In the name of Earth and Balaho, till the bitter end!

Prequel chapter 1: Why do we always have to clean up these messes?

If you are only here to read the story, not listen to an explanation of anything, skip to the next not bold sentence

Authors note: Ok, as I have said in the Authors note chapter of my other stories, I'll be working on this while also rewriting the story 'Avengers of Mass Effect'. This means that updates will likely be infrequent and somewhat smaller then the recent ones of my other stories (all of which are 20.000 words or more).

.

For this story I'll be going for chapters somewhere between 5000 and 10000 words, not only so that updates will be somewhat more frequent if smaller, but also to make it easier to incorporate people's advice into the stories.

With this said, I am very unsure how high the quality of this story actually is, so please do give a review on it. I'm also trying to represent the characters as realistically as possible, though in the case of the Master Chief and Cortona this will probably be harder then most people expect. He's a super-soldier, child-soldier and war hero that has been in near constant combat in a war of unimaginable scale for 70% of his life.

.

Cortona meanwhile is an A.I. that has developed feelings for a human that has stared death into the eyes multiple times, and she has had to live with the idea that she would think herself into insanity and potentially turn on the people she loves in less than 7 years after her birth, while she also spent many years alone on a mostly destroyed space-ship, unable to wake her only companion on the ship who also happened to be the man she loved out of fear that he would die.

.

Both of them are going to have severe problems in handling this. Now, to ensure everyone knows something first: I know that Cortona is supposed to die taking down the 150km long ship that the Didact will attempt to use to destroy Earth and then somehow end up in the domain, however I have thought of a way for her to survive which will be written into a flashback in the next chapter of the story. If people think its not realistic, please message me the why and how once I've released it, if possible also giving a suggestion on what can be done to create a better version of it.

Rewrite on 24-5-2019: I'm finally working on the problems the reviewers talked about concerning this chapter, I hope that it is now a better version of it. People whom have read it previously, please do give me an update on wether or not it is better in the reviews. Also, the name has been changed the reason for this will be in the third chapter of the prequel, after which there will be a time-line.

Disclaimer: I do not own either HALO or Mass Effect, the only thing about this story owned by me are the names of the OC's, the same as every other fanfiction writer. Both game series belong to their respective developers.

And now that the Authors note and disclaimer are over, onto the story.

.

Chapter 1: Why do we always have to clean up these messes?

Dimension: HALO, Location: the light frigate UNSC Divinity in wild space, date: 5th of August of the year 2557 of the UNSC military calendar 00.30 hours

.

Mityat POV

.

This promotion is nice, now I finally have a commanding position among my brothers and sisters of the Unggoy race, when I never got one even after years of fighting for the Gods be damned Prophets. Those fools that sided with the Covenant Remnant are probably not getting anywhere near as good a treatment as our side gives us.
Oh well, their problem, I get this nice command position over the Unggoy members of a joint mission with these humans and every member of our species that sides with the Swords of Sanghellios gets the human civilian genetic modification package adapted to Unggoy biology expanding our life-span from 60 to 120 years.

These genetic modifications do not only do that but they also give us the ability to survive without methane for longer periods of time due to our lungs now being able to turn oxygen into methane, though outside of pure oxygen its not enough to sustain us indefinitely so we do sadly enough have to wear the methane tanks on most occasions.

Still a huge improvement over dying in less than a minute if your methane tank gets damaged. I'll be forever thankful to them for this new chance they've given both myself and my people, even though we were at war with them such a short time before this. The fact that they also added translation devices to the armour every single member of this joint military instead of simply expecting us to learn the language like the Covenant would have is also very refreshing.

Even though we honestly didn't necessarily need the things since most of us can speak and understand English just fine, the gesture is very much appreciated by all of us. Well all of us except for one of the ensign who began grumbling about now having studied the language for no reason and how he could have spent that time more efficiently, but even that was probably mostly complaining so that he could complain about something.

Lastly we also get a better treatment from these humans then we ever got from the others in the Covenant, up to the point that even the demon and the captain are if not friendly at least treating us with a measure of respect for the fact that we are their fellow soldiers risking our lives along with them in this search for the Didacts surviving forces and if the Demon is correct, possibly even a wounded Didact himself.

I just hope he doesn't have another one of those massive ships of the Gods lying around, because while this is a strong ship for a frigate, it would still be the equivalent of me trying to fight a Brute as the humans so accurately describe them with a very well knife in a 1 on 1 duel while he is wielding a gravity hammer. Should not have thought of that, now the possibility of that actually happening is stuck in my head, I'll have Hallyat message the other ship on this expedition to see if they have discovered anything peculiar in the past few hours.

