ships as possible."

"Yes, Excellency!" 'Galimee replied with a salute and turned smartly, jogging off through the crowd of milling soldiers to see to that. A few of the other Elites had caught the conversation and headed for their stations. Only three of the Silent Contemplation's guns were still functioning. The ship's port side had slammed into the ground and lost all weapon functions, so it was going to be up to the three on the starboard to compensate.

'Kajramee would not let his unit go down without one last fight.

-----

Vak's faith in the intelligence of his superiors was long dead, the bones picked clean and bleached white. Still, what he found when he took a look at the shield generator somehow killed it even deader.

There was a note stuck onto the maintenance panel. It read:

GENERATOR TEMPORARILY OUT OF SERVICE.

All Vak could do was stare at it while some little, less calm part of his mind threw off its helmet and jumped up and down on it shrieking curses in his native tongue.

Vak reached out with one slightly shaking hand, and began to gingerly remove the panel. He had a bad feeling about what he was going to find underneath it, so instead of thinking about that he focused solely on removing each individual bolt. One by one.

And then there were no more bolts. No more delays. Nothing Vak could do to put off the inevitable revelation of whatever horror awaited him inside the generator. He noticed he was holding his breath when he lifted the panel.

And there was nothing.

Vak stared at the nothing like he'd stared at the note, adding a touch of fear to the disbelief and fury. There was nothing. Nadda. Squat. Where the shield generator should have been, there was a generator-shaped piece of thin air.

Vak swallowed with some difficulty due to his dry throat, and then he put the panel back. Then he replaced the bolts, picked up the tool box, and turned to leave.

"Vak!"

Vak froze. Who was it? Had they seen? Were they going to tell 'Kajramee? 'Kajramee was bound to make this out to be Vak's fault somehow, and witnesses would not help the Jackal's case.

Vak turned to find Raz looking at him with an expression of polite puzzledness on his face.

"What?" he asked, managing not to sigh with relief.

"'Kajramee told me to help you fix the shield generator," said Raz. "Oh, and Kar too, but I think he went somewhere else instead. He does not listen very well. I wonder if he has hearing trouble."

The other Jackal then noticed the memo on the maintenance panel.

"What is that supposed to mean?" he asked Vak, gesturing at it.

Well, the jig was up. No point in lying now.

"The generator appears to be missing," Vak replied tonelessly.

"Are you serious?" Raz's eyes bugged out of his head. This would be difficult for the casual observer to notice, Jackal eyes always tend to seem bugged out, but Vak was a Jackal himself and had grown up with that.

"Dead serious, Raz. Dead serious. Or at least, I will be when 'Kajramee hears about this."

Raz looked back and forth between the amazingly calm Vak and the note. "But we have to tell him!" he said, getting anxious now. "How can 'Kajramee compensate for not having shields if does not know about it in the first place?!"

"You can tell him if it means that much to you," Vak replied. "I am going to go check with the gunners and make sure all is well with them. If the generator were only broken I might be able to repair it, but it is not there at all, so it is a waste of my time to stay."

Raz nodded. "Sir!" he said, taking the suggestion as an order, and jogging off the way he'd come from. Raz was quick and found 'Kajramee barking orders to the various soldiers and crewmen that had made it in out of the hail of Pelican fire. Some of those same soldiers were beginning to think it wasn't much of an improvement.

"Excellency?" asked Raz.

"What?" snarled the Elite, turning to scowl at the smaller alien.

"The shield generator is missing, Excellency. Vak has gone to check the gun systems instead," Raz reported dutifully.

All 'Kajramee could manage was a strangled sound in his throat that can be best described as "Gyahrlk!"

-----

Don't be a hero, and never volunteer for anything. That one philosophy had gotten Private Boskovitch through many a tight spot. The only trouble was it didn't work with Lieutenant Baker. Baker had, in the earlier portion of his military career, followed that same code. That meant now, as an officer, he had figured out how to subvert it.

