User:RelentlessRecusant/Halo: Memory/Chapter Three

Chapter Three: Turn The Lights On

One Month Later…

Advanced Institute for Xenological Studies Cote de Azur, Sigma Octanus IV

The orderly was careful enough to divert his eyes from the double-sealed package that he gingerly handed to the research assistant that had met him at the front of Room 418 in the Advanced Institute for Xenological Studies. The principal investigator (PI) of the lab had assured the orderly that there was no need to look at the package, conjecture as to its contents, or even to set foot in the lab, and it was the PI’s impressive credentials – M.D., Ph.D. from Harvard on Earth, his regular publications in Nature, and some of the more emphermal connections the man was said to have, that dissuaded the orderly from doing any of the aforementioned three points.

The R.A., a graduate student, acknowledged the package with a quick flick of a pen over the recipient form, and handed it back to the orderly, and by then, the R.A. had ushered himself into the lab and locked the door. In the innards of the expansive laboratory facilities was the P.I.’s office – Dr. Goetz, the figurehead of the Advanced Institute in Cote de Azur of Sigma Octanus IV, the man whose favor propelled graduates and undergraduates through their professional career, whose displeasure ruined academic careers and lives. It was a huddle of various postdocs and other lab students that had aggregated into Goetz’s lab, and as the R.A. pro-offered the double-sealed package, with the rigor of a military officer, Goetz broke apart the seals and extricated the protected contents – a magnetic disk, stamped with a menagerie of intimidatory annotations; UNSC DEFENSE FORCE, UNSC OFFICE OF NAVAL INTELLIGENCE, NAVAL INTELLIGENCE DEPARTMENT OF STRATEGIC INTELLIGENCE, CLASSIFICATION: TOP SECRET PANDORA. Without as so much as a glance at the labels, the researcher stuffed the disk into his computer’s disk-reader.

There were two folders: WELCOME and S117_MSSN_REC. With a smile touching upon his lips, he opened the first folder, revealing a pre-recorded video by Admiral Ackerson, Office of Naval Intelligence. Perhaps one of Dr. Goetz’s closest friends and collaborators. The two had much to be gathered from each other, and symbiotic relations between each other had been to mutual good. Despite the best orofacial surgeons of the Navy, Ackerson’s face was still deeply scarred—the blood had dried, the synthetic skin overlaid, yet the man’s body and mind still bore testament to his interrogation at the hands of the Brutes during the Second Battle of Earth. Ackerson’s smile matched his own, as he began, “Dr. Goetz, greetings. As you have previously seen the folders enclosed in this disk, you are quite obviously grinning now.”

Goetz faintly smiled. The senior ONI leader could be a dick at times, but his wit and intelligence was humoring at times. Ackerson continued, “Enclosed are the selected mission records of Master Chief Petty Officer SPARTAN-117 during his combat operations aboard the Forerunner installation known as the Ark. Marge says hello.”

Dr. Goetz’s more pronounced smile was for something else now – Goetz and Paragonsky, the ONI Director, had been husband and wife for over fifty years. Connections with Naval Intelligence undoubtedly had fed the Advanced Institute’s growth and progress.

It was with urgency that Goetz extracted the files from S117_MSSN_REC, disseminated them, handed them to the various researchers of his laboratory.

“We meet again in twelve hours. I want results by then.”

UNSC Miranda Keyes Slipspace en route to Carinae-312

Perhaps the most daunting aspect of naval combat was diving from Slipspace to attack an enemy world – while the Covenant certainly had the augumented technologies to communicate between realspace and Slipspace vessels, for the UNSC, entering Slipspace was to blind oneself, to shut one’s eyes and cover one’s years…lost in eight dimensions that were suddenly more than mathematical abstractions, and rather a reality. It was an unfriendly thought – the initial UNSC experimentations with Slipspace had been disasterous, and even through the Human-Covenant War, one of the UNSC’s major hindrances was Slipspace – while the Covenant could make pinpoint jumps, emerging from Slipspace in the precise formations they had been thousands of light-years ago, UNSC vessels could be off their intended jump point by hundreds of kilometers. Inevitably, this precision of maneuverability was unacceptable; during Admiral Cole’s campaign to retake the lifeless sphere of Harvest, one of his frigates, the UNSC Repulse, had jumped into the thinned atmosphere itself, plunging catastrophically into the surface at flank speed, killing all hands and eliminating the warship utterly. The list of casualties from UNSC vessels that had jumped into the atmosphere, jumped into a system’s star, jumped into an astrological anomaly, jumped and had not been contacted again…Repulse, Thunder Break, Deterrent, Peacekeeper, Valorous, Excelsior…the list stretched yonder, and still, UNSC military scientists had not only failed to improve Slipspace accuracy, but failed to even perfect realspace-to-Slipspace communications and vice versa. Ironically, the only advance gained had been achieved by spying on the Covenant – the UNSC artificial intelligence Cortana had uncovered detailed information on Covenant Slipspace drives from the cruiser Ascendant Justice, and while they had been a roadmap to furthering of Slipspace Theory, the drive design was far beyond current UNSC technological capabilities.