''Hallyat, can you contact the UNSC Athena and the UNSC Forward into the Night to see if they have found anything noteworthy yet?'' Getting an affirmative reaction, I take a moment to look around me at the ships crew. As its currently the so called 'Night shift' most of the bridge crew are me and other Unggoy sailors, while our human counterparts who handle most of the 'Day shift' are asleep for now. The only non-Unggoy on the bridge are the ancilla, captain Cortana, and a single human marine, corporal Stephan Fredrickson, since protocol demands there is an anti-boarding group up, and we don't have enough Unggoy direct combatants to make full Unggoy shifts for that aspect of our schedules.

Not that I have a problem with him being human, however it might have been nice so that we could lower the energy consumption of each specie's specialised sleeping quarters to give more to the captain to assist her in the task of searching what the most likely hide-out of the Didacts remaining forces will be. ''The Athena reports having seen nothing strange appear on their sensors however after multiple attempts neither them nor us can contact the Forward into the Night. What do we do?''

Ok since the Forward until Night is a 'Prowler' type vessel the chance of them having comm issues is relatively small. The highest chances are that they either have found an enemy and cannot send a message out of fear of being found by that enemy, option two that they have been destroyed by an enemy ship or option three that they found something that their captain doesn't want anyone except ONI or UNSC high command to know.

I'll ask for advice from the captain since she probably has more experience with these types of situations. ''What is your take on the situation captain?'' Still a bit strange for the commanding officer of this operation to be the ancilla instead of the Demon, probably has something to do with politics, but hey, she's quite capable and also willing to listen to our advice if the situation requires it so I do not mind too much. She seems to think for a moment before replying.

''Since it's commander is an ONI member chances are equal between him currently trying to hide from the opponent and him trying to hide something from the slip-space engine to jump us to their last known position and tell the Athena to do the same, afterwards notify the 14th and 15th flotilla's requesting them to jump to the nearest solar system and be ready to support us if the situation turns out to be hostile or defend the colony if the remaining enemy forces decide to attack. Mityat, wake up the non-active Unggoy crew, I'll get the humans to get themselves ready for combat.''

We salute her while everyone goes to their assigned tasks, on a normal human ship my job wouldn't be necessary since the ancilla can just wake everyone, however some of our superiors disliked the idea of us not having any privacy at all in our own quarters and as such there are no camera's or holo-pedestals in our barracks aboard the two renovated frigates. While on the one hand I'm grateful to be given some level of privacy, the fact remains that it does create a problematic situation if we were to be ambushed while the day shift is on.

Luckily right now the only people in there are some of our spare sensor operators and mechanics, whom while a useful addition in combat in case somebody gets injured somehow or we get system malfunctions that need to be repaired fast aren't really necessary otherwise. As I arrive at the door I open it to get into the first small methane room, letting the door close behind me I open the second door once the room has been changed to methane again and making my way into the actual barracks. Where even after I try to get them to wake up they seem to keep sleeping. Oh well, they asked for it.

''Wake up you lazy imbeciles and gear up for duty immediately, otherwise no food nipple for you weaklings today!'' I shout in my best imitation of the Sanghelli major we served under a few months before we began this joint mission, and considering that they all wake up almost immediately and scramble to gather their gear, I'm reasonably successful. That is until they are awake enough to remember that they haven't served under a Sanghelli in weeks and that nobody on this ship actually addresses people like that.

I am then subjected to the annoyed gazes of 7 now fully awake Unggoy ensigns and 1 petty officer, who also speaks what is on all their minds ''Lieutenant Mityat with all due respect, what is the reason behind you waking us up in such a nightmare inducing way. As far as I can see we had another'' he checks his wristwatch, which he had won from one of the human crew members in a poker match, what a delightful game that was.

''2 hours at the very least before we would have to replace the current crew members at our usual posts, and as far as I can understand we're not under attack or else you would have kept yelling at us instead of waiting a moment for us to recover.'' Good he's using proper arguments and not just complaining about it being too early to perform work, well as the humans say kill two birds with one stone, I can answer his question and brief them on what is happening at the same time.

''One of the other ships belonging to the task force isn't responding to hails from either us or the Athena and as such we need to go and ensure they aren't in trouble. So no we aren't in combat yet, however that yet is important because we are heading towards their last known location and will be there in less then 20 minutes. I need you all to head towards your posts and ready yourselves for a potential combat situation.'' The annoyance disappears and instead a grim determination appears on their faces. However a hint of fear is visible with some of them, looks like I might need to hold a speech.

''While at one point we may have been the covenant cannon fodder and as such would be afraid of nearly all combat situations, now we are well armed, trained and hardened soldiers that have in most cases months in a few cases even years of experience in warfare. We all know what's at stake in case the Didact is still actually alive like the Demon fears, because while he only wishes for revenge against humanity, with both our own and the Sanghelli economy and military in shambles we would have a much harder time against the Covenant Remnant factions.