The lieutenant marched into the mess hall and shouted for silence, then gave some orders. All able-bodied soldiers were to form a single file line, from one end of the hall to the other, and listen to what he had to say. That was accomplished with some grumbling and table moving, and then they all stood in a line and listened. The Covenant were settled comfortably into the defenses of the crashed ship, and the Pelicans couldn't do a thing about them. It would also be no good having the Dracos and the Albatross go rip them apart because then they'd risk destroying the ship logs (which Command had ordered them to secure) or, even worse, making the ship's engine explode and kill all of them. Baker wanted volunteers to go inside and do some close-in work. The lieutenant liked volunteers, even if they weren't voluntary.

"Now, anyone that would like to volunteer, please step forward."

No one moved.

"Okay, we'll try this again. If you want to volunteer, stay back."

They all stepped forward.

Baker knew he had them now. It was just a matter of talking fast.

"Forward! Back! Back! Forward! Forward! Back Forward Back Back Forward!" And on he went until nobody knew which way they were supposed to move anymore. They all formed a line again, assuming that at least one other person had caught the directions and that they hadn't meant to volunteer.

Baker's face cracked into a grin as he surveyed the line. The soldiers that weren't wearing their helmets looked at each other out of the corners of their eyes nervously, all of them trying to figure out what was making the lieutenant so happy and none of them liking their conclusions.

Baker clapped his hands together. "Well isn't that great! All of you volunteered!"

He started to pace now.

"Well, we can't take all of you. That would leave the base undefended. So let's see..." Baker looked up and down the line, thinking. The snipers should probably stay, no point bringing them into a closed environment where they couldn't get vantages to shoot from. That ruled out the one freelancer. The other, Blood, would be a real asset this time around. Baker had seen a bit of his sword work in the last fight and was impressed. The knife specialist would come.

That was how it went with Baker's thinking. Names jumped to mind and were decided on, and those names brought up other names. It didn't take him too long to finally settle his list and then he divided them all up accordingly. The garrison would include all the snipers and the gunteams as well as a handful of others Baker felt were less suited to what he would need in a boarding party.

Holcomb swallowed to help settle his nerves. Jake and Davis were wounded, and Ohio was more valuable up on the towers. Holcomb, on the other hand, was going and none of the rest of his squadron were coming along.

"Well, this ought to be interesting," grumbled Blood from his right, not turning his head to look at Holcomb as they pretended to listen to what the lieutenant was saying. The freelancer had a knife in one hand and the unactivated plasma sword in the other, and somehow managed to seem like he did this every day.

This was helped by the fact that, at one point, he actually had.

Ohio, across the room and out of Baker's line of sight, flashed Holcomb and Blood a thumbs up and mouthed "GOOD LUCK!".

Baker lead the group out of the room and Holcomb found himself at the very back. He was about to go out when,

"Holcomb."

He turned to see Jake staring him in the face with the determined, slightly violent scowl he was used to.

"Fair warning: If you die, I'll have to kill you." And she meant it. No matter how impossible that was, Jake's expression told no lies. It was the sort of look a hawk gives a mouse before biting its head off.

"Sure thing, Jake," he said, despite the distinct sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach as he turned again to go.

-----

The flight in the dropship was by no means relaxing, especially because Holcomb's mind wandered onto the subject of exactly why the floor under his feet was known in slang as the "blood tray".

"We oughta come out alright," said Blood optimistically, flicking one-handed through all the blades in his knife belt to make sure they were all present, accounted for, and honed sharp. They always were, but it gave him something to do.

"Well, cool," replied Mathers stiffly.

"Freelancer said it. Must be true," said Griffith. The uneasy silence returned.

"Ah, git over it kids," said Wolf, examining the chamber on her rifle. "We gonna go in, we gonna come out, everythin' right peachy. Just dun git killed and yeh'll be fine."

