User:RelentlessRecusant/Halo: Memory/Chapter One

Chapter One: Beneath Shoreless Waves

UNSC Beneath Shoreless Waves Slipspace en route to Carinae-312

It was with the deliberate intent of war and slaughter that the UNSC Beneath Shoreless Waves shuttled at superluminal speeds through the extradimensional realm of Slipspace. The frigate’s oversized Magnetic Accelerator Cannon and dozens of Archer missile pods erased any peaceful notions for the vessel’s blocky, elongated fuselage. Aboard the bridge, crimson emergency lights palely illuminated the taut faces of men and women going to battle, their hands tapping commands into their monitors with a careful precision, their backs rigid, and demeanors composed—the hearts of soldiers sailing to a bloody death.

And in the center of the grim orchestra of officers and crewman carrying their duties with diligence was their leader, the one that they entrusted their lives to solely and without the smallest pause of hesitation--the woman that would decide their life or their death upon the brilliant, winking stars of the Milky Way galaxy—Commander Erica Carr. Her face was careful not to betray the turmoil of her heart; yes, the Human-Covenant War had ended. The Prophets and the Brutes had been vanquished at the Forerunner world known as The Ark by a UNSC and Elite strike fleet, and after that, the Covenant had deconvoluted, its member species having no oligarchy to pledge allegiance to. The peace, however, was a brittle one, one tensed with under-currents of discord; the UNSC was opening its arms to encompass the shattered Covenant, to soothe them and to convince them to remit war. The Elites (Sangheili), the most intelligent of the Covenant races, were the first to agree to this uneasy cease-fire after decades of warfare with the humans—disillusioned by the falsified religion instituted by the Prophets (San ‘Shyuum), they had renounced their ties with the Covenant. In the final battles on Earth and the Ark, indeed, it was a Sangheili fleet led by Rtas ‘Vadum that had allied with Commander Miranda Keyes and SPARTAN-117, contorting the neck of the Covenant and bringing it down crashing upon the fragile foundation of its Prophets. Already accustomed to allying (albeit under dubious circumstances) with the humans, weary of the decrepit bonds of the Covenant, and mostly unwilling to continue the war they had been duped into fighting, they had hesitantly laid down their arms and agreed to a temporary truce with the UNSC. Deprived of the leadership of the Brutes, the lesser Covenant species, the Grunts (Unggoy), Jackals (Kig-Yar), Drones (Yanme’e), and the Engineers (Huragok) had tentatively followed the Sangheili in their truce. It was more reeling from a mystery world, a phantom reality of the cunning deception of the Prophets and their sudden deaths within months of each other, that the lesser species had followed their Sangheili masters. The UNSC Office of Naval Intelligence had deemed the Brutes (Jiralhanae) the remaining threat of the Covenant—while most of the Jiralhanae colonies were retreating and their society, cut off from the rest of the Covenant, was collapsing, falling into internecine warfare, there still remained the possibility of renegade Jiralhanae fleets refusing to disband themselves and to continue the war to the humans and the Sangheili. Just several weeks ago, a Jiralhanae fleet had raided Emerald Cove, burning the UNSC restoration and terraforming project there, and recently, there had been a skirmish over Chi Ceti IV, and the UNSC defense group in orbit outmaneuvered and drove off another rebel Jiralhanae fleet.

Rogue Jiralhanae fleets were still yonder, in the vast and only partially-documented outer territories of the Covenant Empire, and each individual missing command had been rated by Sangheili Fleet Command to be able to overwhelm a class-three UNSC colony world; the search and destruction of Brute fleets was the priority at lights at FLEETCOM Sidney. Even when those organized naval groups were destroyed, there was still the threat of rebel Brute colonies…terrorists that would use thermonuclear devices to burn out UNSC colonies, rebels that could gather into an organized resistance against the UNSC—ONI’s tactical projections were fathomless.

It was this overbearing, inexorable phantom threat impressing upon the UNSC that compelled the wearied UNSC Defense Fleet to action—capital ships were being dispersed to the farthest Covenant colony worlds and undocumented Outer Rim planets to scour for Jiralhanae fleets on the run, to scout our and burn the Brute infestation that plagued the mystery borderlands of the Covenant. And it was the UNSC Beneath Shoreless Waves that steadily carried the burden of one of these reconnaissance missions upon its Titanium-A frame; Atlas sustained the weight of the world…trillions of beings praying to their deities for a lack of hostilities against the Brutes, that the raids would come to a conclusive end…and it was these pressures funneled upon Commander Carr and her crew.

The helmsman called out, “Tachyon diffraction peaking exponentially, Commander. We’re losing a solution for the Slipspace navigation matrix. ETA to Carinae-312 is one minute, ma’am.”

