War of Vengeance

The War of Vengeance is a term used by historians to refer to the period of almost continuous conflict lasting from 2555 to 2562 between the Covenant Remnant Factions, and the alliance of the United Earth Government and the Sangheili Armed Forces. The war lasted seven years and cost the lives of approximately 160 million beings, but due to the relative technological parity between the two sides, the war was considerably less costly in terms of life than the Human-Covenant War.

The war saw the improvement and extensive use of various technologies prototyped in the Human-Covenant War, such as nuclear shaped-charge missiles, anti-plasma countermissiles, fragmentation warheads, and the first arsenal ships, all of which were instrumental in reducing the UEG's vast numerical and technological disadvantage at the start of the war.

It remains a topic of considerable debate among historians as to whether the War of Vengeance can be considered to be a separate war or simply another period in the far more destructive Human-Covenant War. However, the Official Histories of the UNSC Army, Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy (J.R. Michaels, Luna Publishers, 2563, 2564, and 2566 respectively) consider it to be a separate conflict, and so that reckoning is used in this article to avoid confusion.

Beginnings
The War of Vengeance obviously has its roots during the Human-Covenant War. During the Second Battle of Earth in 2553, the vast majority of the vessels brought by the Prophet of Truth to the Sol System went through the Portal to Installation 00, and were destroyed by the pursuing Sangheili fleet. However, a small number of ships were able to escape into slipspace, one of which was pursued by a UNSC Prowler to a Jiralhanae-occupied Covenant colony known as Unmoving Virtue. The Prowler was able to gather a large amount of intelligence on the colony and its defences before returning to UNSC space. However, the intelligence was shelved by the UEG, who preferred to focus on reconstruction rather than taking the war to the Covenant, who in any case, appeared to be a less important threat than a potential second Insurrection, given that they were ripping themselves apart in a civil war created by the death of the Prophet of Truth and numerous Jiralhanae Alpha Chieftans.

However, by 2555, the warring Covenant factions had mostly been united under the New Covenant, led by the Prophet of Objection, the Blood Covenant, under Chieftan Hephaestus, and numerous other smaller, but no less dangerous states such as the Kig-Yar Privateer Alliance. The New Covenant, however, was not yet prepared to continue the war with the UEG and the Sangheili, and it is indeed possible that Objection had lost the stomach for another costly war. In contrast, the Blood Covenant was rearming at full pace and made no secret of its aims to destroy humanity, the Sangheili, and the San'Shyuum, whom they viewed as deceivers responsible for their ill-fortune during the Human-Covenant War, and decisively ended negotions with the New Covenant over a potential military alliance by sending the two ambassadors home in pieces.

With their shipping being constantly harrassed by Kig-Yar pirate vessels, and the Blood Covenant rapidly approaching the capacity to overwhelm them, the UEG recovered the intelligence gathered at Unmoving Virtue, and together with the Sangheili, composed a plan for a strike against the Blood Covenant that would cripple their military capability, and act as a deterrent against further aggression.

First strike (December 2555)
The attack on Unmoving Virtue was conducted with the cooperation of the Sangheili Armed Forces Second Fleet of Enlightened Benevolence, and the UNSC 30th Fleet. The battle was a significant victory for both participants, and saw the deployment of numerous new technologies. In this regard, it served as a combat test for UNSC prototypes, proving their reliability and effectiveness in the field, and also functioned as a psychological deterrent against further Covenant aggression. For the Sangheili, it saw the liberation of thousands of captured Sangheili slaves from the shipyards, the destruction of three significant Jiralhanae fleets, and denied the Blood Covenant control of a strategically important naval shipyard.

The effectiveness of various new UNSC space weapons technologies in the battle led to the New Covenant and the alliance signing the Unmoving Virtue Non-aggression Pact, which kept the New Covenant out of the war, at least against the UEG-SAF alliance. The New Covenant would wage its own campaigns of conquest and absorbtion, but would remain outside of UEG-SAF combat theatres, leaving them to their own devices.