"Reassuring as ever, Ma'am," said Holcomb.

"Thankya."

"I wonder how many are left now," said Griffith.

"What?" Mathers looked at the other soldier.

Griffith shrugged. "Well, we killed a good few of 'em when they stormed the base. Then when they ran off, at least some of 'em had to get lost in the jungle. Question is, how many are left to guard the ship?"

"Who'd be dumb enough to bring the whole force in one attack? They probably left reinforcements back at the crash site. I bet we've only seen part of what they've got," said Boskovitch. His usual pessimism was not appreciated on this subject, and he recieved a few sidelong scowls. Of course, that was because nobody knew precisely how dumb their adversary had been in handling this whole entire fiasco.

"Well, we'll just have to beat 'em all," replied Wolf, nodding sagely as though that settled it.

"ETA two minutes, folks. Lock and load," said the pilot's voice over the com. There were a few seconds filled with the sounds of guns being loaded and readied, ammo checked, grenades looked over, and all things found shipshape.

The Pelican buzzarded down to an acceptable drop level in a slightly clear area that was a safe distance from the ship. It was, in fact, part of the entry scar the Covenant craft had dragged across the jungle floor. Several trees had been torn up by the roots, the earth still fresh where they had been standing. The combination of logs and ground was too unlevel to land the Pelican on in the conventional sense, so the soldiers had to settle for a six-foot hover and a knee-jarring hop to the ground. Wolf went first, followed by Holcomb, Blood, Griffith, Mathers, Bosko, and the five others with names Holcomb couldn't remember that had aided them in filling the seats.

"Good luck, fellas. We'll keep you posted on where we'll do the pickup. Kill some covies for me," said the pilot, and the Pelican lifted off to go do whatever it was Captain Eddy had told it to do. Holcomb was absolutely clueless when it came to aerial tactics and was more than happy to remain so.

"You 'eard him. C'mon, we gotta move up. 'San order," said Wolf. She ducked down and began her steady progress across the fallen trees. The fact she didn't trip over any of them was, for Wolf, a near olympian feat. Water welled up in their bootsteps as they made their way over the rainsoaked jungle floor.

Holcomb knew that others had found drops all around the Covenant ship. They were gonna basically storm the place and hope for the best when it came to the plasma guns. Or at least, that had been the plan until someone found three rocket launchers tucked away neglectedly in the corner of Outpost Delta's hangar. The sight would have made Ohio cry.

One of those rocket launchers was now in the hands of a member of Holcomb's team. It took a few minutes, but the name "Rutherford" eventually floated up from memory to identify him. Holcomb didn't know anything about Rutherford besides his name and what he looked like. He could only hope the other man was a good shot.

The ship looked more than anything, to Holcomb, like a beached whale. The bubbled purple shape lie undignified with its port side dug into the earth and the hull in terrible condition. Perhaps, he thought, there was some hope for the lot of them after all.

"Shields probably aren't working," said Blood, barely above a whisper. There really was no point to that, there was no sign of life outside the craft, but something about being so near it made the caution seem necessary.

"What?"

"The shields." Blood made a little circle in the air with his finger around the ship. "I'm pretty sure they rely on proximity sensors. If the ship's touching that much ground, they gotta be either turned off or broken."

"Well, good."

It seemed the lieutenant had come to the same conclusion, because Wolf held up a hand to stop the rest and listened carefully for a moment, then looked to Rutherford.

"Yeh're up, soldier. Lieutenant wants ya to go stop up one o' them big guns. He oughta tell ya more once ya git goin'. Now git goin'."

"Yes'm," said Rutherford. He crept off into the forest, up a splope a bit to the right of the group. He circled around to where his cover was better and he wouldn't draw attention to the rest of them.

Wolf dragged the team forward through the trees, gradually drawing nearer and nearer to the ship. She raised one hand again at the treeline.

"Wait a minnit. Gotta give the launchers time."