At the center of the bridge, encircled by a ring of polarized privacy monitors, barricaded from the rest of the crew, Carr curtly nodded. “Very good, Helm. Communications, signal FLEETCOM Sydney that we are about to run our recon op. Bring the combat alert to Yellow-Three. Fighters to their hangars, and get those missile pods manned.”

A chorus of affirmatives answered her as the UNSC Beneath Shoreless Waves readied for battle, plunging through Slipspace.

*   *    *

It was when rustlings reverberated through the metal bulkheads that Dr. Passmore was alerted that there was activity aboard the Beneath Shoreless Waves. Situated in the modest quarters typically reserved for the fighter mechanic chief, the biologist poked his head out of the grey-painted doorway, to find the passageway a vein of movement; men and women shuffling, clad in camouflage ballistic armor, firearms in hand. He jerked a hand onto the pauldron of the nearest Marine, and the irritability in the soldier’s eyes at being seized by a Harvard Ph.D. were demurred when his irises focused upon his rank, a Lieutenant Commander, with the affiliation insignia of the Office of Naval Intelligence upon his breast lapel.

With distinctly un-military tones, the heightened and insouciant pitch of a man that had never seized a pistol grip in his softened hands before, his eyes unfamiliar with spilled blood, Passmore demanded, “Soldier, what the hell’s going on?”

The Marine was about to correct perfunctorily that Marines were to be addressed as “Marines” whereas UNSC Army personnel were “soldiers”, but he revoked his repulsion for the civilian-with-a-badge and spilled quickly, “The commander’s called Yellow-Three. We’re about to jump in.”

As the trooper shouldered his MA5C and continued down the passageway, aggregating with his teammates, Passmore bit off an epithet, and notebook in hand, began to part the streams of armored Marines and scrambling Longsword pilots in the innards of the frigate, making his way to Armory C – the home of ONI’s Strategic Intelligence team aboard the Beneath Shoreless Waves.

*   *    *

“Five, four, three--”

The hangar chief’s report obscured the rest of the helmsman’s words. “Commander, Red Squadron is on the deck and…”

Immediately, the Beneath Shoreless Waves shuddered with compression of incomprehensible ethereal forces, and with a magic key, dropped abruptly from the realm of the quantum domain of Slipspace to 3-D “realspace”; the light of a dozen stars was obscured as the 478-meter attack ship materialized, the Hand of God inexplicably thrusting a battle ship in the center of a star-lit funeral pyre—as Commander Carr turned her eyes to the bridge viewport, she saw the sky awash with the thermonuclear light of hundreds, thousands of punctuate unwinking points, draped across the veil of the Eta Carinae Nebula, the cerise webbing of the behemoth stellar arches hanging behind thousands of stars. It was with a baited intake of breath that Carr suddenly realized what the meaning of a jump Coreward was; Earth and the Sol System was located on the Orion Arm of the Milky Way, a relatively peripheral aggregate of stars to the center of the galaxy. The center was a compact labyrinth of stars, of a luminosity so intense as to etch against the lenses of the most powerful telescopes…from the rim of the Milky Way on Earth, Carr’s birthplace, the Galactic Core had merely been a strobe of unusual light against the plane of the galaxy. The Beneath Shoreless Waves, however, had jumped tens of thousands of light-years Corewards; what had been an innocuous diffusion of light was now a gauntlet of light that encompassed, engulfed her miniscule vessel, the heavens soaring with their divine power above her genuflecting warship.

The Fire Control chief staggered, unable to find a way for her gunners to find targeting solutions against the brilliance of the Core, but Carr’s first reaction was not to the vaults of the celestials but rather to her officers. “Tracking, I want a list of contacts!”

“No enemy tracks, ma’am.”

The bow of the Beneath Shoreless Waves was pointed towards the sphere of the fourth planet of Carinae-312, a world hanging by some unfathomable energy in the center of space, the UNSC attack frigate poised as if a predator to assail it. Carinae-312 itself was one of thousands of planetary systems identified to be in close spatial proximity to the Eta Carinae nebula, which itself was of the Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way, tucked closer to the Galactic Core than the Orion. And it was Carinae-312 IV that the Covenant Astrological Ministry had identified as the most probable terrestrial world in the surrounding dozens of planetary systems.

A pause, and the yoke of the tracking radars of the frigate stabbed out again, snatching for any matter in the vicinity, high-powered beams burning through interstellar hydrogen to seek out potential threats to the frigate.

“No orbital tracks. No contacts out to a clearance of one hundred thousand kilometers, Commander.”

It was with some consolation that Erica Carr leaned forward upon the leather of her command chair. The executive officer, Thoreau, glanced questioningly at her.

“You think this place is clean?”

Carr turned to address the exec, her short-cut auburn hair rippling as she scrutinized him, the ready intelligence in his eyes, the diminutive stature that did not pay homage to his shy, but fiercely tenacious mind. In the combat lighting, it was difficult to ascertain his complexion or expression, and she shrugged, unable to find any ulterior intent or subtle shade in his question.