The eighty vessels of the UNSC Fourth Fleet Battle Group Mediator were bound by the cloak of Slipspace, its blinding shawl wrapped around them. They had been mute and silent, devoid of communications and even life for the one full month it had taken them to jump from Mars to the planetary system known as Carinae-312. Unable to communicate or even engage sensors in Slipspace, the warships had remained dormant, hibernating, readying their weapons for combat, while most of the crew was in artificial hibernation – cryogenics. Because of their lack of sensation and communications, when the battle group jumped into the target system, they would have no forewarning on enemy and friendly presences in the area. Armed with nothing else but the information they had received from Fleet Command when they jumped, they had been unaware of any events on Carinae-312; for all Commodore Tate dared to care, the Beneath Shoreless Waves could have been destroyed in orbit and a Covenant fleet was waiting to ambush them upon reversion. Although there was no way to circumvent the communications and intelligence blackout on a Slipspace jump, UNSC tacticians had come with the second-best alternative; ensuring that in a combat jump, the majority of the vessels would not be ambush. This was achieved by subtle methods. The core component of any major UNSC naval force would be prefaced by two smaller groups: the first of prowler stealth craft, the second of a small task force that would immediately secure a small clear jump zone, and finally, the majority of the warships. At least if there was an ambush, the second force could divert their attention for the core force to jump safely. A necessary sacrifice.

It was a more keen sacrifice for Task Force Gamma, who was that forward task force. Whereas the remaining reinforced seven task forces of Battle Group Mediator would be able to jump securely because of Gamma’s sacrifice, if enemy forces laid in wait, it would be Commodore Tate, his vessels, his crew, that would bear the brunt of the fire, and be the pro-offered sacrificial anger to the jealous deities of war.

However, even Tate admitted the possibility the whole of the battle group would be destroyed upon reversion upon an enemy force was slender. Battle Group Mediator was much greater than Admiral Cole’s fleet that was dispatched to Harvest, and was twice as large as Admiral Stanforth’s fleet that was sent to Sigma Octanus IV. Rear Admiral Wagner’s force was less of a battle group and more like an independent small fleet – the only warship concentrations that surpassed Wagner’s current group had been the hundred-and-fifty-odd vessels over Reach during that battle and the current UNSC Home Fleet, which had over a hundred vessels in orbit over Earth and Luna. Wagner’s eighty vessels had been partitioned into eight taskforces of ten vessels – while the loss of Fleet Master ‘Tulomee’s Covenant cruisers had been a substantial one, the sheer numbers of the reinforced battle group made it quite invulnerable to enemy attack. Tate’s Task Force Gamma had been expanded from six warships to ten warships, of which a full three were Sojourn-class attack cruisers: the UNSC Miranda Keyes was now supplemented by the UNSC Cydonia and the UNSC Vishnu, and the task force’s remainder of seven vessels was now at a count of three destroyers and four frigates.

Aboard the Miranda Keyes, the crew had all been roused from cyro-induced sleep—they were on the thirty-second day of their jump, and it was projected to terminate in one day. The master tactical’s chronometer counted down from the hours to the minutes, and now, the task force tactical officer, Commander Pederson, began noting the final count-down sequence. “Three …two…one…prowler line has jumped in-system.”

The battle group had four prowlers from the ONI Prowler Corps attached to it, and all four of the stealth electronic-intelligence craft were part of the first wave; undetected, they would slip in-system and begin to form up to transmit to the incoming UNSC vessels that would be jumping in shortly about the presence of hostiles.