Our homes could be destroyed and families might very well die, or even worse enslaved again by those mad fools. Not only that, but those brave people of Earth that have assisted us in rising this far even with all the problems they've faced in the past would die because of the prejudice of one being. Never again I say, we are the new generation of Unggoy, we will ensure that freedom and safety are always there for our families and allies if need be we will pay for it in our blood or our lives. Are you with me?''

A cry of determination is my answer and they all speed to get ready, good, good that is the spirit, they only needed a reminder. Then I suddenly see Ensign YipYap send something with his personal computer, something called an I-pad 5000 by the humans. ''Ensign Yipyap what did you just do? Why is sending a message to somebody more important then readying yourself for a combat situation, especially as right now that thing wouldn't be able to send any meaningful distance beyond the ship?''

''Well you see Lieutenant, I thought about it and realised some of the others might also need some type of speech. So I recorded yours once I saw you were preparing to give one to us, and sent it to all crew members.'' Oh well it's not too much of a problem, we might help the others too, good thinking of him actually.

''Good idea ensign YipYap, well done. Now continue getting ready for battle.'' After an affirmative ''Sir yes sir!'' that he picked up from that human bootcamp we had two weeks ago he continues putting on his gear, while I leave the barrack and head back to the bridge to report in and see if we already know more about the situation.

Oh well if it does turn hostile, we've got a demon and the strongest non-godly ancilla alive on our side while a small fleet of forty or so ships will be a few minutes of slip-space travel away from supporting us. Meanwhile the Didacts remaining forces, even if he is still alive and fighting himself, are according to intelligence reduced to at most 16 ships, most of whom will be heavily damaged from previous battles.

And if he himself isn't alive those ships will be led by a young hot-headed commanding officer that doesn't have much combat experience outside of glassing campaigns against small lightly defended colonies in the human-covenant war, and probably looks down on both humans and Unggoy, making him relatively easy to surprise and trick during combat.

.

Dimension: HALO, Location: the light frigate UNSC Divinity near unknown fore-runner structure, date: 5th of August of the year 2557 of the UNSC military calendar 00.55 hours, POV: Mityat

.

I think I now understand why humans have the concept of 'jinxing' a situation. I think I am sadly enough the guilty one in this case. ''Intelligence said they had 16 ships at most and that the majority of them would be damaged, while yes some of the ships over there are damaged, that still doesn't tell us why there are currently twenty-eight enemy ships, with only four of them damaged, surrounding that near moon sized Forerunner structure, which intel also forgot to tell us about!''

Well said my human friend, well said. Just what is going on here? ONI might make mistakes, but those are usually revolving around breaking sentients rights laws or having extremist factions that try to create problems between the UNSC and its allies. Rarely if ever is there an actual mistake in information given to combat personnel in recent times. Especially not mentioning close to half of the opposing force and the fact that they have an extremely large base once created and used by the Gods, or Forerunners as the humans refer to them. So just what could possibly be going on around here?

Then Hallyat spoke up from his station ''Captain, an incoming message from the Forward into the Night, apparently they have been trying to contact you but something has been blocking outgoing messages in the system.'' Ok that makes almost scarily too much sense for it to not be true.

Almost at the same time Yityat, who was currently manning the sensors spoke up ''Captain, as far as I can tell by the sensor information the enemy isn't moving in our direction, nor are their weapons charging so unless they are baiting us for a trap they don't know we are here.''

This caused the captain to react ''Hallyat, clear the communication line up as much as possible then project it in front of my console. Recheck a few times with all sensors YitYat, if this is true we might have a chance to drop people off at the structure without being noticed to investigate this.'' While she was saying this an image of a somewhat older human female appeared on screen ''Commander Margret Williams reporting in captain, we have very disturbing news.'' Not good, not good at all.

The eyes of the captains hard-light body narrowed. ''The flood hasn't gotten loose right? Also this isn't another composer or a differently designed weapon of mass destruction that cleanses all life in the nearest thousands of light years?'' The commander onscreen paled even more if that was possible at the very thought of any of those possibilities, but shook her head in the negative.

''While the situation is not anywhere near as bad as any of those options thankfully, it is still very bad.'' She seemed to gather herself while a small video file opened showing what seemed to be a sped up view of the construction of a slightly older covenant frigate design, the type of which there were also a dozen or so orbiting around the structure, in a way too large dockyard.

''The other good news is that we have found out where on the structure the stations command centre is, we'll send you the coordinates and a visual of the location.'' The commander received it and sent the image through to the Demon since he was in command of our ground forces.