“Carinae-312 is one of literally hundreds of thousands of systems explored by the Covenant and partially documented but officially uninhabited. There’s no reason that the Brute rebels would come here.”

The lieutenant commander turned to the plot table, the hologram projector at the fore of the bridge, its 3-D cyan scanning lasers painting an exactingly precise blue-phased diagram of the Milky Way galaxy; the strikingly florid pallor of the galactic core, the affable orange medley ringing it, and to the jagged arms, a muted beryl blur of the periphery…the whole of the galaxy, ponderously revolving on the projector. Green triangles indicated UNSC colony worlds, blue triangles indicated Covenant colony worlds, and clusters of red pinpoints denoted hot spots or potential skirmishes. With a willowy finger, Thoreau connoted Earth…and then, fifteen thousand light-years closer removed to the fire of the galactic center, Carinae-312, tightly wedged against the bloom of NGC 3576.

Even in the insubstantial lighting, Thoreau’s eyes burned into Carr’s with an urgency, with a purpose.

“Earth is twenty-five thousand light-years from the galactic core. Carinae-312 is fifteen thousand light-years. Any population at Carinae-312 would be two-fifths closer to the Galactic Core than Earth.”

It was with a bit of disappointment that Carr regarded the exec’s statement. With a bit of ire, she replied, “Thank you for the astrography lesson, Exec. Helm, let’s press forward at one-half battle speed to the fourth planet…we’ll make three orbital passes, see if we can see anything on the surface. Comm, inform FLEETCOM Sydney of our situation and—”

Thoreau interrupted her slurry of commands, meeting her hazel irises again. “Commander, this is not idle astrography. Carinae-312 is strategically positioned—halfway between the Galactic Core and the Galactic Habitable Zone, the territory where terrestrial life can be made. It could easily be the relay between the Habitable Zone and the center of the Milky Way, and has the added benefit of being shielded by NGC 3576; an easily-fortifiable star system.”

“The Covenant haven’t even gotten near the Galactic Core, Lieutenant Commander. Hell, the Sagittarius Arm is most Coreward they’ve ever expanded to; Carinae-312 was one of the farthest colonies away from High Charity that the Astrogational Ministry they explored. There’s no reason they would ever use Carinae-312 as a strategic jump point from the Orion to the Core.”

The bridge crew’s attention fell upon Thoreau, who shifted with unease, and finding no intelligible way out of the situation but clearly harboring his doubts, cleared that with a petulant shrug.

UNSC Miranda Keyes Rally Point Able, 0.2 Light-Days from Paris IV

Task Force Gamma was a constellation, a terrible beauty of arrayed warships clustered in an almost stellar precision and formation, fit to be charted by the ancients as a constellation as worthy as the Orion. At its fore was the attack cruiser Miranda Keyes, piscine and dolphin-like in its appearance; the majority of its length was a slender prow extending forward, a knife leveled towards its enemies. At the rear of the vessel, it was more substantial, and the prow swelled into a compact rectangular fuselage, carrying hangars on its underside, and on its dorsal surface, an extension of its superstructure that shot upwards; the command tower, with the bridge at its apex. To either side jutted maneuvering fins; full-fledged wings one-half the length of the vessel that allowed the Sojourn-class cruisers to enter the atmosphere; a first for UNSC vessels. The Miranda Keyes was a lovely vessel, its angular cut, overarching wings, and proud prow in martial military tradition, bespeaking of aggressive force, but force projected through elegance. The sword of the battle cruiser adroitly led the formation, and behind it in regimental formation was the Sangheili CCS-class cruiser Filial Piety, with four UNSC frigates and destroyers spread towards the flanks. A versatile and well-armed task force…and with the whisper of a word, its thunderous power would seize the stars.

Aboard the flagship, the communications lieutenant called out, his check board lighting up with an incoming transmission, “Commodore! Fleet Command is responding.”

Looking up from the latest updated list of task force callsigns, search-and-rescue frequencies, and battle formations, Commodore Nathan Tate affixed a weary interest upon the officer. For nineteen days, ONI had kept Task Force Gamma waiting at Rally Point Able, idling, the excitement of the initial orders dissipating over the course of nearly three weeks. And now, that anticipation was coming to its climax. “Go ahead.”

“Sydney says to execute, sir, as of 1435 hours. Local battle network has been initialized. Rules of engagement are weapons free. Attack authorization is sierra-kilo-nineteen-three.”

The bridge crew was aroused to action. The Firing Control lieutenant was the first to respond, entering the authorization code into his monitor and turning his silver-plated key into his console, removing the safety locks from the weapons across the cruiser and automatically booting the target-acquisition software and arming the weapons. A moment later, that was followed by a new network flaring to life on one of the Miranda Keyes’s communications sockets – the secure transmission between Task Forces Alpha through Epsilon, as well as FLEETCOM and the Office of Naval Intelligence.