Pederson tapped a key, and the master tactical metamorphed into a second timer. “Commodore, the task force is coming in-system in one minute.”

Tate nodded. “Alright, peoples. Fire Control, are those MAC systems and Archer missiles hot?”

“Aye, sir.”

Satisfied that at least the rudimentary combat preparations had been carried out, he hit the intercom. “Bridge to Miranda Keyes. All hands to battle stations. Pilots, to your fighters. Our jump’s coming up in under a minute.”

The lazy pace over the past thirty-three days intensified to a fervor as it reached its final minutes; pilots in seven-piece pressure suits climbed the ladders to the Rapier and Longsword fighters, two squadrons, stored in the gut of the attack cruiser, while gunners began to initialize their targeting systems, engineering crews began to scramble to positions from which they would be able to assess and deal with damage, and the medical bay prepared for casualties.

It was a mere twelve seconds left on the master tactical before the vessel’s executive officer, Captain Rutledge, confirmed that the Miranda Keyes was locked down and prepared for the dragons that laid behind the curtain of Slipspace. With formality upon his words, Rutledge said in measured tones, “Commodore, your flagship is yours to command.”

Quietly, he acknowledged his exec. “Thank you, Captain.”

The only further words on the bridge of the battle cruiser were Pederson’s, seven seconds later. “Five…four…three…”

Tate shifted himself upon the rigors of the command chair, his eyes contracting slightly and forearms tensing upon the arms of the seat as stress began to insinuate itself into his interstitial spaces, and he felt the heat descend his neck and his hairs raise from the pilor erection…

“Two…one…”

We’re committed, he thought. That was his final thought when the Miranda Keyes slipped from the extradimensional space to the star-lit realm of Carinae-312.

It was beautiful—the crimson smear of NGC 3576 rippled, distorted, and the fabric of space and time itself was kneaded to produce forth a blossom of warships, with martial lines and carrying the standards of the UNSC Defense Force. Immediately, the formation firmed up in those first blind milliseconds as the master tactical recorded the operation. It was autonomous; the navigational computers were set to immediately interface with the sensor arrays upon reversion, determine the location of allied vessels, and according to a pre-planned formation protocol, would maneuver to a wide-winged formation that would allow the task force to secure a jump point for the core force. The ragged, misshaped clump of Task Force Gamma streaked outwards; on full burn, the destroyer-type and frigate-type vessels streaked to the myriad flanks, and the Miranda Keyes punched forward, her prow an arrowhead raised towards the fourth planet, while the Cydonia and the Vishnu smartly fell in behind her, their graceful wings spread behind the command cruiser, the talons of their weapons extended—a trio of predators, leering to the planet in defiance, while their nest of birds flanked the cruisers to either side.

Tate snapped, “Tracking, report!”

“Task force reports all vessels have jumped in-system. All warships are on-station and are maneuvering to secure formation.” A pause as the lieutenant checked a different array of screens. “Threat receivers are clear. Sensors read clearance in all directions for three thousand kilometers. Five thousand kilometers.”

Another officer affirmed that. “Task force confirms that local space is clear, Commodore. Prowler line reports twenty thousand kilometer clearance ahead.”

Satisfied, and reading similar opinions on Pederson’s face, Tate reached for the comm with the task force frequency. “Miranda Keyes to Task Force Gamma and ONI Recon Six-Twenty-Two. Sensors report no contacts. All vessels are to deploy fighter screens. Prowlers will diffuse to the lateral aspects of the planetary orbit and lay sensor buoys and recon satellites.”

The prowler group commander, a major by the name of Frey, called out, “Copy that, Miranda Keyes.”

It would take several minutes for the prowlers of the ONI 622nd Recon Group to reach their positions, and in that time, fighters flitted from the launch bays of the task force’s vessels. Each frigate carried a full squadron of fighters, and each attack cruiser twice that number. Immediately, the Miranda Keyes’s flight operations chief produced half-a-dozen Rapier interceptors, which formed into pairs and raced with afterburners to positions ahead of the cruiser’s missile umbrella—the cruiser’s fighter screen. Rapiers and Longswords snapped from the hangars of the other cruisers and frigates, broke by wingpairs, and fell into similar positions across the task force’s wide arc formation.