Island Hopping (2556-2560)
The attack also proved to be a double-edged sword for the UEG/Sangheili alliance, however: Jiralhanae politics being what they are, the leadership annihilated at Unmoving Virtue were quickly replaced, and the other worlds put on immediate alert. Another attack of the same scale would not be possible again for many years, until the Blood Covenant fleet had been left battered and disparate after a decade of swift, aggressive and devastating raids against the most significant nodal points, leaving worlds dependent upon them to "wither on the vine", reminiscent of the "Island Hopping" campaign envisaged by World War II Admirals Nimitz and Halsey.

Pious Ascension (February 2556)
After the defeat at Unmoving Virtue, the Blood Covenant moved their capital to Pious Ascension. However, given the planet's position as a key shipyard, a large population centre, and a major stop-off point and re-fuelling base for convoys heading for four other smaller colonies, it was an obvious target for the Island Hopping campaign, something that the Blood Covenant leadership apparently failed to appreciate.

The force defending Pious Ascension was larger than the alliance was prepared to comfortably deal with, however, and so they planted disinformation to convince the Blood Covenant that an attack was to take place at the less well-defended but equally important world of Eternal Fealty. The Office of Naval Intelligence made use of an easy-to-break code to transmit the information between fleet formations, and even constructed a faux attack fleet that seemed to be poised to assault Eternal Fealty. Blood Covenant cryptanalysists and intelligence officers were convinced that the attack on Eternal Fealty would come at any time, and so Blood Covenant Naval Command made the decision to detach three dozen ships from the Pious Ascension fleet to reinforce Eternal Fealty, giving the allies the opening they needed.

An allied force of sixty-four ships arrived at Pious Ascension on February 2, 2556 and engaged the far larger but technologically inferior Blood Covenant fleet, dealing them heavy damage but taking enough losses in return to make a pyrrhic victory appear likely. However, the entire attack was a feint to draw the Blood Covenant's attention away from the real threat: Since Pious Ascension's garrison was too large to overwhelm with a ground assault, and the planet was too important to the Blood Covenant war effort to even allow them the possibility of recapturing it, the decision had been taken to utterly destroy the planet. An ONI Prowler launched a NOVA Bomb at the planet and utterly destroyed it, with the entire Blood Covenant fleet getting destroyed in the blast wave. Blood Covenant supply lines were tripled in length, and four Blood Covenant colonies were starved, surrendering three months after the battle. The Blood Covenant leadership, however, once again escaped, this time to Expansive Judgement, where they would remain until the end of the campaign.

Eternal Fealty (June 2556)
Emboldened by their two crushing victories, the alliance was prepared to carry out their threat to attack Eternal Fealty. The Blood Covenant was forced to commit more ships to convoy escort duty, as the UEG's campaign of Unrestricted Prowler Warfare (see below) became more and more agressive and harmful to their ability to supply their dependent colonies. As a result, ships were stripped out Eternal Fealty's defence fleet in order to fill the gaps left by losses to Prowlers. Seeing that the Prowler campaign was doing the Blood Covenant damage in areas that they hadn't foreseen, Admiral Carolyn Webster, Commander, UNSC Prowler Corps, ordered the campaign to be stepped up, to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Fleet Admiral Terrence Hood's enthusiastic approval. Eventually, Eternal Fealty's defence fleet had been reduced by half following losses on convoy duty. The allies came to the conclusion that the time to attack had come, and on June 18, 2556, a joint UNSC-Sangheili force entered the system.

Despite numerical parity, the demoralised Blood Covenant fleet was quickly dealt with by the allies, and the six-day ground campaign ended with very few (comparatively) allied losses. In the process, the men of the UNSC Army's 3rd Scottish Infantry Regiment captured a data centre in the planet's capital. After analysing the data, the UEG learnt that the Blood Covenant was fighting a two-front war, one against them, and another against the New Covenant, and was slowly being pushed back on both fronts. What should have been good news was tempered by the fear that once the New Covenant had dealt with its secessionists, it would turn on the alliance. Fortunately, this proved not to be the case.