In the socket, Rear Admiral Wagner, his blond hair already tinged with the omnipresent cloak of grey but eyes still suffused with diligence and intelligence, began speaking, his loud, clear tones carrying to the five joint Covenant-UNSC task forces arrayed around the Paris IV System. “All task forces, this is Wagner. We’ve got the final go-order from Fleet Command. My AI will be contacting all your navigational officers with the Slipspace countdown. UNSC vessels should slave their navigational solutions to the battle network and the Covenant nav-computers.”

He paused for effect, eyes refocusing as he glanced at something off the field. “Paris IV reports that they’re under attack by a Brute fleet; twelve ships, one carrier, one cruiser, the rest lightweights. Our navigational solution will bring us around on their rears. We’re making one pass, and then breaking off. Remember that.”

The helmsman called out, “Commodore, we have incoming transmission from the Mediator’s AI. Attached is the Slipspace micro-jump trajectory. Numbers check out. Slaving to the Piety.”

Tate nodded, a brittle smile forming upon the lateral aspects of his lips, a quiet pleasure ushering into his orbicularis oris. For months, small Brute fleets had raided UNSC colonies in retribution for the death of the Prophets and Tartarus, pillaging them, setting them afire before UNSC response forces could react. Now, ONI had finally achieved an upper hand in military intelligence, and they had received word from their surreptitious sources that the colony of Paris IV would come under attack. And now, they were vindicated. Task Force Gamma’s three-week-long stay in deep space hadn’t been for nothing. The plan was for the Brute fleet to enter into orbit, and then almost immediately, UNSC and Covenant forces, held in wait at the periphery of the Paris System, would micro-jump in at high speeds through Slipspace, sending down the Brute ships in fire on their rears. This was no longer a coward’s game for the newly-christened Miranda Keyes, which had spent the past months chasing after Brute fleets, always hours late, arriving on shattered colonies and distress transmitters. Now, they were meeting the Brutes face-to-face—a direct confrontation to make an example of the hideous apes.

The only problem in the plan had been how to achieve the micro-jump; Covenant vessels, with their superior Forerunner-derived Slipspace drives, could manage sub-kilometer precision jumping in and out of hyperspace, arriving tens or hundreds of meters within their intended destination. UNSC vessels arrived thousands or tens of thousands of kilometers within their intended destination, something worrisome and problematic. The solution had been suggested by Lord Hood – during the First Battle of Earth and Regret’s ill-fated attack, Regret’s carrier had made an atmospheric Slipspace jump right over New Mombasa…wiping a whole city from the map and millions of human and Covenant lives…but also, dragging five UNSC ships with it, the Coral Sea, Dusk, In Amber Clad, Paris, and the Redoubtable. Those UNSC warships had been pulled along by not only the suction effect produced by Covenant Slipspace rifts, which had dragged along chunks of Mombasa into the assault carrier’s destination point, but had also been aligned on vectors parallel to the carrier’s Slipspace navigational solution. When Regret’s carrier jumped to Delta Halo, the In Amber Clad and pieces of New Mombasa jumped there as well…in precise formation after the carrier, with exactingly precision, in the formation they had been when they’d jumped to Delta Halo. If the UNSC ships were nearby the Covenant vessels in their task forces and on appropriate vectors, when the Covenant ships micro-jumped to Paris IV, their UNSC counterparts would micro-jump as well. A beautiful plan.

With another COM socket, the navigational computer of the Miranda Keyes synchronized with its more sophisticated alien brother aboard the Filial Piety, and the military bandwidth became a bridge for information exchange – stochastic quantum variables associated with the transdimensional jump, entry and exit vectors, energy outputs. Scarcely thirty milliseconds later, the Covenant computer had established a specific vector for the UNSC Miranda Keyes to enter its Slipspace rift, and less than two hundred milliseconds later, the Filial Piety’s navigation chief announced that Task Force Gamma had readied its navigational solutions for its specific insertion point into Paris IV’s orbit.

Wagner nodded as his command board flared green, announcing all five of the Paris IV-bound task forces were ready for the micro-jump maneuvering. “I read all task forces are ready to jump. We execute in thirty seconds.”

UNSC Beneath Shoreless Waves Carinae-312 IV Orbit

The UNSC Beneath Shoreless Waves was illuminated by the ambient tangerine flare of its engines, the channeled thermonuclear fiery of its deuterium core burning tracks in space behind the frigate as it stately completed a second pass across the planet’s circumference.

“Commander, all clear.”

For Erica Carr, the situation was perfectly expected and mundane – of the three required orbital scans requisite for the reconnaissance operation, the first two had gone without incident. If Lieutenant Commander Thoreau had not received an inexplicable surge of irascible fear in his heart, a timely intelligence…perhaps, this conflict would not have erupted, and Carinae-312 IV would be a desolate sphere, left to its rotations in the solar winds until its own star flared into a supernova, instantaneously flattening and vaporizing the system. Perhaps this war would not have erupted, the terrible but honest truth that would visit itself upon man and Sangheili.

