Halo: Minorca Saga/Chapter Seven

APRIL 17TH, 2551 (MILITARY CALENDAR) / UNSC POWLER HUNTERS ARROW

The pieces of the puzzle came together…slowly. Very slowly. But the Lieutenant Commander had the time to spare on puzzles, and had the mind for it. He was very analytical.

Commander Thorson did not. He had a head for stealth manoeuvres, and sensor sweeps, and processing information to provide battle movements and fleet formations and possibilities to use. But the Lieutenant Commander saw more than the facts – he saw the reason behind them. The motivation. The why behind the what.

Thorson had to admit, that was a useful thing right now, when battle was over and they were tasked with working out what else had happened here.

“Have there been any improvements, Lieutenant Commander?”

The man looked up from his work, bringing his face away from the screen.

“Not…improvements. Not as such. But there have been…additions.”

“Ah. Well, heaven forbid I interrupt you in your work.”

“Indeed, sir.”

The Lieutenant Commander waited until the ships CO had returned to his command chair, before he reopened the files. And especially the one that was labelled “POMARE, MICHAEL, LT. CMDR.”

Pieces. That was the correct word. Individual fragments of information, that sometimes managed to fit neatly into the big picture, but mostly did not. He had a lot of pieces, but they all seemed to be of sky. Or fluffy clouds.

He was relatively tall, certainly taller than most of the people he worked with, but since most of them were rather brilliant but short women that wasn’t saying much. He was heavyset, with a rather inflated outline. If someone had stopped him on the street, all they would have seen was a tall, slightly overweight man with extremely bad hair.

Of course, he wasn’t too modest to know that there was much more than that. A lot more.

The kind of mind that could, for example, formulate a trap for a Covenant task force.

It wasn’t something he was proud of. Sometimes, the pieces of sky contained a hint of castle, or windmill, and he could connect them together and get…potential. He had connected captured Covenant communications equipment with the enemy’s recent intensification in searching the colonies they conquered, and the result had been the beginnings of OPERATION: HOT GATES.

He had never expected it to get this far. What had he expected? Perhaps it would be absorbed into some other plan. Or set on a shelf until, years later, it was dusted off and given a proper look at. Pomare was not high up in the chain of command, and he certainly hadn’t expected to be paid any attention.

And then had come that fateful lecture, teaching the wet-behind-the-ears recruits at the Luna Officer Cadet School the intricacies of strategy and tactics, of intelligence and of cunning. He had proposed HOT GATES as a hypothetical, asking his students to pick apart the flaws of his plan and then addressing them. They had risen admirably to the task, and even he had begun to have some doubts.

But, as Lord Hood had said, they had few options that didn’t involve running away and cowering. This was one of the few. And, as Michael understood things, it was one of the better plans.

He shuddered as he thought of the slaughters worse plans had led to.

He clicked on one of the folders, opening up several windows, and refocused his mind on analysing the data. He was good at analysing. It stopped him dwelling on things, and that was the last thing he wanted to do.

Last time he had let himself dwell, he’d come up with this plan.

Debris trajectory. Vaporised hull plating and frozen atmosphere. The occasional corpse. The shattered hulls of enemy destroyers and cruisers, and the melted hulks of UNSC ships. He was glad there were mercifully few UNSC casualties – that, at least, was some good to have come out of his plan.

He tasked the computer with reverse-engineering the battle from the debris. In the simulation, debris flew backwards, ships reassembled themselves, and…there was the how.

Now, he needed the why.

“Commander? Indulge me, if you will.”

The officer returned, striding across the few meters between them, looking at the screen over Michaels shoulder.

“What is it that I’m looking for?”

“Nothing, sir. What’s there is fact. What isn’t there is motivation. May I use your holo-projector?”

The man nodded. “Of course, Lieutenant Commander.”

The Commander was a decent sort, as Michaels judgement of servicemen went. He looked like he took a keen interest in survival rather than bravado and revenge. And from the respectful responses he received from his crew, he commanded absolute loyalty and respect. He was thin, but not unhealthily so, and slightly balding. But he still had many long years left to offer the UNSC before honourable discharge and medals the Prowler service didn’t allow until retirement, after sensitivity mattered little.

The holo-tank, where the ships AI avatar would be if the ship had an AI, warmed and light-reflecting particles rose up, forming a three-dimensional image.

Michael pointed to a cluster of ships. “Look here.”

Commander Thorson leaned forward. “Covenant CCS-class battlecruisers, Lieutenant Commander. Dropping infantry and dropships.”

“Yes. But why?”

The man looked momentarily confused.

“What do you mean “why”? They’re invading.”

Michael waved a hand dismissively. “We know that. We know WHAT they’re doing. But WHY are they doing it?