Operation Tartarus
Jiralhanae understanding of human political structures and motivations has been understabdably poor, given how far removed their own society is from the democratic institution that has served humanity's interstellar government needs. Their own society is a patriarchal kritocratic hierarchy, where males achieve power by defeating their superiors, moving up the chain of command as available posts become available. As such, it is not difficult to see how they concieved of Operation Tartarus.

To the Jiralhanae, the answer to the UNSC's continued involvement was simple - cut off the head of the snake,and the body dies. Fleet Admiral Lord Sir Terrence Hood, effectively the benevolent military dictator of the UNSC during the Human-Covenant War, was seen as the most strategic candidate for removal. His influence upon the military was not inconsiderable, and without him, they believed, the UNSC would grind to a halt as rivals fought to fill his place, and the general populace would lose the will to fight. It was also meant to demonstrate to humanity that even their heroes were not invulnerable. While the Sangheili had cultivated a reliable spy network within the Brotherhood of Ruskt, with which the Blood Covenant had cool relations with, this would prove to be a double edged sword for them - the same network was used to gain information on Hoods projected locations and timetable, and an assassination fleet was rapidly assembled.

What occurred, however, was certainly not the well-oiled precision of comparable UNSC and Sangheili operations. During a military inspection of the politically sensitive Middangeard ruins, the Blood Covenant appeared in orbit, engaging the limited colonial defence forces in orbit, blowing past the two orbital defence platforms and landing thousands of troops on the planet. In the ensuing ground combat, Hoods location was overrun, and the Admiral was killed by Jiralhanae forces before rescue teams could arrive. As response groups arrived to combat the enemy attack, a Sangheili delegation arrived in-system. Originally scheduled to take part in a ceremonial dedication on the colony, the fleet instead became part of a pincer formation, trapping the Blood Covenant fleet. While UNSC ships closed and engaged the main force, the Sangheili picked off stragglers and other ships attempting to flee. By the end of the space battle, not a single ship had escaped the slaughter. The ground battle was less smooth, and only the orbital support provided by the UNSC Navy and SAF Fleet allowed the local forces to retake the capital.

Technically, the operation was a decided success. It saw the death of a prominent military figure, as well as demonstrating that the Blood Covenant had the capability to attack UNSC colonies, even while fighting a two-front war against the New Covenant and Sangheili Armed Forces. The response to it was decidedly different to that expected by the Blood Covenant. Rather than demoralising the UNSC, the attack served to infuriate humanity. Where before protests had been staged calling for the immediate withdrawal of human eprsonnel and materiel from a war percieved by many as irrelevant, now public opinion swung back in the UEG's favour, producing a public outcry and outrage. The UNSC would immediately step up its operations, increasing funding for special warfare projects, and mobilising the entire armed forces for the first time since the Human-Covenant War in the name of colonial security.

Expansive Judgement (2561)
After Pious Ascension's annihilation, the capital was moved to Expansive Judgement. They belived that an attack on the planet would be impossible - the sheer number of ships and orbital defences rendered it practically immune to orbital assault, and the billion or so Jiralhanae population would render a ground campaign pointless. In any case, the Alliance had virtually no idea of the sheer scale of the defences, much less the planet's location.

However, during the anti-piracy Operation: CORSAIR, the Prowler succeeded in attaching a telemetry probe to the Kig-Yay Privateer ship Heikekatohuia, which retreated to the Expansive Judgement system to refuel and repair. The probe gave the UEG an unprecedented look at the planet's defences.

Pacifying the Kig-Yar Privateers (2560-2562)
For the most part, the Kig-Yar Privateer Alliance went ignored by the major factions, largely because they leased their services out to all involved sides. Even the Sangheili contracted a number of Kig-yar mercenaries, mostly as privateers against Blood Covenant and New Covenant merchant shipping. As the war drew on, though, and the Blood Covenant grew increasingly desperate, they contracted a large number of Kig-Yar Privateer Alliance personnel. Though conventional payment was out of the question, the Jiralhanae offered them a perfect site for the type of colony they preferred, and an ideal piracy base of operations - the asteroid field surrounding Goromakton, a gas giant in the same system as Expansive Judgement. In exchange, the Kig-Yar provided their ships and mercenary warriors to supplement the Blood Covenant's wounded military, and protected the Gargarensis gas refinery facility.