Thoreau furrowed his brow, kneading it as the check board flashed, and nothing was superimposed over its transparent matrix.

As Commander Carr began giving the orders for the third sensor pass, Thoreau gently touched her on the shoulder, brought her aside.

“Ma’am—with all due respect, we should go in for a closer look.”

Her hesitation was palpable. “Why?”

He doggedly refused to answer directly. “Eight thousand kilometers. A high atmospheric run.”

“Eight thousand kilometers above sea level is extremely dangerous for any capital warship – it is in easy range of even the most primitive thermonuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles and air-to-space defense platforms, and Beneath Shoreless Waves is not a vessel designed to go into the atmosphere, at any density or altitude.”

“There’s something here, on Carinae-312, ma’am.” As Carr’s eyes began to be glazed with an impatience, the executive officer began to insist, his voice almost ringing as immature as he said softly, but with overtones of some enigmatic urgency, “There’s many things wrong with this system; it’s strategically positioned for a Covenant expansion to the galactic core, is extremely habitable, with a balanced nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere to sustain life, appropriate terrestrial air pressure, gravity, and atmosphere-regulated temperature…but the sensors pick up no fauna or flora. It’s highly improbable no life at all evolved on this kind of planet.”

“You forget that evolution isn’t a universally-accepted theory.”

“And that there is no fauna or flora? Our pass isn’t close enough to get that resolution.”

Her eyes flashed dangerously. “This is getting close to insubordination, Lieutenant Commander. You are here to execute my orders to the crew, not to challenge mine.”

Thoreau’s response was that of practiced nonchalance. “I’m here to serve my captain and the crews of this ship. I did not intend to undermine you before the crew.” He paused to adroitly point out softly, “As you see, I suggest this here to you at the back of the bridge, away from the ears of your crew.”

Erica said with disgust, “You ask me to risk the lives of my crew and this frigate to scan this planet closer on a whim. A whim based on doubts and abstractions on speculative astrography and biology.”

“If you think this planet is clear, then where is the risk on an atmospheric pass?”

The Commander turned to the navigations officer. “Helm, let’s go in closer – eight thousand kilometers. We’ll skim the exosphere. One more pass.”

UNSC Miranda Keyes Slipspace en route to Paris IV Orbit

An instantaneous beat later, with a flicker of tachyonic motion, the arrowed proboscis of the UNSC Miranda Keyes translocated across 5.1 billion kilometers from far yonder beyond the orbit of the eighth planet of the Paris System to ten thousand kilometers at the rear of the raiding Brute fleet, which had already made a single orbital attack run over the colony. The civilians on the colony had been evacuated hours ago—the buildings that were burning were uninhabited, but now, Commodore Tate found himself with the firepower to avenge the dastardly barbarians that had mauled tens of thousands without provocation, smeared themselves with the blood of the UNSC, the spilled blood crying for vengeance. And now, Task Force Gamma, along with its four sister task forces, would exact retribution.

The firing acquisition radars had already been automatically keyed-in to initiate a target sweep immediately upon reversion, but it was wholly unnecessarily. The flickering, dancing cobalt engine scintillations of the dozen Brute ships were dead ahead; the Mediator’s AI had plotted an exceptional course through Slipspace – the animalistic raiders were in easy attack range.

Instantly, Tate began broadcasting on Task Force Gamma’s COM channel. “Miranda Keyes to task force – fire at will.”

Task Force Gamma was but six ships…however, the combined fleet itself was thirty vessels, and the Covenant force, woefully positioned and unaware, was but a dozen.

The UNSC vessels shuddered, their blocky, rough-hewn bodies seized by an unseen fist and thrashed as they violently were propulsed backwards from the tenacious recoil of their MAC cannons. Behind them, the scattered Covenant warships in the fleet also began their salvos as their targeting computers analyzed the effects of the first MAC barrage. It was a withering crossfire, deplete uranium projectiles lancing across space, impacting the sleek silhouettes of the Brute vessels. Two Covenant Destroyers were awash with fire, their shields neutralized by multiple projectile impacts, and then their metallic hulls punctured by further rounds, and with ugly, inflamed scars on their hulls, erupted, their internal plasma ignited by the metal rounds. Nearby destroyers and frigates careened, their own shields lowered, displaced off-course from the sheer mass and velocity of the incoming rounds.

The Communications officer called out, “Commodore, Mediator’s AI says all remaining vessels with rounds should continue firing.”