A moment later, Pederson announced, “Core force dropping from Slipspace in three…two…one…”

There was an unmistakable strobe of Cherenkov radiation on the plot table, and that blotch across the stars widened, engorging into a massive sphere that encompassed thousands of kilometers, with its periphery registering with lesser intensity. Well behind Task Force Gamma, and remaining seventy vessels of Battle Group Mediator had reverted from Slipspace, and it was almost with a profound awe that Tate regarded the visual display of the steadily-reforming formation. At its center was the great swath of the Marathon-class Cruiser Mediator, Wagner’s flagship, ponderously turning to bring its keel on a direct vector to the planet. Flanking it were swollen battle carriers and the blocky outlines of the aging Halycon-class cruisers. Frigates and destroyers were tearing outwards, forming a sentry line, while trios of assault cruisers the same as the Miranda Keyes leapt forward with an eagerness, forming a forward skirmish line, shielding the core cruiser and carrier force.

Immediately, the silent system of Carinae-312 lit up with communications chatter and navigational radars, and the Miranda Keyes, Task Force Gamma, and the ONI Prowlers were no longer alone in space.

“Commodore, Admiral Wagner is on comm one for you.”

Tate took a final glance at the bridge stations of the cruiser, and then acknowledged the transmission.

“Miranda Keyes here.”

“My battle group confirms clearance of up to fifteen thousand. Do you concur?”

“Yes, sir. I’ve ordered prowlers into advance positions around the fourth planet. They’re laying buoys and satellites.”

“Have you found the Beneath Shoreless Waves?”

That was when one of the prowler captains broke onto the battle-group frequency. “Shade to battle group; we’ve found the Beneath Shoreless Waves. Far side of the planet. She’s trying to authorize a link through one of the BLACK WIDOW comsats.”

With interest, Wagner beckoned, “Patch her through.”

A female voice interjected into the channel. “This is UNSC Beneath Shoreless Waves to unidentified battle group. This is a secure UNSC operations zone, and--”

The admiral chuckled. “Beneath Shoreless Waves, this is Admiral Wagner, Fourth Fleet. We’re your relief.”

Being stubborn, the frigate commander retorted, “FLEETCOM Sydney alerted that we were being reinforced, but I was being approached by one of your prowlers, and when I maneuvered to scan your battle cluster, I wasn’t able to interrogate your IFF modules before I initiated a link to one of your satellites.”

“That’s fine. What’s your status?”

“We’ve been on-station for over a month, holding at a Lagrange point. System’s silent, sir. No one’s peeked at all.”

The bridge crew of the Miranda Keyes perked at the transmission, and irritably, Tate muted the external feed for the conversation and watched as they returned to their duties.

“That’s good to here. My battle group has received orders to maintain an orbital presence and a planetary garrison on the fourth planet of Carinae-312 for six months and to ensure that hostile forces do not land on the planet to reclaim their garrisons there. Fleet Command says that your sensors registered the world as lifeless?”

“Affirmative, sir. Nothing’s down there. It’s all abandoned bases and ruined vehicles.”

“Good to hear”, said Wagner. “Once we secure the orbital perimeter, we’ll be sending down Pelicans and Albatrosses to establish our surface presence and begin fortifying strategic bases on the planet. Do you have a contingent onboard to assist us?”

“One company of Marines, a Strategic Intelligence team from Naval Intelligence, and a squadron of Longsword fighters.”

Wagner nodded. “I’ve received orders to aid your ship’s ONI team on the planet and assist them in their reconnaissance of the planet. I’ll patch you through to my ground ops chief soon. However, for more urgent matters; Fleet Command has also given me orders to absorb your frigate into my battle group. You are being temporarily reassigned from the Fifth Fleet to the Fourth Fleet under my command.”

“Understood, sir.”

“Good. Wagner out.”

Unidentified Vagabond Vessel Anomalous destination

There were all matter of vagabond vessels in the clutter of the galaxy, vessels lost from their parent systems, strayed from their course and lost in the abyss of deep space, a wanderer groping for interstellar hydrogen, hulls long lost of life and energy. In the billions of cubic light-years between planetary systems, it was an astronomical probability that anyone should happen to chance upon such a wanderer. Freighter captains in the UNSC had made a highly-superstitialized fiction of these wandering ships, labeling them ghosts of former captains that had entered Slipspace and never called back. Others named them divine spirits, travelling in the space between stars. Even others didn’t care, treating them indifferently. It was easily forgotten that the Human-Covenant War had sparked from the discovery of a UNSC freighter near harvest by the Kig-Yar ship Minor Transgression. A slip of memory. Most freighter captains had never seen a pilgrim starship in their lives, never would.