Holcomb's confidence in Rutherford and the other two men was bolstered considerably when three pairs of rockets came flying out of the jungle to strike the ship guns. The guns were not meant to take hits like that, the guns were designed with speed and accuracy in mind rather than durability. Only one was outright destroyed, but the other two weren't going to be operational long if another shot like that was coming. This success proved a further point that made Blood grin to himself. He and Baker were right. The shields were down.

"Gonna find a way in," Wolf muttered to the rest of the team, waiting on the order to move. "See the ramp up there? Gotta clear that. Git up in there. Then we git t'the control room, or somebody else does and we buy 'em time. Git 'em out, and let the fellas upstairs blow these bastards to Kingdom Come. Tha's the plan. Any questions?"

There weren't any. Meanwhile, the Covenant gunteams were slashing at the jungle with their two working weapons, hunting blindly for human soldiers and setting the forest alight. Holcomb couldn't tell if they hit anyone, though. The rocket launchers had left their first posts to avoid fire and must have reloaded, because a second salvo came out to rip up the last two guns.

Now things were just about as close to even as they were going to get. Wolf lead the team out from cover at the same time all the other leaders did. The Pelicans swept low over the crash site to shoot at any aliens dumb enough to stick near open doorways. Holcomb's feet pounded the muddy ground as he raced with the rest of them to the boarding ramp, which the enemy seemed to have forgotten to lift. In an instant, everything was firefight and close-quarters at once. Plasma bolts and lead were flying all over the place and fizzling off his shields while Holcomb had to bring the butt of his SMG down on a Grunt's head when the alien blocked his way. The human force launched itself into the fight and at once began to find places to duck and shoot from, capturing a few standing shields when no one was left to stop them. Holcomb's heart was thudding the whole time as he helped gun down one after another after another of the enemy.

Blood, however, was as close to being in his element as he'd been in a long time.

The freelancer tore into enemy lines with gusto, the sword in one hand and his other alternating with amazing ease between a knife and his sidearm until the flow of attackers temporarily stopped. He stole a shield off a fallen Jackal and hooked it to his left arm, as a few other soldiers did, while the officers made a few quick decisions as to how best to proceed. All Blood knew was the fight wasn't over yet, and the further they went the closer the quarters, and the closer the quarters the better.

"I'm kinda surprised," said Mathers quietly as their team made their wary way deeper into the ship.

"How so?" asked Holcomb, a good deal calmer now that he had survived the initial charge.

"Well, this is kinda easier than I expected."

"Dun get too comfy, fellas," said Wolf. "Them guys was jus' the welcomin' party."

"No Elites yet," said Blood grimly. In fact, "grimly" described the whole trek down the eerie, quiet passage.

Unfortunately, it didn't stay quiet for long.

The soldiers came to a fork in the hall, a way ran off to the right and another went straight ahead.

As it turned out, there were two Shade guns crammed side-by-side into the right hall. Oh, and did I mention they opened fire?

Wolf, who had been the one to peer around the corner, narrowly avoided losing her head. The wasted shots sizzled into the wall across from the opening, hissing almost resentfully.

"Awe, ain't it cute? They went to all this trouble for us," Wolf chuckled. The sergeant took a pair of plasma grenades she'd policed off a kill and chucked them around the corner. There were a few inarticulate alien shouts and two satisfying explosions, then Wolf lead the charge round the corner with a war yell. Blood matched her stride for stride on the right and Mathers, who was alarmed to find himself up front but could really do nothing about it, brought up the left. They leapt (or, in Wolf's case, scrambled ungracefully) over the Shades and emptied clips into the Jackals that had formed a wall of linked shields. It didn't last long. Then the open air in front of them started spitting plasma rifle shots where two stealthed Elites stood ghosting, barely visible. The pair ducked back when the team attacked, forcing the humans to climb back behind the Shades for cover as the aliens fired their own shots. Wolf chucked more grenades at them while shouting curses and some of the strangest epithets Holcomb had ever heard.