''That was the good news, now we go on to the bad news. Unlike what it may seem, this video wasn't a sped up version of the construction that went on in that place, instead it is of equal speed to reality and is actually the live feed of our cloaked spy drone. This structure is a fully automated shipyard that can construct entire Covenant frigate class ships in any of its dockyards in an estimated time of less than 12 hours. This all while seemingly only needing power to create the entire ship, no actual heavy metals or other finite supplies required because of those being synthetized from the output of whatever generator there is on that thing.

It has half a dozen of these dockyards spread out all over the structure and considering the size of them we fear that the only reason they are producing covenant frigate class ships and not destroyers or cruisers or even carriers is that the system needs to restart and as such they aren't using it to its full capacity yet. Possibly they can also be constructed even faster then what is going on now when the structure is fully operational again. It is very much possible that they are only constructing at this speed because the structure is also producing mechanical soldiers to actually man the ships and that its capacity to do that is relatively low in comparison with its shipbuilding abilities or that if one is in use the other is slowed down badly.''

You could almost see the dread come down on the faces of the bridge crew except for the captain, who remained calm. ''Commander, do you still have a good stock of your nuclear mines and nuclear missile on the ship'' The commander looked like she was getting an inkling of what the captain wanted to do. ''Yes we do captain, our full complement of mines and 2 nuclear missiles, though one of them is relatively weak.'' The captain seemed to give a slight smile at that.

''Good commander Williams, here are your orders, lay down a few nuclear mines near the enemy flag ship, then the remaining ones near that frigate concentration then move away, fire the weaker one of your missiles at the dock with the vessel closest to completion on this side of the structure and the other at the enemy flagship. Then use a slip-space jump to get out of here.

Head towards the nearby Hydra solar system and warn the 14th and 15th patrol flotilla's of the situation and order them to move here to support us. We will in the meantime try to find out if the Didact is anywhere on or near the structure while also keeping the fleet busy to stop them from either moving away themselves or moving the structure away from this location. Are these orders understood and are you capable of following them through?''

The commander nodded ''Yes captain, we can follow these orders through. Though are you sure you'll be able to hold out? No offense but they have a battlecruiser, 2 regular cruisers, 6 destroyers, 16 frigates and 3 corvettes. You on the other hand only command 2 frigates. While the first strike WMD attack will take out a few of the enemy ships, including the flagship and a number of their frigates, they will still have many more and a number of capital ships against your two frigates.''

Causing the captain to respond ''If we die, then we will die fighting this enemy. We will not let them get away, giving them the chance to attempt genocide on the human race once more, especially since we don't know if this thing can move on its own power so we need to find a way to either prevent it from doing so or ensure we are able to follow it when it tries to move.''

The commander nodded at this response. ''If this ends badly, it was an honour knowing you ma'am.'' After saying this the commander salutes the captain and her image fades away, before the Forward into the Night can be seen cloaking, her IFF can be seen moving to accomplish her tasks though. Normally a combat frigate like ours wouldn't actually see that IFF during their stealth operations however it seems that with the new sensor technology they installed we can partially see through the stealth capabilities.

''Are all ground troops ready for a combat drop on the structure's surface?'' I could hear her Demon reply over the comm systems ''Yes, all of the Divinity's combat personnel and vehicles are ready Captain.'' Was that just my imagination or was there affection in his voice when he said captain? Oh well her and the Demon went through a lot together, though I'm not interested in such things myself, it is their own business and they do seem very good for each other, anyways back to the upcoming battle.

''Captain, the Athena responds that their ground forces are also ready for battle. Shall I enact the battle-net allowing all personnel between ships to speak more easily? Or should we wait for a few moments more before doing so?'' She shook her head.

''We cannot connect the battle-net yet, it's a general UNSC code and so either the Didact or one of the more intelligent covenant sensor officers would probably notice if we started it up. Wait until after the missile is fired by the Forward into the Night. After that we will be on our own for approximately 5 minutes. Do open a video connection to the Athena for a moment though''

Hallyat nodded, sending the request and getting a feed. In front of the captain the image of a relatively tall Unggoy appears, commander Yullup. ''Captain Cortana, you have more experience in leading space battles against superior numbers, so I will follow your advice on how to do this. My ground forces are ready for deployment, however our ancilla announced that you had received information from the Forward into the Night, can you give us any news.'' She looked thoughtful for a moment then repeated what the commander of the Forward into the Night had told her, causing the commander to nod.

After she was done with relaying the Forward into the Night's information, seh continued ''The didact won't trust his followers very much nor does he think much of the cyberwarfare capabilities of the current humanity, so I will probably be able to hijack one of their corvettes and have it fire upon the flagship of the enemy fleet, causing the Didact to think the crew is rebelling even if they regain control before the ship is destroyed. This together with the nuclear mine and missiles will give us the chance to take out the corvettes without them being able to respond immediately, leaving a large hole in the defences giving us the chance of landing troops on the surface.