The first MAC salvo had been twenty-five rounds; each UNSC cruiser, destroyer, or frigate had fired a single round. Whereas the smaller frigates only had a single of the mass-driver cannons, each destroyer had a pair of such cannons, and all the cruisers, regardless of their classification, had three. The joint fleet had thirty vessels in its five task forces, with five Covenant vessels and twenty-five UNSC ships, of which five were cruisers, ten were destroyers, and ten were frigates. While the frigates had exhausted their capacitances for their magnetic accelerator cannons, the fifteen remaining warships still had the fight in them – twenty more MAC rounds left, and all of those focused in the second barrage.

Tate evenly nodded. The Sojourn-class attack cruisers had three MAC systems, and only the first was empty of charge. “Fire Control, light up MAC Two and Three.” His eyes glanced over the plot table, now displaying the enemy formation; its veil of frigates and destroyers were blenching fire or their hulls were deformed, clipped by MAC round impacts, with a few of the lighter vessels maintaining steady formation, hugging the larger central carrier and cruiser tightly; sheep flattening their ears as they scattered from a slaughter they’d survived by the most insubstantial whims of fortune. “Let’s clear those escort ships – open up firing lanes. Helm, accelerate to battle speed. Let’s close to them.”

The Miranda Keyes shuddered, her metallic exoskeleton pleading against the ponderous thunder as its second MAC system, tucked in its prow, fired, and a moment later, that was joined by another streak of fire across the fires, both MAC rounds destined for one of the Covenant frigates that was in shielding position behind the Jiralhanae carrier.

A moment, the gunnery officer confirmed, “Commodore, rounds were on target. Hostile frigate has lost power and is losing altitude and falling into the atmosphere. Telemetry suggests breach of primary plasma conduit and magnetic shielding fields.”

Nathan’s eyes were raised to the master tactical, the high-magnification visual of the Covenant frigate, a conspicuous hole through its meridian axis, a wildfire of amorphous fire clinging to the serrated edges that the projectile had shorn. The ovoid frigate itself was trailing a haze of unfocused fire from its winking, damaged propulsion drives, and was peeling away from the fast-moving Brute fleet, a smoldering kilometer-long warship falling into the wispy atmosphere of Paris IV, its shape already obscured by the heat shield as it screamed through air, its descent in re-entry clothing the craft with a comet-like torrent of fire. Perhaps the frigate’s impact against the ground would cause collateral damage, but it had been transformed from an out-of-control frigate to a clearly neutralized threat.

The Brute fleet, however, by some combination of iron will and Covenant engineering, maintained formation upon its retreat – the cruiser and the carrier were in the lead, with four unshielded escort frigates regaining control and vectoring to accelerate to meet their parent vessels. For a moment, the commodore’s eyes narrowed, examining their formation, fearing the aggressive savages would turn and engage the fleet that was bombarding them…then, it would turn from a bloodless massacre into a full-fledged naval battle, and with their MAC systems recharging, the UNSC ships would be fully exposed…Wagner, however, had predicted correctly. The Brutes had to be fulminating in rage, but their intent had been to pillage a defenseless colony, not to lose all their vessels in a costly battle against a combined fleet. The Brute fleet commander had a limited number of warships—ones he would use as pieces to jockey for a higher tribal position and to fight against aggressor tribes. To lose them all would mean he had a selfless purpose, and ONI’s political indications had indicated anything but for the remaining rebel Brute Chieftains.

The strike fleet, however, was not depleted of all its fight. There was still a Reverence-class cruiser, three kilometers in length, in Task Force Alpha, the command force, and in each of the four other task forces, a CCS-class battle cruiser, approximately half the length of the Reverence-class cruisers. While the slower UNSC vessels were being outdistanced by the fleeing Brute vessels, the Sangheili-crewed cruisers had the speed to match the enemy ships, and weapons with greater fire power and longer range.

Wagner came back onto the command network, face flushed with victory. “All Covenant vessels, break task force formations. Primary targets are the cruiser and the carrier. Secondary targets are the frigates. Remember, we need one to be alive.”

The Reverence-class Cruiser Rapture Transcendent and the four other Covenant cruisers lit their propulsion drives, surging into an attack arc as the Rapture Transcendent’s Fleet Master acknowledged the Admiral’s orders. Levelly, he replied, “We shall bring fire upon their hides for the fire they have wrought.”

A moment later, superluminal lances strobed from the Rapture Transcendent—energy projectors. Sixty thousand kilometers distant, they eviscerated the command carrier, the shields glowing brilliantly under the points of penetration, and then the beams were through, seeking for the command deck, hangar bays, and the reactor core. It was a transient salvo – milliseconds later, the beams had withdrawn…but at least two of the projectors had squarely lanced the reactor silos. The enemy carrier’s running lights began to flicker in disconcert, and then rents were rended in its hull as superheated plasma burst out, uncontained by their superconducting magnetic shielding fields. The carrier would burn for half an hour, its hull smoldering under the vicious fire, its crew long vaporized but the hull of the vessel more resistant.

