Halo: Resurgence/An Act of Retribution

Seven flares of white lit up the void as the ships returned to reality.

Positioned in battle formation, dozens of kilometres apart, the ships were grey, ugly, block-shaped, and vaguely intimidating. Each of them was half a kilometre long, at least, plated in flawless, impervious-looking armour, and bristling with weapons and sensor antennas. Almost simultaneously, ghost-like flickers wrapped themselves around the ships and vanished as their energy barriers coalesced.

The battlegroup was late, but it hadn't mattered. The small Remnant force above Unflinching Contrition had been smashed anyway by the UNSC Navy's invasion fleet, so recently that even at that distance, the wrecks of Covenant warships could be seen burning up in the atmosphere. Not visible at that distance were the three dozen or so human ships that held orbit in their place, raining missiles and slugs with deadly precision on the Covenant's ground positions.

Ten years ago, almost to the day, the reverse would have been true. In 2552, the UNSC Navy's finest fleet to date had massed to repulse the Covenant from Reach, foremost among humanity's colonies. But the Covenant annihilated it, batting aside in one month the most powerful military force in humanity's history. Almost a billion lives extinguished. A billion. It was an incomprehensible number. The word was meaningless. The human mind couldn't ever grasp the enormity of it.

But a decade on, here the UNSC was, above a Covenant world. Winning.

Captain Marshall saw poetry in that.

From the bridge of UNSC Sheffield, he watched Unflinching Contrition, a perfectly round, shimmering blue orb. It hung there, stark and bright against the background of inky black. He watched the wrecks of the Covenant ships tumbling and smouldering in orbit, as if in slow motion. It was beautiful, he thought. He wondered how many people walked its surface, right that moment, how many innocent lives. Were they looking up into orbit? Were they terrified? He found himself thinking of home, and a fond, bittersweet fog enveloped his thoughts. It all felt so distant, so long ago. Happiness returned to him like a spectre. It was just a memory.

He wondered how many times they had seen the same sight. The illusion of happiness in him evaporated in an instant and blinding hatred took its place. How many times had they looked on before they scoured away life from a whole world, he thought bitterly. Dozens of worlds, millions, billions of human lives, all burned away. They exterminated entire families, levelled entire cities. The Covenant scorched a path through space, killing everything that crossed their way. They left a trail of worlds dark and smouldering and stacked with corpses. His hands clenched to fists. Nothing anyone could ever do would repay it. There would never be any retribution great enough.

But he could try.