After that we will have to hold our own for roughly four minutes against the opposing fleet until the 14th and 15th patrol flotilla's arrive. I estimate the number of surviving enemy ships will be somewhere between 2 cruisers, 6 destroyers and 6 damaged frigates or 1 damaged battlecruiser, 2 cruisers, 6 destroyers, 8 undamaged frigates and 4 damaged ones by the time we have to engage the fleet in direct combat.''

Commander Yullup looked grim but nodded his acceptation of the plan. ''While not the best option, it is better then anything I can currently think of Captain. Shall I give the order to slowly start moving forward towards the place where we intend to blow a hole in the enemy line?''

She nodded her agreement while saying ''Yes, follow our lead on the front of directions.'' before he saluted her and the image went away again. Afterwards she gave the order to move as silently as possible once she saw that the Forward into the Night had placed most of their mines already, lowering the problems that could be caused by an early detection by the enemy.

.

Cortana POV

.

''Halt the movement, signal the Athena to do the same.'' After getting an affirmative I looked over the enemy lines to see if any of them might have noticed us yet, no signs of that, good. The Forward into the Night is almost done laying mines, both the Divinity and the Athena are in position to start our attack, meanwhile I have the covenant corvette on the other side of the structure under my passive control without its crew knowing and with a single command I can take direct control of the ship and have it perform an attack run on their flagship.

I turn my still new hard-light body towards our comms officer, Hallyat as he receives a message, normally I would simply be able to read this but controlling the corvette over such a large distance while also providing as much ECM cover for our ships as possible to stop the Battlecruiser from simply detecting us is taking a lot out of me. ''The Forward into the Night signals that they are ready to deploy the missiles on command while their slip-space drive is also warmed up and ready to send them to the Hydra system.''

Here it goes. ''Signal the Forward into the Night and the Athena to be ready for our attack runs, I will start my control of the enemy corvette, now.'' Taking full control of all the opposing ships systems and turning off life support the only crew members still alive are some of the Unggoy and a single Sanghelli that was overseeing the off-loading of supplies. ''Signal the Forward into the Night, start their attack run and detonate the mines, now!''

While he signals the Forward into the Night, I have the corvette, turn towards the battlecruiser and move forward at ramming speed, ignoring the calls from the comms officers of the opposing ships, with the battlecruiser turning its weapons towards the corvette just as they are hit by the Nuke. Nice, it seems to have knocked out most of their systems, including their shields. ''Open fire on the designated corvette.'' As I say this to my crew I have my own corvette fire everything it has at the battlecruiser, more specifically at where I can see the enemy slip-space generator through the hole currently open in the ship.

All three ships hit their marks, with my corvette managing to destroy the slip-space generator, killing the already crippled battlecruiser before the corvette is taken out by one of their cruisers, while both frigates MAC's manage to open a large hole in their designated corvettes, with the Athena's target dying immediately due to them hitting just right to break the enemy ship in two, while our shot only makes a large hole that is then exploited by some archer torpedoes being fired and going in, causing a large explosion that rips the ship in half a dozen pieces.

Now able to use our own ships scanners again, I see that the enemy ships are in a state of complete confusion while the Forward into the Night managed to slip away without them noticing. They are also suddenly 1 battlecruiser, 5 frigates and 3 corvettes short of their previous flotilla with another 5 frigates being damaged, stumping them completely on what just happened. Not the best possible outcome, but close enough that our chances of survival have just gone up severely.

I quickly start up the UNSC battle-net, connecting all the soldiers and sailors, both human and Unggoy, to it while also checking up with Floats-higher-then-average to see if our slip-space generator was still doing alright, which it was, at least that's going well still, let's signal to everyone the network is up and also give a precautionary announcement to our ground pounders.

''Battle-net is up, Master Chief Petty Officer Sierra 117 is in command of all ground forces. We're going to be able to drop you 0.5 kilometres from what seems to be the control station of this structure, if Didact is there either let the Master Chief handle him or signal in air-support, I repeat do not try to handle him yourselves signal in Master Chief or air-support!''

After listening in for a moment to see if the troops were playing nice with each-other, it was the first combat situation between this group of human marines and this group of Unggoy were they actually fought side by side with the respective other species instead of fighting against them after all. Ok that was going much better then expected, nice, though I should probably have expected it since these people were selected specifically for this mission and also have been working together to keep these ships running for a while without too much trouble.

