Operation Hammer

Operation Hammer was a series of Blood Covenant offensives against the United Nations Space Command and the Sangheili Armed Forces during the War of Vengeance in early 2557.

Prelude
By 2557, the second year of the War of Vengeance, a stalemate seemed to have been reached between the two sides: the Blood Covenant lacked the technical experience of the San'Shyuum, the Huragok, and even the Sangheili, and so were finding it exceedingly difficult to repair badly-damaged ships, and the task of building an effective warship class of their own was almost beyond them. This terrible weakness was beginning to bite after the losses from Operation: MACARTHUR and the UNSC's Unrestricted Prowler Warfare campaign. The Blood Covenant needed to find a way to slow the alliance down in order to buy time to regroup and rebuild.

However, the UNSC/SAF alliance was in not much better a shape either. Though their technical expertise was decidedly superior to the Blood Covenant's, the Sangheili Armed Forces also lacked the knowledge to build their own ships from scratch, and given their sense of pride and honour, were not prepared to accept help from the UNSC to build new ship classes. A large number of Sangheili still considered Human technology to be "inferior" to their own, which was, after all, inherited from the Forerunnners, despite the fact that this attitude had been proven false again and again. The Sangheili's best hope for new ships was a series of pre-built hulls in the Morhekan Shipyards around Ketesh, which they were refitting to current standards with the latest equipment. Blood Covenant intelligence, working through the Brotherhood of Ruskt, discovered the existence of these new ships and recognised their value for the weakening Blood Covenant war machine.

Planning
Planned by Fleet Masters Arboreus and Gargantum, Operation Hammer was aimed at crippling the Sangheili and UNSC military-industrial complexes and bolstering the Blood Covenant Navy with a new fleet of warships stolen from the Morhekan Shipyards. Given the fact that the UNSC was beginning to have a greater role in space-based operations than the SAF, given their rapidly-growing ship numbers, most of the Blood Covenant's targets were UNSC shipyards or mining facilities, aimed at destroying the alliance's space superiority. A strike on Ketesh in overwhelming force was planned to destroy the defending Sangheili fleet and raid the shipyards for the new warships. The targets for the operation were the UNSC shipbuilding and mining systems of Sigma Octanus, Alpha Centauri, and 23 Librae, and the Sangheili worlds of Ketesh, and Thorak'tamin in the Devout Foreboding system. The strike at Devout Foreboding was aimed at capturing the technologically-advanced Forerunner ruins on the surface.

Sigma Octanus IV (March 2557)
Because of its position far from the front lines of the war, Sigma Octanus IV had been chosen by the UNSC as one of the sites for a new series of shipyards. In hindsight, this was a poor decision, given that the Blood Covenant was aware of the system's location, having already attacked it during the First Great War. Twenty Blood Covenant Vrathek-Class Cruisers jumped into the system and easily overwhelmed the defending UNSC Battlegroup, before dismantling the shipyards and destroying the fifty five half-built warships in their building cradles. In an unusual display of tactical innovation, Fleet Master Arboreus, the Blood Covenant commander, ordered his ships to use their Energy Projectors to destroy the UNSC ships rather than closing and utilising more traditional plasma torpedoes, the result being that the UNSC force could not block the energy projector beams with countermissiles or strike back, as the Blood Covenant force was out of range of their missiles. Only one Destroyer managed to escape to the nearest allied system, but arrived too late; an SAF convoy carrying raw materials and troops had already set course to the Sigma Octanus system and was captured outright on its arrival, resulting in the enslavement of twenty thousand Sangheili servicemen. Managing to capture an entire Sangheili resupply convoy, destroy a vital human shipyard, and humiliate the UNSC/SAF forces, Arboreus was justifiably satisfied with his victory, jumping his fleet away without glassing the planet - later accounts would insist that he did it out of a personal sense of honour, seeing none to be gained by glassing a defeated planet. Others point out that Blood Covenant plasma production has never been the most efficient, and that it is more than likely that Arboreus simply had no desire to waste such a valuable commodity.

23 Librae (March 2557)
At the same time, twelve Blood Covenant warships arrived in the 23 Librae System with the objective of destroying the reestablished UNSC mining facilities in Hesiod's ring system and the system's main belt. Only four of the Blood Covenant vessels were capital ships, however; the remaining eight were antimatter mine layers. As the UNSC picket advanced towards the numerically inferior Blood Covenant force, the minelayers launched hundreds of stealthed antimatter mines into the main belt and Hesiod's rings. Six of the largest mining asteroids were shattered into fragments by the explosions, and the resulting clouds of debris collided with smaller asteroids, smashing the mining facilities and setting back mineral production in the system for over two years. The Blood Covenant fleet escaped the system before the UNSC force could fire a single shot at them.

