Helen fired at the first combat form that leapt at them, creating a gaping burn hole in its chest. The flood form fell to the ground as the infection form in its chest popped and died. Jason and Trepid both ignited their lightsabers, hacking and slashing at Flood as surged toward them. Infection forms popped, combat forms fell into heaps on the ground, and large round carrier forms that they hadn't encountered before exploded, sending infection forms flying from their insides.

Fire floated several feet above the carnage, watching with his large green eye. Jason only hoped the monitor was calling some sentinels for help. Back in the library they had fared much better with their silent robotic comrades, but now they were surrounded, outnumbered and even outgunned.

Pink needler rounds flew from the hand of one of the combat forms. Jason barely blocked the shots and turned, expecting to see one of the colourful Covenant Unggoy, but was horrified to see the attacker was also infected by the parasite. He glanced around and spotted the familiar shapes of other infected Covenant also wielding the same weapons they had when they died.

Jason would have swapped the Flood for the Covenant any day. The covenant had physical limits, but the Flood didn't stop fighting until their death.

The three of them fought bravely, but the Flood continued to push them back until their backs were touching one another.

"We need to get out of here!" cried Helen.

Jason looked around as he fought and finally spotted two thin catwalks lining the top of the tall hallway. He nudged Trepid and Helen behind him and pointed up. They both nodded and continued to fight.

Without any hesitation, Jason force jumped up to the catwalk and sheathed his lightsaber. He looked over the railing and called on the force, pulling Helen up from the battle while she sent blaster bolt after blaster bolt into the wall of Flood.

With no one but the Flood around him, Trepid utilized some of his more lethal moves. Jason and Helen watched as the Sith flipped and spun, chopping the Flood around him into numerous pieces. His ability to combine his force powers and lightsaber combat in a way that made his movements flow like water.

When Trepid began to loose space to the Flood he jumped up to Jason and Helen on the catwalk. But when his foot landed on the metal grate, what seemed like fifty infected Yam'ne took flight, firing plasma pistols and needlers at the humans standing high above the Flood.

"Fire, where are those sentinels!" Jason roared, swinging his blade at the infected bugs.

"They have all been disabled by the Flood Reclaimer" monitor said calmly, "but I would advise we move down the corridor toward the Delta power core immediately. My sensors have detected the Flood are trying to disable access to the main terminal and prevent us from detonating the core. If my calculations are correct then they will achieve success with twenty standard minutes."

"What happens if they disable it?" Trepid said with a grunt.

"Then we will need to teleport to the vicinity of another power core with an intact terminal. If all seven have been disabled as well then we will need to detonate the core manually."

They all knew what would happen if that was necessary.

Trepid tried using his lighting one last time, and smiled when he found it had some affect against the flying combat forms. The bodies convulsed as the lightening ripped through their bodies, killing the parasite inside and sending them plummeting to the ground bellow.

Eventually, the last of the infected Yam'ne fell back into the ocean of Flood. The rest of the Flood forms watched them from the ground, and Jason knew the Gravemind was thinking of a way to get to them.

"How far is the power core?" Jason asked Fire.

The monitor turned its eye, "it is approximately 18 kilometres down the corridor."

Jason didn't even have a chance to ask how they were going to get there in twenty minutes when an explosion knocked them off their feet. The catwalk swayed on its support cables as Jason climbed to his feet, looking over the guard rail to find the cause of the explosion.

It seemed the Covenant that they had seen in the library had also brought in some heavier equipment. Bellow them, a wraith tank flanked by four Ghosts, lobbed plasma ball after plasma ball at their catwalk. Causing the entire thing to shake and move from each impact. Most never came close and merely smashed into the metal ceiling, but the odd shot would get close enough that he feared it would collapse.

It seemed the Flood was having trouble aiming the wraith's mortar and resorted to the use of the Ghosts. The Ghosts lifted their twin plasma guns and had much better results against the three humans.

The nonstop streams of plasma cut cleanly through the thin metal they stood on. The Gravemind was one step ahead of them. It knew they were after the core, and it had prepared for their arrival with the Covenant vehicles and the attempt at deactivating the power terminal.

A crazy idea went through Jason's head and he looked down at the Ghosts. He had learned in the Sangheili's interrogation that these light attack vehicles could move pretty fast, not to mention their control layout was very simple.

Looking back at his comrades he knew there wouldn't be any time for explanations. He moved closer to them so they could hear over the plasma fire and the creaking of the catwalk.