The vagrant had groped through the stars for countless millennia…lost from its warm alcove, deprived of its master’s gentle voice, fated to wander, search, seek.

Recon Group Red Low atmosphere, Carinae-312

As Carinae-312’s star rose above the crest of the fourth planet, its rubicund rays stabbing through the darkness and finding purchase upon the ground as the sun struggled to ascend from night to midday, pitching the world in dawn, it also illuminated the eight fast attack Hornet fighters of UNSC Recon Group Red. The smoothened noses of the VTOLs pierced the fast-receding night, as if tracing the star’s light to uncover the hemisphere into the glory of morning. As the atmospheric attack craft swayed in the brightening winds, the undulations of the grassy plains beneath superfluous to the advancing fighters, their weapons leered, bespeaking of the deadly deliberation with which the recon force advanced; each of the VTOLs bore two Class-Two guided missile launchers and two tri-barreled gatling guns, a one-two punch of warheads and machine guns meant to smash armored columns in a single fiery pass. Despite the beauty of the world they were uncovering, with its ribbons of ultramarine creeks and citadels of the crowns of evergreens, the fighters were not here to snoop and peak, as “Recon Group Red” suggested. Before the main UNSC planetary force descended from orbit, the VTOL squadron was the only prefacing force, the only warning if enemy forces were still on the planet. In the eventuality Brutes still remained, each VTOL also had the weapons and authorization to assail them on-sight. Each of the eight fighters also had two Marines snugly secured to each of the two jump-seats on the lateral flanks of the Hornets – while it was precarious work, clinging onto the nimble craft as they advanced at high speed, propelled on ethanol engines, determination, and daring, but a necessary risk for the sixteen Marines; each one was laden with an M41 SSR Rocket Launcher or an M6 Galilean Spartan Laser, and a shot from one of the two heavy weapons could instantly set afire an enemy Ghost or Chopper. Extra insurance.

“Mediator, this is recon commander. We’re approaching the first Brute camp.”

Convoluted by compressors and combat encryption-decryption modules, the flagship’s ground operations officer’s response was hollowed and of an oddly deep cadence. “Copy, Recon. Turn the lights on down there.”

In the VTOL known as Red Six was Second Lieutenant Alexander Raff. In all actuality, he was the most junior pilot of the reconnaissance force—Red Leader was a Major, and the rest were mostly First Lieutenants. However, of the eight VTOL pilots, Raff was the only one to have participated in the Battle of the Ark, the climatic war eighty kiloparsecs yonder from the Milky Way. During the Elite-UNSC storming of the Brute-held Citadel, it had been Raff who was one of the pilots that escorted the UNSC attack force to disable the Barrier Tower Generators. Inevitably, because of the high cost of the battle, with a handful of the UNSC’s most-acclaimed war heroes dying within hours of each other, when Raff and the other UNSC survivors had returned aboard the carrier Shadow of Intent, they had been hailed as glorious and patriotic fighters. It had landed him a spot aboard the Fourth Fleet’s fighter forces, and a coveted position in Recon Red. However, Raff fully intended to disabuse the notion that anyone would hold that he was an inferior pilot than the rest of his squad-mates, and had landed the cushy position from the luck of being aboard the Aegis Fate, one of the two UNSC ships sent to the Ark. To either side of the cockpits were two airborne-trained Marines, Sgt. Creed and Sgt. Walter, both also veterans of the campaign of the Ark. If the recon force stumbled upon Brutes, it was Creed and Walter who would join Raff’s guns in attacking.

Red Three broke the silence as Carinae-312’s star began to illuminate the ceiling of night with orange-and-amethyst pastel hues. “Ten kilometers. Threat receivers clean.”

“Recon, Red Lead. Break and converge.”

This was the first of three major destroyed Brute bases upon the desolate world, and all the eighty-one vessels of the orbiting battle-group had high expectations for what the VTOLs would find—it would decisively determine how the next six months of their patrol would be fated as. As Red Leader gave the break order, the VTOLs broke by pairs, and each wing-pair soared out to an alternate heading. Creed and Walter strained in their jump-seats, rebelling against the sudden acceleration. Raff’s eye flitted to the tracking board, which showed Red Five, Lieutenant Colander, on his starboard flank, and then Red Lead was on the squadron COM again. “All units, move in.”