Now lets turn my attention to the opposing forces in space, hmm ok now its nearly certain that the Didact is either not here or at least not in a state to command troops, they are acting like complete and utter idiots. I just hope that he was actually on that battlecruiser we just took out, would be nice for him to finally truly die. Probably too much to hope for though. Still it's a good thing that the intel was correct on the incompetence of their second in command, otherwise we would never have managed to take that battlecruiser down without serious losses.

As we touch down and the troops unload I have a fully formulated plan in mind on how to deal with the enemy ships until our supporting forces arrive. ''Commander Yullup, once our troops are done embarking and we are back in Orbit, let us target the surviving opposing Frigates that were near nuclear mines first, without those we should be able to outmanoeuvre the enemy long enough for our re-enforcements to arrive.''

This resulted in a near immediate reply of ''Yes captain, we will do so as soon as possible, are our troops done embarking yet and has their air coverage been able to leave the ships?'' This question got a response from John before I could give an answer or inquire to him.

''Yes sir, all troops are done embarking, we are only waiting for the Pelican of the Athena to leave the Hangar, it had moved during our atmospheric entry. Everything is out now, ground operations are ready to go! Good luck in space captain, commander.'' John is unusually talkative, hopefully its our new relationship having a positive effect on him and allowing him to bring out his social skills a bit more. Thoughts for later, focus on the battle for now. As we lift off I hear one of the pilots send a message.

''Pelican 1-3-0 to ground forces, watch out there is a group numbering at least battalion strength Storm Covenant troops nearing your position. Seems to be mainly infantry and not acknowledging my presence, four kilometres out. We will do what we can to lower their number but their only vehicles are mechanised anti-air guns, so we will not be able to perform more than one airstrike.''

Damnit we can't give them orbital support, that would leave us completely open to the enemy ships. Sigh, I'll just need to trust in John's capabilities to lead them through this without much damage. And now we're back in space ok, the cruisers are still trying to find out what is going on apparently, though a few of the destroyers seem to realise what is wrong and are moving to fire at us. Oh well, we'll have to improvise.

''Athena we're going to use their numbers against them, prepare for close quarters. Slave your archer targeting systems to ours for the moment'' I felt myself gaining control of them, ok now to use this. ''I'm targeting the outermost frigates, we're going to storm at full power into the middle group to dodge the shots their destroyers are charging up.''

While saying this I fire the archers, killing 2 of the less damaged frigates on the outer edge of the group and crippling a third. The Athena follows our lead in charging through the centre, with one of the destroyers halting fire instead of risking friendly fire while two of the remaining five hit an already crippled frigate while we're passing by, killing it. Then I feel the ship rock harshly and notice immediately that the third, fourth and fifth shots hit our shields in almost the exact same spot, with the shields barely holding on and causing some hull damage but most dangerously heating up that section of the ship badly. ''Starboard shields down to 25%.''

While not deadly for our crewmembers luckily enough, it was bad enough to fry the navigational systems for the slip-space drive, meaning that while we could still jump we had no database at all to pull locations from nor could we store any until the thing was repaired. Damnit! This caused the cruisers to finally notice we're actually there, making them turn in our direction. We manage to dodge theirs and the destroyers follow up shots by using the debris of the Battlecruiser to our advantage, but that isn't going to work for long after this. We need something, and fast.

Wait our MAC has recharged, if I then use it against that ship while also firing using our anti-fighter systems when they fire for close quarters combat… yes that might actually work! ''Athena we're going to close in with that cruiser closest to our current location, and use him having to drop his shield to charge and fire his main gun to take out not only said gun, but also most of their secondary weapons then use the ship and the surrounding debris as an improvised shield against the other cruiser and the destroyers, understood?!''

After getting an affirmative I initiated the action, and when the ship lowered the lower frontal shield for a second to fire the next shot I targeted it with our defence lasers, taking out the hull based shield projector, and ordered ''Fire all weapons into the gap!''

.

Yulluk POV

.

''Enemy main gun taken out, their main bridge is also destroyed by a lucky archer hit! Though sadly enough someone in either their secondary bridge or their engineering section managed to reroute shields form other areas so the gap in the shields has been closed off. Enemy defence lasers are firing, but for now they are relatively inaccurate due to the quick switch from control area.'

The captains crazy plan actually worked! Let's hope the re-enforcements show up soon though, our chances of surviving for more then a few more minutes are very low now that they actually know where we are and have re-organised themselves. ''Enemy Destroyers are charging towards us supported by the three surviving enemy frigates, while the other enemy cruiser is holding position and will likely keep doing so to fire at us if we try to move far enough away from this one to make sure there is no risk of friendly fire. Shields currently at 85% from the enemy defence laser hits, stabilizing now. What are your orders commander?''