Operation: LAMENTATION changed that situation dramatically. With the destruction of the colonies and the facility, the Blood Covenant-contracted Kig-Yar were left without a base to operate from, unable to dock and resupply. Believing it to be an easy and overlooked target, these privateers launched an assault on a Sangheili colony, Triumphant Declaration, hoping that its plunder would be able to cover the costs neccessary to reestablish themselves. What they hadn't counted on was the Sangheili's swift and overwhelming response - three hundred warships entered the system, utterly obliterating the Kig-yar fleet before it could escape, and launching ground forces to retake the planets population centres.

Seeing the attack on Triumphant Declaration as a declaration of war, the Sangheili Armed Forces mobilised to devastate the infrastructure of the Kig-Yar Privateer Alliance, destroying as many Kig-yar colonies as they found, spreading the message that the Sangheili's genocidal fury had been unleashed upon them. By the end of the campaign, even the Kig-yar themselves were hunting down Privateers, hoping that this act would be percieved as a gesture of goodwill by the Sangheili, and that it would halt their purges. When the War of Vengeance was officially concluded, the Privateer Alliance had long ago ceased to function as a coherent collective, reduced to small bands of disparate criminals isolated even from Kig-yar society.

Though the War of Vengeance saw little disagreement between the UNSC and the SAF, the extermination of the Privateer Alliance was a point of contention among human and Sangheili diplomats. For one thing, the UNSC had invested a considerable amount of time and resources building up a spy network within the Privateer Alliance, hoping that Kig-yar contacts would be able to provide the UNSC with an advantage against the increasingly-powerful New Covenant - a spy network that was now being wiped out by the Sangheili. Though it had little effect on the Human-Sangheili Alliance, the UNSC did not participate in the campaign, and records indicate that at least a few Kig-yar informants were actually covertly evacuated before they could be killed by the Sangheili, in order to recover their valuable knowledge. After the War of Vengeance, the Sangheili would demand these the UNSC hand over these Kig-yar as criminals for execution - records of their existence were purged, and a mass escape from a UNSC "detention" facility saw their escape and disappearance back into Kig-yar space. The Sangheili have vociferously claimed that the UNSC allowed the Kig-yar to escape in order to re-establish their Kig-yar spy network, which the UNSC have denied multiple times.

Timeline

 * 2555
 * Operation: TACK HAMMER
 * 2556
 * Battle of Pious Ascension
 * Battle of Eternal Fealty
 * Operation: MACARTHUR, a planet-hopping campaign by the UNSC and SAF, is begun. Stealth Frigates and Prowlers cripple Blood Covenant shipping, while battlegroups strike hard and fast at vital and vulnerable targets.
 * 2557
 * The Blood Covenant hires privateers and mercenaries from the Kig-Yar Privateer Alliance to prey on UNSC and Sangheili shipping. Megiddo is the victim of countless pirate raids, prompting an expanded ONI presence in the system.
 * Operation Tartarus
 * Battle of Sigma Octanus IV
 * Battle of Alpha Centauri
 * Battle of Ketesh
 * 2558
 * Battle of Cloistering Expectancy
 * Battle of Determined Resolve
 * Siege of Ambient Wonder
 * With UNSC and Sangheili battlegroups wiping out strategic assets, including refineries and shipping points, Blood Covenant colonies begin to starve and wither. The Blood Covenant pulls back to Expansive Judgement.
 * 2559
 * The New Covenant encounters the Imperial Covenant, quickly and peacefully assimilating the holdout Prophet bastion world of Victorious Avowal, transfering the capital to the well defended world.
 * 2560
 * Operation: SPECTACLE
 * Operation: METATRON
 * Operation Hammer - Terrence Hood assassinated by Blood Covenant Special Forces
 * Operation: SIREN SONG
 * 2561
 * Operation: FURY - UEG reprisal campaign for Hood's death
 * Battle of Exultant Piety
 * Battle of Undefeated Glory
 * Battle of Wonderous Enlightenment
 * Battle of Glorious Fraternity
 * Operation: CORSAIR
 * Operation: LAMENTATION
 * 2562
 * Battle of Triumphant Declaration
 * The Interminable Reprisal Campaign begins, with the Sangheili wiping out the Kig-Yar Privateer Alliance, and leaving the Kig-yar as a species with little in the way of infrastructure. For a long time, they will be forced to rely on Sangheili aid, and are once again denied slipspace-capable ships.
 * Balaho Civil War
 * The Blood Covenant Civil War begins and ends swiftly, as rival Jiralhanae tribes struggle against each other. The few that refuse assimilation when the New Covenant conquer their colonies are wiped out by orbital bombardment. The Blood Covenant is officially declared nonexistent, its last worlds annexed by the New Covenant.
 * The Unmoving Virtue Treaty is signed between New Covenant, Sangheili and UNSC delegates, officially bringing the War of Vengeance to a close. Smaller tensions and conflicts would continue to be fought, but are excluded from this timeframe.