The VTOLs closed the ten kilometers swiftly, the agile craft being to make sinuous side-to-side motions as they closed on the camp, attempting to jink possible fire-finding radars in their direction. From Raff’s careful purview of the overhead recon spots from the Beneath Shoreless Waves of all three camps, they had been completely clean, devoid of life, exterminated with activity. There was, however, a reason why the squadron was named Recon Red—it was the careless reconnaissance pilot that got blown out of the sky from a hidden surface-to-air emplacement or a mine trap. Especially with the battalions of Marines due to land in hours, it was imperative the Hornets ensured the sterility of all three bases—landing troops in Pelican and Albatross Dropships with enemy anti-air fire screaming was going to be a savage slaughter.

A blur of greys, and then the VTOL was hurtling above the first Brute camp, and instinctively, Raff’s eyes seized the threat receiver—all clear, not a single radar or sensor ping except the navigational and search radars of the reconnaissance squadron.

“Red Lead to squadron. Slow to cruising speed and comb the ground. Enable motion trackers and infrareds.”

Raff’s teeth gritted as his masseters bunched. Velocity was the main defense of a Hornet, or for that matter, any UNSC VTOL-type fighter—unlike the Covenant, the UNSC’s defensive systems were easily-penetrable; titanium armor was no substitute for molybdenum alloy and energy shields. A single lobbed Fuel Rod projectile, M41 Rocket Launcher round, or Spartan Laser burst could cleanly blow a Hornet from the sky, send it down in fire. While a dedicated recon pass was impossible at the flank speeds the Hornets were moving at, lowering the altitude of the VTOL to skim the surface and allow the sensors to actively-scan the breadth of the camp would allow even an inattentive Grunt around a corner to disable the fighter with a sole Plasma Pistol burst or mortally wound the fighter with a plasma grenade. From Colander’s uncharacteristic unsteady wag of his Hornet’s wings, the dissension was palpable.

“Activating high-throughput sensors and station-keeping thrusters.” UNSC Beneath Shoreless Waves Carinae-312 IV Orbit

It was with matching palpitation that the crew of every frigate, destroyer, prowler, carrier, and cruiser in orbit over Carinae-312 observed the video feeds from the reconnaissance packages on each of the eight Hornet fighters. Erica, Thoreau, and a handful of other officers were gathered over the Communications station, the VTOLs sweeping over the ground with careful deliberation, easing their way to bring their scanners into alignment with a ruin not unlike Babylon; once inhabited by pride and majesty, with flagging ramparts of command centers, the polished sheen of Banshee flight pads, and regiments of environment hubs…now wanton waste and ruin. An ONI spook on the Mediator was annotating the live-feed in a matter reminiscent to a sports news-caster.

“Reds Five and Six have reached the peripheral armory.”

The Beneath Shoreless Waves’s tracking officer stabbed a finger at a cluster of ruinous structures, their hemispheric domes perforated and crumpled. “Those are the shielded storage huts for Banshee and Hunter fuel rod cores.” He indicated the slagged, scarred ground to every side of the destroyed constructs. “One of the cores must have been lit off, set off a chain reaction that broke the back of this entire storage line.”

Carr raised an eyebrow. “Sabotage?”

The tracking officer shrugged. “A possibility. Enemy fire could have done it too. From the looks of some of Truth’s garrisons in Africa before they pulled out, it’d take a pretty heavy-caliber round to punch through those things. They’re deliberately designed to be invincible.”

The commander spun as something at her elbow said thoughtfully, “Saboteur with a strategic charge could probably bypass the containment shielding and set off the cores directly.”

Erica’s eyes narrowed at the intruder—a Lieutenant Commander, wearing a grey uniform, gold oak leaf raggedly affixed to his breast lapel, affiliation insignia missing. Adroitly, she realized it was the leader of the ONI spooks onboard—the Department of Strategic Intelligence team that had commandeered one of the onboard armories and kept quiet. With ONI’s fairly questionable history in mind, Carr’s first thoughts when she heard the team was to be assigned to her vessel had been that they would be co-opting her command. Yet, for all the previous reconnaissance runs, they had laid dormant. Until now. She said stiffly, eyeing his name designator, “Lieutenant Commander…Passmore. How good of you to join us.”