''Bring us down to the lower starboard side of this cruiser, we need to ensure we can cut off any enemy attempt at flanking the Divine, then fire the MAC at the frontmost '' I got no further before a blue beam shot out from the cruiser next to us cancelling our artificial gravity, while theirs and the other cruisers hangars opened and both started expelling fighters. While the fighters started hitting us together with the defence lasers the larger enemy ships had luckily not arrived yet.

''Damnit status report! Also captain, please come cover us our artificial gravity got knocked out by an enemy shot!'' Luckily helms managed to bring us below the ruined section of the cruiser, meaning we were now out of range from both their surviving defence lasers and that strange EMP weapon.

''Commander, I can restart artificial gravity, our ability to fire torpedoes and our MAC, all of whom were taken out, however it will ruin our slip-space drive.'' Damnit, but we're dead for sure without either of those first two. ''The Divine has arrived to cover us sir, and they managed to take out one of the enemy frigates however they are in need of support badly! While the enemy fighters are being butchered by our combined defences, one of the enemy destroyers is nearly breaking through the Divine's weakened shields!''

''Do it, without the MAC or the artificial gravity we'll be too dead to use slip-space in less than a minute anyways!'' The MAC and gravity came back online, thank the Gods. ''Fire the MAC and all remaining archers on the destroyer currently duelling with the Divine, then take their place at the front so their shields can recharge!'' The order was followed fervently, with the MAC shot being caught by the enemy shields, but the following swarm of Archer torpedoes from both us and the Divine managed to break through and take them out of the fight.

While we moved to relieve the Divine and take on the main force of enemy ships, the captain sent a message over the battle-net. ''The ground team managed to destroy whatever was blocking our communications, I just got an incoming message of Rear-admiral Dresden whom is in charge of the re-enforcements, they will be here in less than 20 seconds! Once they exit slip-space, we'll head to the structure in a defensive retreat as soon as possible to give orbital support to the ground troops.''

As she was saying this slip-space anomalies are detected, and shortly after I can see UNSC ships storming out, their command ship ramming into the other enemy cruiser, throwing it off balance and starting a duel between the two of them while another cruiser and a frigate went to support the UNSC ship, in the meantime most of the remaining ships fired MAC shots at whatever destroyer or frigate they found close to them, destroying 3 of the destroyers and the two remaining frigates immediately causing all remaining enemies to turn to face the UNSC fleet.

The remaining UNSC cruiser turned to face the Storm Covenant cruiser situated above us, while the captain connected our battle-net to the one setup by the other UNSC ships. Seconds later the Rear-Admiral Dresden could be heard. ''Excellent work Divine, Athena, head to the planet we'll take care of the remaining ships in space and land troops on the enemy docks once finished. I'll personally see to it all of you are receiving commendations and medals for this.''

While we started heading towards the structure and entered however a message was sent through the battle-net by the Demon ''Rear-admiral, do not land troops on the structure sir, I repeat do not land troops! The Didact has set the thing to self-destruct in the next eight minutes, and the blast-wave will spread throughout the region too fast, it's effects will cause a lightspeed blast-wave that will reach up to .1 lightyears from this location! We need evac immediately if we are to make it off the structure in time!''

Damnit! Even if he is part of the Gods, no especially if he's part of the race of Gods, what is that idiot thinking! Even with the speed advantage his ships would have had over the old UNSC ones, the slip-space engines of his forces take a lot longer to warm up then ours, there is simply no chance of them actually making it out in time! And after having just jumped here less then a minute ago, the UNSC ships will also take 5 or 6 minutes to warm theirs up to actually get out of here, just how are we going to make it out in time while also saving the ground forces?

Because there is no way in hell we're leaving them behind. Wait, even if we save them in time we don't actually have a working slip-space generator anymore. Damnit this situation keeps getting worse. ''Athena, this is captain Cortana, we're going to have to go in to retrieve the troops, the boots on the surface have found something that might get us out of here fast enough even with our dis-functional Slip-space engines.'' Finally some good news.

''You heard the captain, follow her lead. It might very well be the only hope for not only us but also the ground forces.'' This got nods in return and we raced towards the surface to pick them up. Let us hope we make it in time and that this way out actually works.

.

And that was the first chapter of the story. I hope that the space-battle was interesting, if not, please review and tell me what I can do to optimise it, but also do note that I will be more likely to listen to it if it is written down in a polite manner instead of straight up insulting my capabilities as a writer.

Now, for anyone that thinks the fight was very unbalanced, that's how it was supposed to be. It was supposed to show just how far the Storm Covenant had fallen on the officers front by this point, how experienced and capable Cortana was as a commander and just how badly the balance of ship quality and technology had shifted between UNSC + their allies and the Covenant Remnants.