For example, "Yer mother eats batshit yeh damn sonofalawyer!"

Perhaps sticking the both of them with three grenades each was more than a little like overkill, but Wolf didn't care. She lead the team over the now blood-slicked floor, across the unidentifiable remains, and they progressed even further into the ship.

Things never quite settled into a pattern. They caught lone aliens off guard on occasion, or were ambushed, or ran into smaller groups that were looking for someone to fight. It took some work and all their frag grenades, but the team made steady progress without anybody having to stop due to injury. This was pretty astounding because Wolf had already taken three major plasma hits and some of the blood on her armor was her own, Holcomb's left arm was bleeding and slack where a needler shard had detonated near the elbow, Mathers' chestplate was slightly melted, and Blood had taken a pretty heavy hit to the ribs and, despite acting like everything was fine, it hurt if he inhaled deeply too fast.

The pace and frequency of the fights kept on increasing, too. At least that meant they were going in the right direction.

"Where exactly is this control room anyway?" panted Boskovitch as they high-tailed it down a corridor, trying to outsprint a pack of Grunts coming up on their rear while shooting at the small aliens over their shoulders.

"God only knows!" shouted Wolf over the gunfire. She clicked to the radio. "Lieutenant! Any updates on where we're s'posed to be goin' would be greatly loved right 'bout now!"

"We just hacked the system. Sending the map."

A blueprint of the Covenant ship, complete with incomprehensible alien scripture, flowed over Wolf's HUD. A blinking cursor marked their location, and a second later a red dot marked a room. Target found.

"Right!" Wolf yelled as they came to an intersection. The team obeyed. The ship lurched with a dull roar, Holcomb's best guess was someone had set off some kind of mine, and the soldiers barely managed to stay on their feet through the turn as the slick floor shook. One Grunt tripped, and the whole lot of them tumbled over it like dominoes. Holcomb couldn't have said how he managed to remain on his feet even if he could remember it, his attention was so deeply consumed by the state of his left arm that it left room for little else.

It was insane. It was totally nuts. They were going to launch an attack on the control room, of all places! Everyone important was bound to be in there, all the important people were Elites, and none of them save Wolf was quite excited about charging in on a mess of the alien warriors.

Oh well. Orders were orders.

Wolf had gathered plasma grenades as they went, and her success was outrageous to the point where it may have defied the laws of the universe. Clipped to the magnetic belt at her waist were eight of them, and she'd bullied Mathers into carrying eight more. The others each had picked up one or two, but were nowhere near as efficient about it as the mad sergeant. The team was coming up on the control room now and Wolf had squeezed two in each hand in preparation to fling them.

"They en't gonna like us comin' in there, right?" she said, "So we gotta clear some of 'em out. Ever'body with grenades is gonna throw 'em in the door, awright?"

Nobody said anything, they were too busy running, and Wolf took it as an affirmative.

"So then, while they's all confused, we shoot 'em," she finished. Nobody argued, whether because of injury or lack of a better idea it didn't really matter.

They didn't meet anyone on the way to the control room, which was incredibly creepy and unexpected. As the blinking navpoint grew brighter, Wolf raised a grenade-filled hand to slow them. The message was obvious, so their progress shifted from a dog trot to a creep.

The hairs stood up on the back of Blood's neck as they drew near enough to hear voices. Completely incomprehensible alien voices, of course, but that didn't change the fact they all sounded exceedingly pissed.

The team flattened themselves to the bulkhead, approaching from the left. The only thing that saved them from detection was their angle on the door, they were impossible to see from within the room itself. Provided, however, that nobody was near the entrance.

Wolf was betting their lives on that.

"On my word, unleash hell," she hissed. Blood seriously wondered how she could be cracking jokes when within spitting distance of five or more Elite warriors, but then again Wolf was nuts.

"Go!"

And the team's whole supply of plasma grenades was chucked through the door.