The Fleet Master snarled an order in the Sangheili tongue, and then beta radiation drew together at the fore ends of the Covenant cruisers, aggregating under inexorable magnetic forces, and where there had been the nothingness of space was now a swelling, compact sphere of scintillating fire. A moment later, the predators of liquid fire bolted forth from the plasma torpedo tubes, eager to pursue their prey, brimming with a lusting hunger for enemy flesh. The plasma torpedoes streaked from the cruisers, in pursuit of the remaining enemy vessels. Guided by the infamous classified long-range magnetic projector fields of the cruisers, the torpedoes steadily tracked the enemy vessels, which were already dispersing, each coming to a different heading in a futile attempt to flee the inbound warheads. The lacing fire of torpedoes illuminated Tate’s irises, and in that warm glow he saw the death of billions of UNSC crewmen and tens of thousands of UNSC warships during the Human-Covenant War. That despondent thought was assuaged when the enemy cruiser became awash in the killing flame, and three of the enemy frigates similarly vanished from the plot board, the plasma encapsulating the one-kilometer attack ships and then shattering their superstructures. A last enemy frigate remained, its piscine, amorphous body tinged with a silvery glimmer as it attempted to regenerate its energy shields.

As a pair of the CCS-class Battlecruisers began to advance, pulse lasers charging for a final salvo, Wagner firmly countermanded them. “Hold your fire. We need one to get away, to let the rest know.”

Fleet Master ‘Tulomee affirmed, “Brothers, stay thy hands.”

A convolution of space rippled to appearance before the Covenant frigate, and with a dramatic flare of its engines, it accelerated into the distortion, and a moment later, the anomaly enfolded the capital vessel, and all that remained was several stray particles of Cherenkov radiation.

FLEETCOM Sydney Sydney, Australia, Earth

There was a rap upon the oak door, and it was with a paroxysm that Terrence Hood, Fleet Admiral, Lord of the former United Kingdom, Commander-in-Chief of the UNSC First Fleet, came from the ethereal realm of restless, attenuated sleep into vivid consciousness. It was with a jerk that Lord Hood tossed his eyes around his surroundings, and as he found the sagging leather recliner behind him, and the familiar surroundings that were his lavish personal quarters at FLEETCOM Headquarters, Sydney, Earth. He found the manila folder with the Office of Naval Intelligence’s weekly briefing and update in his blue-veined hands, and with haste, sequestered the reports, and reached for something more comely – the Fleet protocol for Sojourn-class cruiser operations, maneuvering, and combat.

As he flipped to a random page in the thickly-bound binder, he declared, erasing the vestiges of tiredness from his voice, “Come in!”

It was a uniformed lieutenant, one of Hood’s nameless aides de camp, who tentatively opened the door a fraction of a degree and stuck in his head, making a show of averting his eyes from the Admiral’s documents. “Admiral, you’re wanted in the Situation Room. The UNSC Defense Council meeting just started.”

Confirming the time with his wrist chronometer, he bit off a brief epithet that made the courier blush. “Thank you, Lieutenant. Let’s go.”

He arrived ten minutes later at the Situation Room, where the UNSC Defense Council and the senior commanders of the Defense Force convened—the former a small symposium of politicians with high clearances, and the latter the UNSC commanders that were to execute their often ridiculous decisions by practical military means. The structure of the UNSC had metamorphed greatly after the conclusion of the war; now that hostilities had been recessed, the government had decided to terminate the military’s “martial law” and let civilians piggyback over the already-inefficient military bureaucracy. The Defense Council itself consisted of seven Senators, of which one was the chairman. And for this first term of office, it was Chairman Dreyfus who held the chair.

Lord Hood entered the darkly-lit room as Fleet Admiral Harper, Commander-in-Chief of the Second Fleet, was gesturing broadly at the gargantuan wall-mounted high-definition display. The Marine guards stiffened at Hood’s approach, not daring to cease their hamrod etiquette even as Hood entered the Situation Room, drawing a disgruntled glare from Dreyfus for entering impromptly.

“...complete victory. Of thirty UNSC and Covenant vessels, none were lost, whereas eleven out of twelve of the Brute vessels were destroyed. Exit telemetry of the surviving frigate also has led the ONI to suggest a probable Brute staging point as the borderland system classified as Taurus-3823 in the Perseus Arm.”

Harper’s seat was conveniently close to that of Rear Admiral Ackerson’s, one of the newer senior military officers granted an audience with the Defense Council, and also one of the more questionable spooks at ONI, setting a new record even for the intelligence agency on questionable ethics. He had proven to be an adept mind, however, and if he had even courted the favor of Director Paragonsky, the post-war director of ONI, even Hood would not put in the effort to discern the man’s enigmatic labyrinthine activities.