UNSC
As humanity began to rebuild and recover from the devastation of the Human-Covenant War, most of the top leadership were reluctant to return to combat operations, fearing a second invasion of Earth, and the beginning of another campaign of genocide against them by one of the more powerful Covenant Remnant factions. However, as more and more technologies entered service rendering not only their own equipment obsolete but also that of the Covenant, the UNSC began to feel more confident. While the Battle of Unmoving Virtue was the first military operation the UNSC had engaged in since the last war, it would not be the last - the skirmishes with the Kig-Yar Privateer Alliance, the attacks on Ulysses and Mandorla, and the battles of Resolute Spirit, Y'Deio, and Renewed Vigour were all fought by humans in defence of human interests. Unmoving Virtue would be the largest cooperative campaign between the two factions, but it would not be the last.

Sangheili Armed Forces
As the Schism drew to a close, the Sangheili found themselves scattered across former Covenant space, with a smaller fleet and suddenly faced with a much larger enemy. That alone nearly threatened the Sangheili with fragmentation into various smaller emppires and thralldoms, but the shattering of their belief in the Great Journey was almost as damaging. The Sangheili Armed Forces took the disparate Sangheili, uniting them with a common goal - vengeance. It is their crusade against the former Covenant factions that lends its name to the War of Vengeance. Like the UNSC, the Sangheili also found itself benefitting from improvements on their weapons and other systems - though humanity was loathe to give up any advantage it possessed, the native ingenuity of Sangheili researchers was finally lifted from the restraints set by the Prophets on non-interference in Forerunner-derived technologies. As they swept through the stars, one by one the enemies of the Sangheili fell - the Blood Covenant was shattered at Unmoving Virtue, the Brotherhood of Ruskt was reduced to a single world, and even the New Covenant, rivalling the Sangheili themselves in terms of strength and territory, lost significant territories before the Unmoving Virtue Treaty.

Quotes

 * "The Sangheili have fallen from the path they helped to forge for centuries, but no matter. They shall come around, in time. Remember warriors, it was not the Prophets who struck the first blow - the Sangheili were the ones who failed us, not the other way around. The magnitude of their...errors shall be impressed upon them."
 * "It's hard to say whether it's not just an extension of the Human-Covenant War. On the one hand, it still has many of the same players - the various Covenant Remnant factions, the Sangheili, and the UNSC. On the other hand, we're not on the losing side."
 * "A Sangheili has trouble remembering that other species have concepts of honour and valour, however alien they are to us. Before we made peace with the humans, the closest we had to ourselves was the Lekgolo. But as the humans burned a path through their enemies with their righteous fury, avenging the restless spirits of the dead, I learned the true measure of honour - and that I had a lot of catching up to do to atone for my past heresy."
 * "Hell, nobody liked fighting alongside the species that had willingly wiped us out us for nearly thirty years. But they were the only ally available to us - Earth our only stronghold, less than a dozen colonies left, and a shattered military and economic infrastructure left us desperate. And as we worked together, people looked at them as a powerful ally rather than something that could turn on us whenever it wanted. Thankfully, we're no longer in such a vulnerable position."