Devout Foreboding (late March-early May 2557)
The attack on Thorak'tamin in the Devout Foreboding system was aimed at securing the technologically-advanced Forerunner Venartheman ruins on the surface in an attempt to improve the Blood Covenant's technological capabilities in the face of rapidly improving UNSC warship technology. Had the attack actually been successful, however, it is unlikely that the Blood Covenant would have been able to make anything of them, given the relative crudity of their techological base and the increasingly partisan actions of the Huragok. Seventy five warships entered the system, making a pinpoint slipspace jump right in front of the Sangheili picket, which was outnumbered five-to-one. Even with the enormous power drain created by pinpoint jumps, the Blood Covenant fleet was able to get its weapons back online before the surprised Sangheili could even get their shields up. Fifteen ships were totally wiped out in less than ten minutes. On the surface, however, things did not go as well for the Blood Covenant. The ground force took anti-air fire as it went down and had to land fifty kilometres south of the ruins, in the middle of one of the harshest deserts in the Orion Arm. Unprepared for these sweltering conditions, the force met with staunch resistance from the SAF garrison, who had great experience of fighting in desert conditions, and even from the prisoners who had been sent their as a test of redemption.

Things began to go from bad to worse for the Blood Covenant, when they realised that they ruins they so desperately sought were not even on Thorak'tamin - what they had thought to be a Forerunner weapons cache turned out to be an ancient Covenant research base, set up to observe the ruins in the gas giant the moon orbited. Humiliated by this revelation, and intimidated by the arrival of the Fleet of Enlightened Benevolence to reinforce the garrison, Fleet Master Gargantum panicked and ordered his forces off the surface, indiscriminantly glassing both his own and SAF troops in a clumsy attempt to cover their retreat. Unwilling to leave the research base for the Sangheili, he also attempted to destroy it with his energy projectors, broadcasting his intent to destroy "Forerunner relics" to the Sangheili - unfamiliar with the system, and hesitant to provoke such an action, the fleet was forced to hold off as the Blood Covenant made their retreat. As local Sangheili forces informed them of the facts, however, the fleet moved in, furiously devastating every ship present, refusing to accept even the possibility of a surrender. Out of the entire fleet, only Gargantum and his ship escaped, and upon his return to Expansive Judgement, he was executed for his failure and cowardice. Unusually, his cowardice induced the Blood Covenant to send a single diplomat to apologise to the Sangheili for Gargantum's incompetence and dishonourable actions - the diplomat would never be heard from again, and rumours hold that Arbiter Thel 'Vadam had him executed without ever hearing the apology.

Alpha Centauri (May 2557)
The only unquestioned Blood Covenant defeat occured in the Alpha Centauri System. Between the Blood Covenant's reconnaissance of the system and the attack, twelve of the UNSC's new Glorious-class Carriers had been moved to the Alpha Centauri shipyards for final fit-outs and training exercises. The Blood Covenant's objective was to destroy the UNSC's shipyards in the system. If they had succeeded, this would have been a major blow to the alliance war effort, given the dominant role the UNSC was taking in space combat. One hundred and twenty five Blood Covenant ships arrived in the system and engaged the ninety-ship strong UNSC defence fleet. Sixty squadrons of the new and incredibly powerful C800 Blackburn Claymore Space Superiority Fighters were launched from the carriers and supported the fleet in the action, to the Blood Covenant commander's total surprise. Equipped with missiles and Electronic Warfare equipment from Project EXCALIBUR, the fighters and carriers assisted in the decimation of the Blood Covenant fleet and Shipmaster Magnus was forced to order a retreat after Fleet Master Gnaeus flagship was destroyed early on in the action. He was not executed for this action due to the fact that he was able to warn Blood Covenant Naval Command of the existence of the new fighters, a threat that they would face once again at the Battle of Determined Resolve later in the year.

Ketesh (May 2557)
At Ketesh, the alliance suffered perhaps its greatest blow in terms of fighting capability. The Blood Covenant sent three hundred ships, its largest offensive fleet up until then in the war, into the Devout Induction system in an attempt to capture the Morhekan Orbital Shipyards and the ships in them for their war effort. Though still outnumbered by the defending fleet, the Blood Covenant jumped out of slipspace as close to Ketesh as possible and managed to force their way through to the shipyards and boarded them, holding the workers hostage. The Sangheili force was unwilling to fire upon the Blood Covenant fleet from the range they were at, lest they hit the shipyards or the heavily populated surface of Ketesh. However, the defending forces in the shipyards repelled all attempts at gaining control, and even in the sections that they captured, the Sangheili workers refused even under threat of torture to finish the ships for the Blood Covenant. When they attempted to force the Huragok to complete the ships, they found that the Sangheili had already killed all of them as a precaution. Frustrated, the Blood Covenant forces set antimatter charges throughout the shipyard, destroying the facility rather than allow the Sangheili to continue to use it in their war against the Blood Covenant. However, with the Blood Covenant's only bargaining chip foolishly cast aside, the understandably furious Sangheili Shipmasters ordered the fleet to close on the Blood Covenant force and wiped them out to the last ship.

Afermath
The operation proved to be a tactical success for the Blood Covenant, and achieved one of its objectives of slowing the alliance down. It also gave them some warning of the new Claymore fighters and Glorious-class Carriers that the UNSC would later deploy at Determined Resolve and Ambient Wonder. The impact on UNSC morale was also measurable; the number of UNSC civilians who wished to make peace with the Blood Covenant increased after the Battle of Alpha Centauri, understandable considering how close the Blood Covenant had got to Earth. However, the operation neither totally defeated the alliance or tipped the balance in favour of the Blood Covenanat, and the atrocities it involved made the SAF and UNSCDF only more eager to continue the war and attempt to regain the initiative.