"Follow my lead! Ignore the Flood if you can!"

He hopped up onto the railing and let the force flow through him. He had never been exceptionally gifted in the force, but at this moment Jason felt more powerful than even master Cath and finally realized his full power.

The plasma flew at him but he subconsciously used the force to nudge the shots out of the way. He lifted his hands and mustered up all the power he had. With a grunt Jason threw his hands down, sending an incredibly powerful force push down on the Flood.

With their weakened bodies, the flood practically fell apart as the force push hit them. Flood within twenty meters of the epicenter were all but destroyed, pulverized by the power of the force. The Flood aboard the Covenant vehicles were also blown away, leaving the purple machines empty.

Jason reached down and pulled Helen up to him, clutching her tight against his chest. With a small gulp Jason threw him and Helen over the railing. Using the force, Jason slowed their descent so they landed softer than physics would have allowed. Trepid followed closely behind them.

Already the Gravemind was reorganizing its combat forms, sending them surging toward the humans once more. Jason ignited his lightsaber and sent it flying into the flood. He cut down a fair dozen or so before he recalled the weapon with the force.

He then jumped into the seat of one of the nearest Ghosts and glanced at the controls. Since the front of the vehicle came above his face, there was a small purple view screen showing what was in front of him. Other than that, there wasn't much in the way of utilities.

Jason touched a bright purple circle below him and the Ghost lifted off the ground, antigravity generators humming away beneath him.

In the time it took for Jason to find the two hand grips, the Flood were practically on top of them. Helen and Trepid were still facing the Flood with their small weapons, but not doing much damage.

Jason twisted the throttle in the handle grip and nearly fell off from the sudden burst of speed. The Ghost ploughed through the Flood, sending brown bits and body parts flying in every direction.

He circled around Helen and Trepid, giving them some space and a chance to find a Ghost of their own. Within a minute, all three of them had their own Ghosts and were smashing through Flood all around them.

"Which way Fire?" Helen called out to the monitor.

The small machine Flew down from the ceiling and sped down the hall, not even taking notice of the three of them on the ground. Jason exchanged a glanced with Helen before shooting down the hallway after Fire.

The hallway was jam-packed with Flood as far as they could see, forcing the three of them to smash their way to the core. If not for the Ghost's high positioned armour, the three of them would have been covered with the Flood's green/brown blood substitute.

"Fire, how will we get out of here!" Yelled Helen as she drove.

Fire spun around, still flying at the same pace as before only backwards. "There is a small portal located in the core room that leads to the surface. Without the teleportation grid it will be our only means of escape."

Helen dove into her pocket and pulled out her data pad, "upload the coordinates of the portal exit onto my data pad so our ships will know where to find us!"

She threw the small metal pad and Fire nimbly caught it in his tractor beam, brining it close to its green eye. Several seconds later the monitor zoomed down and placed the data pad back in Helen's hand. She then called Keth and organized a pickup twenty minutes from now.

Eventually they blew through the last of the Flood and into a small stretch of empty hallway. Around them the hallway changed from a silvery metal surface to a brown flood covered surface that reminded Jason of being inside a digestion tract.

Jason felt his draw drop when the hallway ended and they entered the power core room. The core itself was huge, taking up half the room as it stretched from ground to ceiling. Over to the right was an equally large viewing panel looking out over a large white space which Jason assumed to be the true core of the planet. But these sights weren't the cause to Jason's amazement. No, standing in front of the large blue core was a creature that Jason could only assume was the Gravemind itself.

The Flood's brain was a mass of infected carcasses attached to the power core itself. Stretching from its body, thick long tentacles curled and moved around the room. One of the tentacles was thicker than the others and stood high above the rest like a head. The head opened up as they got closer, revealing a mouth similar to a Sangheili's with six mandible like appendages spaced around the tentacle's end.

"I offered you peace and yet you resist" the Gravemind said through the head tentacle, "Have you not learned that resisting me will only lead to your destruction?"

"Fire, where is the power terminal?" Jason asked, ignoring the massive creature before them.

"Behind this Gravemind appendage" the monitor said as the three of them slowed their vehicles, "The Flood must have set up these appendages at each of the cores to protect and deactivate the power terminals."

Helen whipped her head around, "This is only part of the Gravemind?"

"Unfortunately yes" said Fire. The monitor stared out of the large observation window, causing the others to follow its gaze.

