An Elite's Tale

The three of them spread out in a tight horizontal line above the Phantom, the Arbiter in the middle, Theg and Joha on the left and right. The enemy contacts were closing in. One second, they were two hundred meters away, then next, one hundred meters. Then fifty.

The Arbiter shouted, "Concentrate fire on the lead Banshee!"

And so they did. The Banshee at the front of the enemy cavalcade started shooting, realized it was losing, and tried to escape. Joha lined up his next shot to where he guessed the fleeing Banshee would be and fired. The green orb seemed to home in before it erupted on impact in a bright green burst and the resulting wreck knocked into the flier behind it and sent them both spiraling downwards. The latter Banshee was able to regain control prior to crashing and moved to make a pass at the Hunters.

The two remaining Banshee Brutes veered off in different directions, accelerating past to flank either side of the Phantom. Theg and Joha started after them, but the Arbiter barked, "Hold the line! They can take care of themselves. Focus on the reinforcements."

Sure enough, two more Banshees were arcing up over the far cliffs at their twelve o'clock. They weren't even in range when Joha's vision was enveloped in a blinding white light. He broke rank. It was violating a direct order, but it was for the greater good, he decided. He was blind in the sky with incoming enemy vectors; holding any kind of flight combat formation under these conditions would be tantamount to suicide. Joha inverted the thrusters to perform an ascending backflip, and the brightness disappeared as quick as it came and fell to the battlefield in the form of small spheres.

The Banshees were upon them now. Joha had evaded to a safer altitude while the Arbiter and Theg 'Motanee duked it out with these new responders. Just as his finger touched the cool metal of the acceleration trigger to fly to their aid, a volley of projectiles thudded hard against the right side of Joha's flier.

Whatever they were, one of them managed to penetrate through the light armor and deflected off his personal energy shields. It stung a sharp, familiar sting.

Joha angled his flier to face the source. Brutes. A few dozen of them by estimate, jump-packing from the cliff tops to the ledges, the Phantom, and the Scarab below. He switched back to the Banshee's main weapon, twin anti-vehicular plasma cannons. He cut through the thick cloud of infantry with the efficiency of a blowtorch to a wall of cobwebs, but there were just so many, and he worried that his attention had already been diverted from the other Banshees for a few seconds too long.

A yellow circle snapped to life on the ledge behind the waterfall of Brutes and a fuzzy green glow faded into existence next to it. Then the glow grew larger as it streaked through a gap between the Brute jumpers and came straight at him–fast. Joha flipped to the side and dipped sharply. The overcharge sailed inches overhead and collided with one of the Banshees fighting behind him.

Joha's blood froze in his veins when he heard Theg holler over the COMs, "Nngrh! I'm wounded! Lost all power."

Theg's aircraft fell out of the sky and the Brute pilot pursuing him noticed Joha and gave chase, opening fire. Boiling hot plasma scorched and melted through the outer shell of Joha's Banshee and dissipated on his energy shield. Smoke filled the cockpit, the systems display flickered, and his shield sputtered and died. It wasn't recharging.

He soared away in a serpentine pattern, but all the while, he could hear grunting through the damaged communications speakers as Theg struggled to force the cowling of his disabled flier open. But even if he was able to, it wouldn't do him much good, Joha knew. Not at this height.

The old warrior must have sensed that this was the end, because he suddenly yelled, "I was born an Elite!" just before his Banshee crashed nose first into a jagged boulder and exploded.

Joha cursed and whipped back around to the ledge with his pursuer in tow and re-armed the fuel rod cannon. His wing was tilted, hand hovering over the thruster, ready. When he approached the lone yellow energy gauntlet, the stalwart Jackal holding it crouched, overcharged his plasma pistol, and squeezed off a shot. Joha let it fly at him for a couple of heartbeats and flipped to the right at the last second. The unaware Brute pilot chasing him took the blast and tumbled out of power and out of control into the cliff to their left.

Mid-roll, Joha rewarded the birdlike creature with a fuel rod that hit the wall behind it and launched it clean off the ledge. When he turned to face the other Banshees, he witnessed one of the greatest acts of daring he'd seen in his life.

The Arbiter was being chased skyward by two Jiralhanae fliers, but the tattered cowling of his craft was ajar. Without warning, he slid out of his vehicle entirely and fell onto the Banshee behind him, then pried the hatch open and kicked the pilot out of the cockpit to an eventual messy death.

The other chaser wheeled to the side to avoid the falling abandoned Banshee and switched targets to the Elite with the more damaged Banshee: Joha.

Joha swiveled and retreated to the airspace between the Phantom and the Scarab, where he hoped to lose the Brute to three plasma turrets from above and an Elite anti-air team below. The Arbiter had given chase to the Brute pursuer, but directed energy continued to burn Joha's tail and wings with near misses and direct hits en route to the predetermined, and hopefully safer, escape passage.