Ackerson raised a hand in greeting as the Fleet Admiral approached, and whispered softly with a thoughtful nod. “Admiral.”

Refusing to be taken in by his ploy of courtesy, Hood merely reciprocated the nod, found the seat well-equipped with iced water, tea, and coffee, and poured some for himself as Harper continued.

“I have begun plans with Strategic Command to prepare a battle group to investigate Taurus-3823 for Brute activity. Already, the prowler Hermes is en route for a preparatory reconnaissance run while--”

Senator Sibyl Vane, one of the few females to have earned a seat on the sexist Defense Council, boldly interrupted him. “Admiral, on whose authority has a prowler been dispatched?”

Hood’s eyes narrowed on the senator’s shadowed figure near the fore of the room as Harper was left off his stride, unaccustomed to a challenge to his authority. “Senator, the Hermes was dispatched by the authority of the UNSC Fleet Command and UNSC Strategic Command--”

“Which essentially means you made the decision.” Standing and attracting even further attention, she proclaimed in a half-snarl, “Admiral, the Defense Council now has executive supervision over military activities undertaken by Central Command, Fleet Command, Strategic Command, or any of the other centralized or secondary commands of the Defense Force. The thought that you would circumvent our administrative overview is unthinkable.”

Admiral Harper’s eyes met Hood’s, unpleasantness clinging onto his stiffened look as he turned once again to address Vane. “Ma’am, it was not my--”

“But it was! Can you answer why our warships are being dispatched without our supervision?”

“Ma’am, I was under the understanding that--”

“Really, is that so, Admiral? Perhaps you could enlighten us as to the purpose of the Defense Council exists to moderate Central Command.”

Even now, the soporific General Strauss had been waked by the commotion and was lending his own incredulous look at Vane as Harper’s mouth could only jerk out incoherent words.

With a smile playing upon her lips, Senator Vane thinly smiled. “What I have seen in the past months, of the actions of our own commanders in our highest military commands, had disgusted me. The war is over, Admiral. The Defense Force exists to defend our colonies, not to attack others, for there are no other enemies that we have in the galaxy. Sending out our fleets and vessels, our pilots and soldiers, in peace time, circumventing our judgment, is intolerable. The Defense Council will make the decisions on where and when to act—you decide how that is implemented. Is that clear, Admiral?”

Harper’s look had intensified now into that of distinct inchoate rage, his jaw thickening with a repressed anger, eyes winking with a lethal light as he compressed his lips into a thin line and answered, “Yes, ma’am.”

Vane’s reply for once was interrupted—the Marines at the door to the Situation Room stiffly saluted, and Vane swirled in her chair to see who would be as so reckless as to interject in one of her diatribes as a captain entered, waving a thermal printout in his hand. Without deference to the Defense Council senators, aggrieved in their chairs at this interruption, the captain hastily brought the report in his hand to Harper, who was still before the central display.

Harper’s eyes slipped from a humiliated, pummeled anger to something glazed and unreadable. He jabbed a finger at the staff of officers at the rear of the room that operated the high-definition screen. “Put up Daily Report Lima-Sixteen-Two-Three.”

As the captain ushered himself from the room, the operators obediently replaced Harper’s well-composed presentation with new panes of information, fresh, unedited information from the field.

In strong tones that well hid the curtailed fury inflaming him, Harper came onto the offensive. “Senators, Admirals, Generals, Directors—I apologize, but there is an urgent matter that necessitates your attention, immediately.”

Chairman Dreyfus met iron for iron. “And what would that be?”

With a hideously falsified smile on his face, Harper waved a hand to the screen. “As you know, for the past several months, we have been conducting reconnaissance operations in the Covenant Borderlands for renegade Brute activity.”

“Yes. This body authorized the action.”

Harper nodded absently, for once, his thoughts elsewhere, and with a small interlude, continued. “The UNSC Beneath Shoreless Waves was dispatched to Carinae-312, what the Covenant identified as a planetary system nearby the NGC 3576 Nebula, a system with a high degree of habitability.”

“At 1330 hours Zulu, the Beneath Shoreless Waves emerged from Slipspace over the planet, and upon its third requisite orbital pass, made an Alpha priority FLASH transmission to FLEETCOM Sydney. The reconnaissance results are on the screen.” He gestured, and the screen updated to show a list of contacts.

TYPE-25 WRAITH TYPE-26 GROUND SUPPORT AIRCRAFT TYPE-52 TROOP CARRIER TYPE-52 TROOP CARRIER TYPE-26 GROUND SUPPORT AIRCRAFT TYPE-47 ULTRA HEAVY ASSAULT PLATFORM TYPE-52 INFANTRY SUPPORT VEHICLE TYPE-52 ANTI-AIRCRAFT ARTILLERY TYPE-32 RAPID ASSAULT VEHICLE

Harper evenly met Vane’s look.

“Senator, we’re not alone in this galaxy.”