-----

Being attacked enraged 'Kajramee even more than minor disobedience did. The big Elite leapt back reflexively with a snarl, narrowly avoiding being stuck on the leg with a grenade. The spattering hiss and the plasma's blue glow had been his only warnings, and 'Kajramee was exceedingly lucky to avoid it.

The commander backed quickly from the center of the room to duck behind a bank of computers, rifle drawn and ready to fight. 'Galimee was beside him, also unstuck, but two other warriors had not shared their good fortune. The three stood bravely and grimly in the center of the room with the other grenades at their feet and emptied their weapons into the hallway at the human force, dying without so much as a cry of pain when the explosions tore them apart. Their deaths were noble, they would be honored for this.

With that, the Elites prepared for a siege of the control room. Aside from the two officers there were another three that had found cover. No one in the open survived the blast, even ducked behind the computer bank 'Kajramee's shields were halved.

"Stay back and let them come to us!" 'Kajramee ordered, leveling his sights with the door and waiting.

It was a stalemate. The humans were smart enough not to come charging in, and the Elite's knew better than to break cover. 'Kajramee settled in comfortably against the hulk of the now very shrapnel-ized computer bank to wait them out.

A head poked around the door frame, even as he fired at it 'Kajramee's lips curled with disgust for the mirrored orange faceplate. What cowards they were to hide their faces. Unfortunately, the human was quick and avoided losing its head. 'Kajramee snorted and narrowed his eyes.

"Just a matter of time," said 'Galimee grimly.

"We have precious little of that to spare," the commander growled.

-----

"Well, now what?" asked Holcomb. He was tired, he was bleeding, and just wanted to get this over with and see whether he was going to survive or not.

"Uhmmmm..." said Wolf. Three minutes and fifteen seconds had passed since she thought it was a good idea to stick her head around the door jamb and nearly lost it for the second time. At least, that was the time according to Holcomb's HUD. His HUD was also informing him of a few key facts he may have missed, such as the fact he was bleeding and that they were only yards away from the target.

"Awful patient, aren't they," said Mathers idly. They were sitting against the bulkhead next to the door now, once more on the same side of the hallway as the opening to avoid being shot at from within.

"Well, we could wait them out," Rutherford suggested, but entirely without conviction.

Blood shook his head. "We can't waste too much time, who knows how long we have before another group of those guys gets down here and finds us, or a whole ship gets here?"

All eyes silently drifted over to Wolf, and everyone wondered why they had listened to her and wasted their whole grenade supply at once and failed to kill everyone in the room.

"Can't we get more grenades?" asked Mathers suddenly.

Wolf turned her head very slowly to face the rookie. "What did you say?"

"I thought we could get... more... grenades..." his voiced petered out toward the end as he tried to decide whether or not he'd made an idiot of himself. "Ma'am," he added quickly.

A heavily silent five seconds passed, and then,

"He's a genius!" Wolf declared, standing up. "C'mon, boys, we're gonna go find s'more grenades. And then we can come back!"

Mathers, feeling he had dodged a bullet of some kind, was the next on his feet and the others followed. Nobody wanted to go, but it was better than being by the door.

It didn't take them long to rediscover the Grunt pack they had run from just minutes before, and it took even less time to dispatch the smaller Covenant. And so weapons and grenades were stolen from bullet-riddled corpses, and Wolf dragged the unhappy lot back to the control room.

'Kajramee had waited patiently the whole time, so they wouldn't get another shot at the Elites in the open. That didn't bother Wolf, the team stayed in the hall near the door and spoke in hushed tones, invisible from within.

"Freelancer, lemme see that shield a minute, eh?" Wolf said, turning to Blood. He handed it over without comment, though his eyebrows went up inside his helmet. Somehow he didn't think he was going to get that shield back in one piece.