The other thing I wanted to talk about is this: from the start, Systems Alliance humanity will not become just another client species to the Citadel Council in this fiction, even if they join. My reasoning behind this is relatively simple: in Mass Effect humanity is the second/third most populated species at 2157, just 2 billion ahead of the Batarians, roughly equal with the Salarians and 4 billion behind the Asari.

By the time 2183 comes around, humanity is ahead of the Salarians and only 1 billion behind the Asari. And this is with the whole 'more than half of humanity still lives on their home-world' thing included. To give a good view of just what numbers I'm talking about, in 2183 humanity in canon ME has only about 15 billion people give or take, non-system alliance humans included.

Populations in the ME galaxy are as I've already said multiple times in my other stories, tiny. As far as I know the population numbers in comparison to more realistic sci-fi universes is also one of the largest problems in crossover fanfictions with Mass Effect, behind how to number 1 make Citadel Council forces technologically realistically stand a chance against other sci-fi series.

For reference, the lowest possible number of deaths in the human covenant war on the human side from combat alone was some 36 billion. The more likely number of deaths caused directly be the human-covenant war, with the direct death count of both sides due to glassing, sabotage and food shortages caused by destruction of breadbasket worlds included, we come at a rough 65 billion deaths.

And this was in a 30 year during war, only a few years after which people and governments that fought on both sides of that war were forced to work together by various things, and even with bad relations there are still Alliances between the UNSC and former Covenant factions even before a large new threat emerges. With the only human group that is really trying to break it up from their own side being an intelligence organisation afraid of losing the power it enjoyed during the war.

The 'Krogan Rebellions' on the other hand have a direct death count of less than 10 billion, most of them soldiers for one faction or another spread over centuries. And the Salarians still aren't managing to work together with them more than a millennium after this when tens of thousands of mechanical space squids that double as destroyer and capital ships that see them as little more than wheat to be harvested come along to kill them all.

Hell, all three Council governments literally feel the need to doom the Krogan to extinction for that single war a thousand years later through the slaughter of Krogan new-born, with as far as I know the only ones against it being some human sentients rights groups before the Reapers invade. Only then do the Turian and Asari governments decide: ''Fuck let's stop blaming them for that war, we need them by our side if we want to survive this.''

And number 2 how to realistically make the Reapers into an actual true threat to other governments of other sci-fi universes outside of just throwing millions of capital ship Reapers at them or making every single one as strong as the small number of strongest ones (Harbringer for example) are in Canon.

I'm not making a joke in the part about people having to ponder on how to make the Reapers a viable threat by the way, the strongest ship-based main gun I know of in HALO is in the triple digit megatons, admittedly a Forerunner main gun but still that shows just what kind of battles HALO has had in the past, especially since this is far from the strongest weapon in HALO, only the strongest one based on a ship.

The strongest UNSC gun that can be used on their ships I know of however still deals damage in the double digit megatons. And that while such ships also have an assortment of nuclear missiles, more than 1 main gun, plasma projectors, hundreds or even thousands of regular ship to ship missile launchers, secondary smaller calibre broadside-MAC's, their laser based AA systems, projectile based AA systems and usually also an A.I. that can wipe the floor with not only the council but potentially also the Reapers in cyber warfare.

This all with the addition that the fastest FTL drive the UNSC has goes some 1500 lightyears a day. The strongest Reaper main gun is meanwhile roughly 400 kilotons while the fastest Reaper non-relay FTL is about 40 lightyears a day. And the main gun, their tentacle lasers and their indoctrination are also the only weapons Reaper capital ships have.

And HALO isn't even the strongest, hell it's one of the mediocre ones overall power wise, because they try to make everything as realistic as possible technology wise while still making it different enough to be interesting. Also what some people don't realize is that because of the people from ME using Eezo as the main, nearly the only technological branch, Council ships have extremely little in the form of armour and thus are usually one hit kills from even single missiles once their shields are down.

This means that the frigates from most other sci-fi universes that have literally all their weapons disabled by something or the other could use their much faster FTL to travel to point-blank range with an ME dreadnought, have their armour simply take the hits of the GARDIAN systems as they exit FTL and then ram the dreadnought in real-space.

The end result would be a dead dreadnought, with maybe, and I have to repeat maybe, some hull breaches and the death of an already crippled frigate due to the dreadnought's Eezo core exploding as it dies. And there goes one of the less than 90 dreadnoughts all council races working together have, while the other side in worst case scenario loses one of the thousands upon thousands of frigates each faction has flying under their banner.

This all makes any scenario in which a true to canon Council actually wins the campaign for Shanxi while bringing along anything less than a third or even half of the entire Turian Fleet to take it extremely unlikely.

Thanks for reading everyone, hope you liked it. Please review on what is and isn't good about this story.