Several tentacles about the size of the power core waved into view, almost filling the entire window. The Gravemind's true head, pretty well exactly the same as the one in front of them, lifted up from a hole at the bottom of the planet's core. The two head tentacles may have been the same in shape, but the one in the planet core obviously dwarfed the one they now faced.

"Oh" said the monitor in a surprised tone, "it seems my calculations of the Flood's growth and size may have been slightly off."

Jason couldn't believe this, "how?" he asked.

"The Flood have the capability to evolve however they see fit with the Gravemind controlling it all. This also includes cell reproduction on an incredible scale, thus creating more and even larger Flood forms."

"For all this time, I have been locked away. Hidden from the face of the universe" said the Gravemind in its deep voice, "it was a sentence I never deserved. And if you will not join us, then you will perish like those who came before!"

A tentacle flew across the room from the mass attached to the power core, aiming for Jason's Ghost. He Pulled on the hand grips and veered away as the tentacle threatened to crush him.

Other tentacles reached out from the Gravemind appendage and ventilation shafts around them, trying to grab or crush them.

Then, like someone trying to scoop up a bug, two tentacles came down at Helen from either side. Helen had nowhere to run and Jason saw this.

Calling on the force Jason force, leaping from his Ghost and landing on the tentacle closest. On wobbly feet Jason cut the tentacle in two and jumped to the opposite one, doing the same.

Helen pushed her ghost as fast as it could go, escaping the Gravemind's clutches. Jason looked back to see another tentacle crushing his abandoned Ghost, causing it to explode in a burst of plasma and causing the tentacle to recoil.

He decided to take the direct approach. Jason jumped into the air toward the Gravemind appendage, dodging and slashing at the creature's tentacles as he went. As he neared, the appendage released a wave of infection forms. But at the speed he was moving the Flood couldn't keep up.

Combat forms eventually joined in, successfully slowing Jason down, at least until Trepid showed up with his Ghost. He ran right through them, giving Jason a straight path toward the appendage.

Helen drove by and tossed him something. Jason snatched it out of the air and looked at it. One of Helen's last thermal detonators. With a grim smile on his face Jason primed the grenade. He side slashed another tentacle and sent the detonator flying a mile a minute.

The grenade lodged itself in the appendage, sinking into its soft organic material. The light on the grenade flashed red and then, there was a sun within the planet of Taxyra. Green and brown gunk exploded outward, but Jason shielded himself with the force. The appendage went down hard, it's long head roaring with anger.

Jason dodged the falling tentacles and infection forms, hoping the Gravemind hadn't succeeded in shutting down the terminal. He jumped over the fallen head and spotted a small yellow terminal jutting out of the crater he made in the Gravemind.

He skidded to a halt in front of the terminal, his knee banging against the metal underneath. His eyes welled up from the pain but he ignored them. He sheathed his lightsaber, wiped away the slime covering the console and took in the controls.

He didn't even sense the combat form behind him when it gripped him around the waist with a thin, sharp tentacle. Jason struggled, trying to get his saber from his belt. Suddenly, the tentacle was gone. He swung around to find Trepid's back a foot behind him, his crimson lightsaber hacking away at Flood that came toward them. Trepid turned slightly so he and Jason could see each other. The Sith lord gave him a curt nod before turning back to face the oncoming Flood.

Jason looked at the controls and found a circle in the center. Taking a leap of faith he twisted the circle clockwise. The yellow terminal slowly increased to a bright red, causing a small alarm to sound from the terminal.

"You have done it!" Fire exclaimed happily from above, "come, I will activate the portal and you may leave."

Helen flew by, allowing Jason and Trepid a chance to hop on, both of them balancing on the vehicle's wings. The Ghost sank lower to the ground, its underside sparking against the metal floor. Helen followed the monitor to the far side of the room where a small blue ball flashed into existence against the wall. Trepid and Jason swung their lightsabers, taking out any combat forms Helen had missed.

Helen slowed as they came up to it, unsure if the portal was meant for vehicles. She pulled the Ghost to a crawl and jumped out, Trepid and Jason close on her heels.

Helen and Trepid went through the portal without hesitation, disappearing in bright white flashes, not dissimilar to Slipspace ruptures. But Jason lagged behind, waiting for the monitor.

"Fire, aren't you coming!"

The monitor's eye flashed, creating a semitransparent barrier between them and the Flood. He floated down beside Jason, the glow from its green eye mixing with Jason's blue lightsaber, creating an odd rainbow affect.