"Ah, nice. Jes' what we need," the sergeant went on, hefting it. She locked it into place on her left arm and activated it, the shield flaring up green-blue. If this hadn't made her plan clear to the other soldiers, the point was driven home when she took two plasma grenades in her free hand.

"Gonna do some cleanin', follow close," was all she said, and without ceremony she primed the grenades and ducked around the doorframe, taking several bounding steps to maximize her throwing range, and hurling the explosives with all her might over the computer banks the enemy sheltered behind. The response had been instantaneous, the moment Wolf was over the threshold plasma bolts assailed her from five different points. Wolf's armor shields blazed, but the larger Jackal generator took the brunt of the assault, and the fire was dispersed as the rest of the team took the plunge behind her. Wolf threw more grenades to draw the Elites out from their cover, there was a despairing roar as one of them stuck and the explosion spattered the nearby walls with purple gore.

The Elites did not like being forced out of cover, but they liked being bombarded with plasma even less. The team was forced to retreat into the hallway again, and by this point the Elites were incensed enough to give chase. 'Kajramee lead them, teeth bared and eyes flashing with anger as his shields flared like molten gold in defiance of shots.

Even worse, the pursuing Elites forced the team to pass an opening with another set of Shades crammed into it.

"HAUL ASS!" Wolf barked, though the order was entirely redundant. The team, despite creeping exhaustion and injury, hauled ass and plasma danced at their heels. The Elites were gaining now, and Wolf was starting to be a lot less confident. Chances were good the aliens had contacted some allies by now to come around from another end of the hall and pin the team.

"Lieutenant, we need backup!" she shouted into the radio, ducking a needler shard.

And then ran into him.

Baker's team was coming into this particular corridor as Wolf's fled down it, and as a result the lot of them collided with no small amount of indignity. There was lots of yelling, but that quickly subsided as the human forces scrambled back to their feet to fire on the Covenant. The Elites skidded to a far more graceful halt, but had no cover against the suddenly doubled gunfire and had to turn tail themselves or get torn apart. It would be stupid, however, to think this was the last they would see of 'Kajramee.

"Thankya, Lieutenant," said Wolf between bursts of semi-automatic fire. "Much obliged."

"No problem, Sergeant."

Thus rallied, the combined teams pushed back toward the Shade fortification, which they over-ran just to make a point. Blood even got to make a few good slices with his sword, sending Grunts reeling with their entrails in their hands. They did not, however, find the Elites.

"They've gone back to the control room again, they know better than to leave it unguarded," said the lieutenant in the pause after the slaying of the Shade gunners. Several members of the team, including Holcomb, were leaning against the wall or had slid down to sit on the floor, breathing hard.

"Pity," grumbled Wolf.

"We out of grenades?" asked Mathers.

"Yes."

The lieutenant looked at them both suddenly. "Grenades?"

"Aye, sir, grenades," said Wolf, faceplate moving to look at Baker more directly.

The lieutenant groaned. "God, you didn't throw any in the control room, did you?"

The sergeant hesitated. "Ummm... Oops?" she said, the meaning dawning on her. In all likelihood, they had just destroyed all the intelligence they'd been sent to retrieve.

Baker shook his head and sighed. "Well, fuck."

Nobody had enough energy or good spirits left to take any notice of the expletive.

"Well, maybe they already destroyed all the data themselves," said Bosokovitch. "They're not stupid enough to just let us have it."

"I don't know about the whole "aliens are smart" thing..." said Griffith.

"They're rather proud, Elites are usually the last to concede a defeat. Chances are they haven't done anything. In any case, we can't just let them stay holed up in there," said Baker firmly, cutting off whatever argument was undoubtedly about to break out.

"But-!" protested Bosko.

Baker looked at him.

Bosko said nothing.

"That's what I thought you said," growled the Lieutenant. "We need to draw them out of the control room, we don't stand a chance trying to get in while they hold a door."

Blood cleared his throat.

"Yes, freelancer?"

"I have an idea, sir."