User:Sev40/Theta Delta Ambush

"The destruction of Battlegroup Victoria and, regrettable, the huge amount of civilian lives lost at the engagement was a... bitter, no - a horrifying - experience. We didn't know, they came from anywhere and everywhere. My commander... and the governor... thought we were safe"

- UNSC Endeavour's Navigation Officer Thule Gresham, reporting the Ambush to ONI The Theta Delta Ambush, also known as the Nebula Massacre, was the final engagement of the Theta Delta System in the Human-Covenant War

Background
Though it was located about 28 lightyears from Earth, the icy world of Vision held a surprisingly large amount of pro-UNSC supportors. This lack of Insurrectionist-related incidents led to the Theta Delta System not having such a large fleet for tightening their hold on the system, nor the need to update the aging warships to the newer, more powerful models available, even during the Human-Covenant War

When the Siege of the Inner Colonies began, somehow the Covenant never stumbled upon the thriving human colonies in the region. As a result, several UNSC commanders stationed there sort to attack the surrounding Covenant-held space, but the intervention of the planetary Governors stopped any such use of the largely-defensive battlegroup.

Discovery of Vision
Unlike many other missions, where dedicated scouting groups randomly (or purposely) jumped into human population centres, Vision was discovered by an aspiring Kig-Yar privateer operating in the system. The Kig-Yar Shipmaster, Yak, captured a large pirating vessel as it sort to flee. Under interrogation, the pirates told him they were operating new the Nebula. However, instead of exiting in a nebula, the slipspace drive malfunctioned and dropped him in orbit of Vision.

Instead of repairing the slipspace drive and jumping back to the nebula, the opportunistic alien decided to attempt to claim a reward when he jumped back. However, when planetary scans brought up a number of human objects, the Kig-Yar thought it would be best to hide until his drive was repaired.

Though he escaped, the planet's slipspace beacons detected the ruptures and alerted the Governor to begin evacuations. The main Covenant Fleet wasn't far behind.

Flight From Vision
The evacuation fleet fled after the Covenant began bombardment. Though they took heavy casualties, a small amount of 'luck' and the orders given by lt. Colonel Kirk Smitt allowed them to throw off the pursing Covenant by slipspacing just past the star. The pursing Covenant battlegroup detected the gravity anomaly given off by the star, and exited far enough to be obliterated in the collision-course.

The plan was to slip just close enough to the star so they would be redirected around it. Though the chances for failure were high (and the fact that a frigate didn't survive the jump), the evacuation party seemingly successfully completed the jump and exited on the other side of the system. The next step was to take a random jump to throw off the rest of the Covenant fleet, and then jump towards the Inner Colonies.

However, Governor Proser pointed out that, not only do the slipspace drives need to checked and repaired before they jumped, the civilian ships took heavy fire and need a place to repair themselves. Thus, the fleet descended upon into the nearby nebula to hide.

Engagement
After 3 hours of repairs, scanners began to pick up physical ruptures throughout the nebula. Though with some doubts, the Captains of the various ships argued the nebula's electromagnetic and physical properties always plays around with the scanners. As a result, the fleet remained stationary. This was the first and last warning the fleet ever got.

The UNSC Iceman, a Frigate, was the first victim. After reporting in the sensors were becoming more fanatic and haywire, recommended it was time to go before she lost contact. The fleet began moving back out the way they came, when they stumbled upon the Prowler that was supposed to be watching their backs. Only, it was in a million pieces.

Suddenly, sensors went haywire across the fleet, and were taking fire from seemingly everywhere. The space-banshees and seraphs began picking off the UNSC fleet. Shouting orders, the flagship suddenly took a fuel-rod to the bridge, killing the commander instantly, though the ship continued to fight blindly.

What was incredibly fearful among the fleet was the shipboard Point-Defense Turrets couldn't separate the attacking Covenant Strikecraft from the thermal background of the nebula. When the Governor was also killed when attempting to evade the seraph bombers, one of the captains, through the panic, authorised the turrets to be switched to manual control. Now the Covenant seemingly took the causalities.

Out of nowhere, the Victoria 's engines had been hit from an energy projector, and with three more frigates destroyed in quick succession when the 'fleet' had exited the nebula. By now, only 3 ships were still functioning - the flagship Victoria, the civilian transport Another Lucky Day and the Destroyer Endeavour. Giving their lives, the remaining crew randomly fired into the nebula in order to draw the attention. The Another Lucky Day and the Endeavour slipspaced away before the Victoria was destroyed.

UNSC
As soon as the ships returned, ONI had began taking measures to ensure that the destruction of another colony (and the pitiful destruction of a UNSC battlegroup by enemy fighters) would not impact the moral, including isolating and intimidating the survivors. However, word did get out, and resulted in a number of insurrectionist attacks across multiple systems. A renewed propaganda effort helped stomp this out, though this ended up only supporting the Insurrectionist movement that started once the war ended.

With a flaw discovered in their weapon systems, the UNSC began a weapons program intended to completely eliminate this flaw. This eventually led to the creation of a new ship, the Thanatos-class Corvette, along with a widespread refitting program.

On a smaller scale, the cowardly actions of the Endeavour's captain, of using the other civilian ships as cover for them to escape, led to his dismissal and the installment of Cpt. Jarad Rosser as her captain, believed to be the official beginning of the ship's legendary reputation.

Covenant
With the discovery of not a fleet of ships, but an entire human-held planet behind the front lines, the Covenant fanatically stepped up production of scout vessels to locate other heretic worlds. This led to a huge heretic movement in the final years of the war.

Meanwhile, after reviewing the Campaign of Theta Delta, the High Council elected to redeploy the fleetmaster to areas where he can be watched by superiors, and placed more Brutes into positions of command in the fleet.

After a distilled military career, Pog 'Ontomeero decided to return back to Sangheilos to pass his supercruiser into the care of his Kaidon. The ship would be left unused until the end of the Human-Covenant War.