My Family (Halo AU) [Complete Rewrite]

Escape

Jackson sat on his bed with a relieved sigh, the purr of the translight engine sounding around me as we traveled through slipspace. The ship was still bustling with people as they were still getting settled after the evacuation of our world. Our world had just been attacked by a force known as the covenant. A handful of us had been able to escape in an old Phoenix class colony ship before theycould notice, we hoped at least. We were cruising through slipspace at the moment but I had an uneasy feeling in my gut that we were not going to get off so easily. I shrugged off the feeling and picked up my backpack, hoping a walk around the ship would help calm me. I was walking past the escape pods when the ship came out of slipspace, the stars coming into view as we slowed. I was just about to reach the end of the corridor when the ship shook violently, knocking me into the bulkhead I was standing next to. An explosion sounded from deeper within the dhip, a plume of hot metal and plasma billowing away from the ship as I braced myself near the window. A man's voice came over the speakers in the corridor as the lights turned red and said, "Attention all hands! Attention all hands! General Quarters! I repeat! All hands report to your battle station immediately!"

I pulled myself back onto my feet and looked out the window that ran along the left side of the corridor to see a massive Covenant DDS-Class Carrier and its supporting fleet come out of slipspace behind us. It looked like we hadn't escaped unnoticed afterall. It fired a volley of plasma torpedoes at us and I watched as they slammed into the ship from bow to stern, plumes of vaporized titanium and plasma exploded from the ship. The lights flickered and the blast doors on either side of the corridor slammed shut as I heard the air get sucked out of the ship on the other side. I panicked as I watched both doors slam shut, starting to cry as another volley of plasma torpedoes slammed into the ship. I swallowed hard as I realized that I had to hope and pray that the escape pod ejection system was simple enough for a fourteen year old to do.

I sat in the seat of the escape pod and I oddly felt at home. My hands almost seemed to move automatically, looking back as the ship was shaken again by a volley of plasma torpedoes. I began coughing as smoke filled the escape pod, looking back to see that there was nothing but a wall of purple flames outside the door of the escape pod. I covered my nose and mouth with my shirt as I started to stumble my way to the escape door. I hit the door controls and breathed in a breath of normal air as the built in air filtration system vented out all of the smoke. I let out a yelp as I made my way back to the pilot's chair, being thrown into one of the seats as the ship was hit by the Covenant again. I pushed myself to my feet and had just made my way to the chair when the ship's gravity generator went out, starting to float towards the ceiling of the pod. I pulled myself into the chair, and strapped in as the chair automatically moved forward. I flipped a few more switches on the console in front of me and grabbed a hold of the straps that held my body in the seat.

"Here's to hoping I did this right!" I said unsurely as I reached forward and hit the ignition switch for the engines, being forced into my seat as I was roughly shot out of the escape pod tube and off into deep space.

I looked back and through the window in the escape pod door and watchedin horror as a plasma torpedo hit the now exposed main reactor, the ship exploding in a flash of light. I closed my eyes and prayed for the people lost on the ship, looking ahead of me as I was met with the vast expanse of space......

***

A female Sangheili officer sat in the captain's chair of the DDS-Class Carrier known as the Truth and Spirit. She watched as the human ship slowly began to explode from the inside out before one of the elite minors before her said, "Human Ship Destroyed Shipmaster!"

"Did it launch any escape pods?" The Shipmaster asked as she turned to the elite minor in charge of radar.

"Yes, Shipmaster... They only launched one. It's cloaked now but we have its trajectory mapped." The minor explained as a line leading away from the human ship appeared before her on the con.