"I cannot come with you Reclaimer," said Fire. "There are several other tasks I must see to, to make sure the installation's detonation will be sufficient enough to destroy the Flood. Containment is my highest priority after all."

Jason didn't know what to say. The machine was unique. A hundred thousand years old and Fire still worked perfectly, except for a few odd personality quirks. He knew the scientist back on Couriscant would go nuts if they had any of this technology, but it seemed that if the Flood weren't to survive, then neither would the Forerunners' technology.

"Thanks Fire" said Jason with a small smile, "Take care."

"Thank you Reclaimer" Fire said happily, "You must hurry; the installation will detonate within the next five standard minutes."

With one last sparing look at the floating eye Jason stepped back into the portal. He was enveloped in darkness and felt a soft pressure squeeze him in on all sides, keeping him from taking a breath.

When Jason couldn't take it any longer and tried gasping for air, the pressure disappeared and Jason found himself overlooking the large equatorial trench, a structure he believed to be the library located on the far side.

Someone called his name from behind and he turned to see Helen running up a bare hillside with Trepid at her side. Above them, the Saurora swung into view preparing to make a landing.

Jason sprinted up the hill behind them, knowing escape was so close. He began to move even faster when flood forms came barreling out of the forest at the base of the hill. Before he knew it, Jason was up the ship's boarding ramp and inside the Saurora's lavish interior. He keyed closed the ramp and ran to the cockpit.

"Go!" Jason said as he jumped in the navigation seat.

Cris obeyed without question, pushing the ship's throttle as far as it would go. The Saurora blasted off the ground, its main engine frying several Flood forms standing behind the ship.

Jason wondered how much time they had left. Not much it seemed. The planet below them already showed signs of the imminent explosion. Parts of the surface began to explode, sending bits of metal and Flood fragments high into the air.

It seemed the Gravemind still had it in for them, even now as the planet exploded around them. Large tentacles reached up from the planet surface, trying to bat them from the sky.

Cris dodged the metal and tentacles with incredible skill, flipping the ship this way and that with ease. Then, they were free of Taxyra. The atmosphere was behind them, along with the Flood and dying Destroyer installation.

Ahead of them, their main fleet stood waiting for them. He had no idea how big of an explosion the Installation would create, but he knew it would be enough to envelop the fleet.

"Helen we need to move the fleet away now!" he yelled over the rumble of the ship's afterburners.

Without acknowledgement, she dialed up Skye and stared yelling at the General to move the fleet. She then did the same with the Sith admiral.

By the time they reached the fleet, it had already begun to move. But when Jason used the exterior cameras to survey Taxyra, he knew they might be too late. The entire planet was sucking itself inward, causing the surface to glow red hot.

"Tell them to make jumps to hyperspace," Jason said to Helen. "the fleet won't make it out of here alive unless they do."

"Where should they go?"

Jason groaned with frustration, "random coordinates, it doesn't matter. We need to get them out of here now!"

Helen recalled the fleet and told them what to do. Seconds later, the ships began to make jumps to the safety of hyperspace. The Saurora stayed to make sure each ship go out alive.

When the Righteous Justice finally made a jump, Taxyra exploded. Bits of planet flew at them at nearly light speed, making them resemble shooting stars.

Jason randomized several coordinates and Cris made the immediate jump. The exploding world flashed away to be replaced by colourful blue hyperspace.

Jason slumped in his chair, too tired for words. They had done it. They had stopped the Covenant and the Flood, but also lost a friend along the way. Glorious Fire was gone for good, destroyed by the home he had lived in for a hundred thousand years. Deep down, he knew he would miss the little droid.

"You guys want to tell me what the heck just happened?" asked Cris.

Jason let loose a half cry, half laugh, "later Cris. I'm just glad it's over."

Helen got out of her chair and walked over to his. She seated herself on his lap and wrapped her arms around his neck. Jason pulled her in and kissed her. Kissed her like he had never done before.

She pulled away, a serious look on her face. "This isn't over yet" he said, "the Covenant won't stop until we're all extinct. We're at war now."

"Well, with allies like us" said Trepid with a dark smirk, "you could say the war is already won."

Jason smiled at the Sith. The two of them may have been different in many ways, and their people had waged war against the Jedi almost half a dozen times before. But this was different. They had finally united against a terrible enemy they both shared. And while they would fight together, peace would never be an option. The light and dark sides were never meant to coexist. They were forever enemies, but for now, they were content to be allies.