Nineteen: The Ultimate Confrontation

A/N: Soundtrack for this chapter (Artist, then Song Title):

Two Steps From Hell: "Black Blade", "None Shall Live", "Norwegian Pirate", "Archangel", and "Cannon in D Minor"

Fringe Element: "Unite Us", "The Fall", "Earth Abandoned", "For All Humanity", "Relentless Pursuit", and "Earth Will Remember You"

Really Slow Motion: "Our Last Hope", "Tell the World", and "Carcassonne"

Audiomachine: "Wars of Faith", "Prevail", "Through the Darkness", "Leap of Faith", "Convergence", and "Ninurta"

Future World Music: "A Hero Will Rise"

If you only listen to one from each (aside from the last, obviously), make it "Cannon in D Minor", "Earth Will Remember You", "Carcassonne", and "Through the Darkness". I'd make a Spotify playlist but I don't use Spotify, so if anyone wants to volunteer, feel free, and leave a review/comment so others can see!

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The entire Hive shuddered when they emerged in intergalactic space. They could feel the same emptiness that John had felt so long ago on his journey to the Large Magellanic Cloud in the Parallel. There was nothing alive out here, just an empty void.

The Fleet fanned out between the ships following them, hoping to nullify any neural physics nonsense the Flood attempted the same way they had for the Forerunners during the Forerunner-Flood War. The rest of the ships organized themselves according to their own designs, with the Infinity falling in next to the Storm.

The fighter with the crystal was well ahead of them, firing its thrusters to settle into place.

One by one, the other ships signaled that they were ready, spread out across hundreds of thousands of kilometers of empty space. When the last one flashed green, John climbed into his Despair-class fighter and called, "Joyeuse?"

Since Spark was no more, she was serving as temporary Monitor of Zero-Nine. After a moment, her reply came through. "Ready, Dad."

"Cortana?"

"I'm here." She was back in his armor, a soothing chill in his nervous system.

"All right, let's go. Main battery, fire."

The Storm's guns fired on the Slipspace crystal, even as all her fighters began spilling out of her deployment bays. There was a flash of pale blue light - before a dark hole surrounded by a fringe of purple lightning opened in space where the crystal had been.

Less than ten seconds later, the first ship tumbled through. It was one of ancient humanity's ships, as they had thought, and John said, "Give them a few seconds to get clear of the Slipspace rupture, then weapons free!"

In those scant seconds, that one ship was joined by dozens, hundreds more, and the Gravemind - part of it, somewhere in one of those ships - shrieked. "You!"

There was really only one way the Spartan could think to respond to that, and everyone else seemed to agree with him. "DID YOU THINK US DEFEATED?!" they roared as one, and opened fire, the rest of the ships with them.

John and Cortana were lost in a haze for a time; they shot at every enemy ship that came in range of their fighter, no matter where it was aiming, streaking between the shattered hulls of Flood ships. The parasite fought back, of course, but it hadn't expected them to come out and meet it, to fight so hard to defend their home. Some of their allies seemed almost suicidal in their ferocity, more than a few gunning for the Flood at the expense of their own defense, leaving protecting the main ships to the fighter screen between them and the Flood.

The Spartan and his AI - and indeed the whole Hive - could feel the Gravemind pressing hard, trying to seize control of their minds and turn them against their friends and allies, but there again was that film between them and it, the same one from so long ago in the Parallel. It had shielded them from the Gravemind's hungry grasp, thin but unbreakable, and did the same now.

They took full advantage of its defense, even as thousands more ships spilled through the Slipspace tear. The Spartan fired on a Flood frigate that appeared before them, the hard light missiles piercing the ship's shields and blasting open sections of the hull. The ship vented clouds of spores, but John had already swung the ship around, aiming for the power core Cortana painted on his HUD. It took several passes to get through the bulk of the ship between - and to avoid the Flood trying to stop him. It had launched fighters of its own in an attempt to defend itself, but they were able to outmaneuver it, get in behind it. The frigate broke apart in a spectacular explosion, and John and Cortana fell back into the fighter screen proper, now chasing after would-be boarding craft. There were thousands of those, too - hundreds of thousands, easy, and every time they fired their fighter's guns, they destroyed more than a few.

The Parallel's Blue Team whipped by in formation, shooting a burst up the side of a destroyer, and John and Cortana fell in behind them. His own Gray Team streaked up alongside him in their Sabres, and they all gunned for the openings the other Spartans had left behind. This ship also broke apart under their combined fire.

[Did the Gravemind do anything to maintain its fighting force?] John demanded, signaling Gray Team to fall in behind him, letting his ship's shields take the brunt of the damage as they streaked through the wreckage towards another target. [Or did it just assume we wouldn't know it was coming? That it could take our ships for its own once it was ready?]