The spook’s insouciant attitude destabilized Erica. “Good to meet you, Commander. Sorry for interrupting; when I heard that you guys were looking at recon run overheads, couldn’t help but take a peek.”

Commander Carr briefly looked over Passmore’s frame; he was thinly built, hair at regulation length but thinning, hands uncalloused, face of soft complexion. She revised her initial impression of field agent to an officer-type; a backseat driver. She coughed awkwardly and replied, “It’s perfectly fine.”

Thoreau, however, was lost in the entrails of his own thought, and indicated a ravaged storage dome in the center of the line of shacks. “This one was probably the one that was set off and burned everything else to blazes. Strange, though, that whatever enemy decided to set off one in the center of the line. If it was an infiltrator team, they could have easily chosen one of the ones at the ends of the line—less security.”

The tracking officer said, “Probably wanted to be sure they could set off the whole line. If they attacked the center of the line, they could propagate the blast in two directions. From one end, the explosion could only go in one direction—more chance of error.”

Carr suggested, “Doesn’t have to be external attack. Could have been a mistake. Grunt probably dropped a core, blew himself and everything near him to hell.”

“Unlikely”, denied Passmore. “Look at the whole base. It’s a mess. I don’t think it’s plausible that Grunts dropped fuel rod cores across the breadth of the encampment.”

“I was just suggesting a reason for why this line of storage constructs had been gutted, not why the base is destroyed”, retorted Carr.

The Mediator’s commentator broke into the battle group-wide channel again. “Hypothesized reason for fuel rod storage line collapse is catastrophic oxidation of single fuel rod core. Spectrographic analysis that adjacent structures destroyed by fuel rod explosion. Fuel rod detonation catalyzed chain reaction that indiscriminately detonated nearby storage sheds and also surrounding Grunt environmental modules and nearby Banshee launch pads.”

It was a carnage. The ground was pitted with numerous charred craters, and the base carried no reminisces of life—even after thirty minutes worth of scanning the first base, Recon Group Red found no corpse, no fragment of a Brute, a Jackal, a Grunt, a Drone, a Hunter, or for that matter, any trace of life. The only bio-signs were that of the flowing grass that carpeted the base. The Covenant vehicle companies had been decimated; while occasionally, the sheared-hulk of a serrated jagged wheel of a Brute Chopper was visible, as well as perhaps the wingtip and a cannon spar of a Covenant Ghost, and even a mammoth piscine wing of a Phantom, the evidence that there had been even vehicles was mostly purple or grey-colored shrapnel.

The tracking officer observed, “Looks like a pretty rough fight. If those storage huts were lit up by saboteurs, all these dead vehicle were incinerated by enemy fire. Don’t know why the enemy went to so much trouble to burn these vehicles all to cinders. Very inefficient. A single BR round can stop a Ghost by killing its Grunt pilot or hitting its plasma containment tank. This army didn’t just want to stop the enemy force but completely incinerate it. You could have easily taken the damaged vehicles as spare parts of your own army.”

Thoreau noted, “That, and the curious lack of bodies. This is also reminding me of the Germans during the Second World War—burnt the corpses of their interned prisoners in their concentration camps. Maybe whoever attacked here wanted to make sure no trace of the Brute army had ever existed?”

“Inter-tribe prejudices could do that”, said Carr. “Assuming each base represented one tribe or a conglomerate of affiliated tribes, if each of the tribes was driven to vengeance and hatred against another, they could easily defeat the enemy base, and then blow every trace of their enemies to pieces.”

There were general nods of tentative agreement as the uplinks from the eight Hornets showed the sensors sweeping over the girth of the demolished base, the sunken and shattered buildings with fires long died, the empty, gaping maws where there would be troops and vehicles and there were none, and the sterile quality the misshapen encampment had.

Mediator radioed, “Recon Red, confirming base Ape-One is secure. Proceed to heading two-six-three and reconnoiter Ape-Two. Ground Force Alpha, you are cleared to descend from carrier vessels and secure Ape-One. Maintain defensive fire concentrations until reconnaissance group confirms Ape-Two and Ape-Three are secure.”

There was a rustle, and Carr turned to see Passmore stalking from the bridge. “My team’s with the first wave; I’ll comm the frigate when we’re set up.”