“See here? These are heavy drop capsules, almost sections of the ship. I’d say they’re the Covenant equivalent of assault boats. They’re detaching and entering the atmosphere. And here we have a total of fourteen Scarabs, in protective re-entry mesh. And three thousand infantry insertion pods. All from a single ship. This is a significant force, Commander, but NOT an occupation force. If the Covenant had intended to occupy this planet, they would have brought in ten times the number of troops they’ve landed.

“So if they had no intention of occupation, then I can only assume they had no expectation of any resistance. That would explain their…slow reaction to our presence. This was, of course, anticipated. But it’s still interesting that the Covenant still followed the pattern I had set, right until the moment they stopped following it.”

He tapped the keyboard of his laptop, accelerating the picture forward fourteen minutes.

“After they drop off the ground forces, the ships simply retreat. No attempt to have a last attack against our forces, just retreat. And the Covenant have never run away from a battle before, Commander. Never. Even while they’re still here, they make no attempt to secure the orbital perimeter – not that they could, of course. But the Covenant have always tried. Always. This cluster isn’t even near the battle – they’re completely where they shouldn’t be. They just swoop into the upper atmosphere, drop their cargo, and vanish into slipspace. They’ve never done that before either. So why do they now?”

The Commander frowned. What Michael wasn’t doing wasn’t fair, he knew. He was giving the man too much to think about that wasn’t related to his duties. He’d known people who’d driven themselves near crazy worrying a piece of data like a dog with a bone, only to be told that it didn’t matter. But this did matter, and it was important that he tell Thorson, if only to work out extra bits as he went along.

He wasn’t explaining this from what he’d been thinking of beforehand. This was all spur of the moment. He was flying, and the data was the wind beneath his sails. When the data ended…he’d come back down to the ground. How hard a landing it was depended on Thorson.

“It not as if we’re conforming to stereotypes either, is it, Lieutenant Commander?”

Michael grinned. He’d pegged Thorson as a smart man, but not this smart. He was glad to be proven wrong.

“That may factor into it, yes. But even facing a numerically superior UNSC fleet, a Covenant force will always sacrifice their lives in the name of their mission. Sometimes they don’t need prompting. They behave like xenophobic religious zealots, not experienced military commanders. Until now.”

Thorson smiled wryly. “Perhaps they’re simply following orders? Heavens know some of the orders I’ve received haven’t made much sense.”

“Give the man a small cigar!” Michael exclaimed, delighted. “Yes, what we have is higher profile leaders giving rather general orders, and Covenant field commanders following them out according to tradition. This hints at loyalty towards a code of conduct that has run deep – until now.”

The Commander raised an eyebrow questioningly. “So what changed?”

Michael grinned. “I don’t know. Perhaps their leaders failed to give an order? Perhaps their man in the field, as it were, is less dependent on tradition and keener on survival? Perhaps they’re particularly experienced or smart? Or perhaps our unexpected presence here threw them off balance? Whatever the case, this gives us plenty of implications to dissect, and plenty of information to work on.”

Thorson shook his head sadly. “Its true what they say about ONI analysts, then. All war is just one big puzzle box to them, and they’re intent on piecing it together.”

Michael chose to take this as a compliment.

“Perhaps, sir. And there are a lot of pieces of sky and clouds, and the occasional windmill. But sometimes we get lucky, and hit a huge piece of castle. And nobody complains about us then, I notice.”

Thorson looked up sharply, meeting Michael’s gaze. The ONI agent returned the stare coolly.

“I don’t mind, Commander. I really don’t. Whatever opinion you have of me, my work saves just as many lives as yours does. Probably more. I contribute in a way that has little to do with combat manoeuvres or ammunition tallies. But I still contribute.”

Thorson grunted. “Small ways build up big, they tell me.”

“Oh, no sir. Small ways are the start and finish of it. Big ways are just many small ways lumped together and called “battle”.”

The Commander shook his head again, with a little more conviction.

“Return to your work, Lieutenant Commander. I’m sure CENTCOM will find your…implications very interesting.”

Michael returned to his seat, explanation performed and feeling slightly smug of himself…

…there was a subtle beep, indicating a process error. He opened it up.

There was a small corridor. Debris should be there, but they had been deflected by…something. Moving slowly, far too slowly to be a regular celestial object, and moving in a straight line. Not erratic, like debris. And none of the UNSC’s sensors had detected any debris entering the atmosphere.

He catalogued it in the growing list of anomalies. There would be other analysts, able to make sense out of the seemingly random jumble. Michael’s forte was politics, not science. And right now, he felt exhausted and excited and a hundred other things.

The Covenant didn’t break the pattern. Until suddenly they did.

He’d been handed another piece of sky. Oh yes. And this one had lightning bolts on it.