'Unknown,' Cortana said, 'and I'm not about to reach out and ask.'

'Mood, Your Grace.'

The last of the ships tumbled through the Slipspace tear, which slowly started to shrink. [Cortana, can you give us a count?]

'Ferial wasn't too far off with her estimates,' the AI answered, 'About four hundred thousand total, roughly three hundred thousand remaining. The number differential is actually acting in our favor; the Flood has too many ships, and they're blocking each other's lines of sight on ours.'

[Then let's take advantage of that while we can.]

Gray Team returned to the Infinity, who was holding her own; Lasky, Roland, and their team were doing very well alongside so many heavy hitters. Even the Almusian Pirates were doing damned good work.

'John, supercarrier coming up on our starboard,' said Cortana.

[Need support!] the Spartan called to the others, and thirty seconds later, they were just one of nearly two dozen fighters of varying types, their destroyers Starfall and Fog of War coming about to fire on the carrier and take down its shields for them.

When the barrier shimmered and broke, the fighters split into squads and raced for their targets. John and Cortana led their pack and focused on the guns targeting them, letting the others handle their primary targets.

"Never again!" Tande had said once, in the Parallel, "You hear me, you worthless shit?! Not this planet - not these people! Never again! Your time is done - it's our turn now!"

The Fleet echoed that cry now, blowing the hell out of absolutely every Flood ship they could reach.

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It took hours - hours and hours, and despite everything the Flood had going for it, the allied fleet only lost about five hundred ships.

(John was privately relieved that the Infinity wasn't one of them.)

But at last, all the Slipspace-capable ships were disabled, drifting in space, even if they were still firing on the allied fleet. [Joyeuse!]

"On my way! Clear the LZ!"

"All ships, start falling back to the wormhole!" Cortana called over the COM, "Once the Halo is through, you are free to retreat! FoS ancillae, prepare to turn control of all unmanned ships over to Zero-Nine for defense!"

There were literally thousands of acknowledgements over the radio, and John swung them down and through the wreckage of countless Flood ships. The spores they had vented when broken had formed something like a nebula in space, clouds and clouds and clouds of toxic gases; all the ships would have to be thoroughly scrubbed to prevent contamination.

Installation Zero-Nine emerged through the wormhole, and all the other ships started fleeing through, the Fleet of Shadows covering their retreat. They would be the last to go, the Infinity right alongside them.

The Spartan sent the fighter plunging toward the inner surface of the ring, their daughter marking the Control Room on his HUD. As he did so, the edges darkened, tentacle-like distortions appearing as the Gravemind screamed - in fear, in wrath, in resignation - but John and Cortana only laughed at it and throttled their engines higher. They closed quickly with the Control Room and brought the Despair-class fighter sharply around for an abrupt landing, throwing themselves out of the cockpit before it had even really stopped moving.

Then they raced for the top of the pyramid, using their armor's enhancements to jump from level to level up to the doors, which were already open to receive them. Both of them remembered the last time they had made their way through these halls and briefly mourned for Johnson, who hadn't seen the end of it all, but they did not stop until they reached the control panel.

They had retrieved the Activation Index while the Halo was still in transit to WR102, and they used it now, John slapping a hand down on to the hard light display, letting Cortana jump into the ring's systems. She inserted the Index, then jumped back, saying, "Be well, sel nín. See you on the other side."

"You got it, Mom. Safe flight."

They turned and ran for their fighter.

The ship blasted off from the surface, streaking for the Sun Gazer, which was closest to them. The whole Fleet was waiting for them, holding position and providing cover fire even as the Halo's energies built. Some of the Flood ships' engines were sputtering fitfully, trying to provide enough impulse to get away, but to no avail.

The fighter nearly slammed into its dock in one of the Gazer's deployment bays, and the carrier raced for the wormhole at full throttle. They entered together with the rest of the Fleet - and then they were through, returning to realspace in the midst of their allies.

Through the wormhole, John and Cortana could see the distorted image of the Halo, but they waited until the cleansing energy was released before lifting their hands and taking control of the star roads once more, collapsing the wormhole all at once.

The Halo Array had a certain radius, true, but the firing itself did not respect the laws of time and space. Far in the distance, through the now-empty heart of the web, there was the briefest flash of white light. They waited until it faded before opening a supraluminal channel. "Joyeuse?"

"Scanning…"

There was a long moment of silence. It seemed that the entire galaxy was holding its breath.

Then, "Firing successful - all hostiles eliminated!"

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sel nín – my daughter