One Last Mission

Chapter – 1

The UNSC prowler classed ship, Gladys orbited around the small moon called Onyx. The space craft has had a long log book of fights with rebels and covenant. Not all of the fights could be classified a success, but jumping into slipspace and running away to fight another day is always a success. The ship's crew, after 20 years of fighting the covenant has grown tired and weary, always disengaging fighting the covenant, unless outnumbering them at least 10:1. Normally the ship's Captain, Melissa Jones, one of the UNSC few ship Commanders, would decline a major mission for the UNSC. But to have the UNSC finest warriors on her ship is a honour, and will go down in the history books.

Captain Jones sat in her chair in front of the NAV screen. Having accepted the mission, the ship had received a AI, a "smart" AI, not like the old one they use to have. The new "smart" AI, Thor, who is dressed in a old Greek robe and is wearing a barbaric head-dress. Most of the ship's crew like the new AI, but the crew that have grown up with the old "dumb" AI, Constantine, the ONI scientists have been upgrading Constantine to a "smart" AI. So after the mission and giving back Thor the ship will receive Constantine back, and the ship will have a permanent "smart" AI.

"Captain, Covenant ships are leaving slipspace, on the other side of the moon," explained Lt. Leon, Jones' navigator.

"What is the power to the ships slipspace generators?" asked Jones.

"Ma'am, the generators are at 89 gaining 3 per minute," replied Lt. Myers.

"Transfer all power to the slipspace generators, get us out of here!" yelled the captain.

"The two Covenant destroyers have spotted us and are charging their plasma cannons, impact in 40 seconds," said Leon.

"We are cutting it close, what is the power on the generators?" asked the captain.

"Full power in 4...3...2...1...Full power," said Myers.

"Punch it!,"

Exiting Slipspace

"Ahh...report!" yelled Jones as she repositioned her hair.

"All power is out, setting up back up power, the power will be back in 5 minutes," answered Myers

"Where are we?" asked The captain.

"We are exactly 2,034,134,972 kilometres from Earth," said Thor as he appeared on the data image enlarger.

"No! re-check and check again, we can't lead the covenant to Earth," Yelled Jones as the crew in the bridge focused on Thor's image for the answer.

"I have checked, re-checked and checked again," said Thor. "We are 2,034,134,972 kilometres from Earth."

The Caption sighed and closed her eyes to think for a while, the crew grew anxious, looked at each other with worried faces, some muttering to each other about their families on Earth.

"Open up a single-band on the FLEETCOM to Lord Hood and notify me if any Covenant try to follow us back here," said Jones.

"Yes Captain, opening single-band now..." replied Thor.

"Captain Jones, you needed me urgently," said Lord Hood.

"Sir, we accidentally jumped away from two Covenant destroyers and may have lead them straight to Earth, Sir, we need to notify all of the fleet about a possibility of a Covenant attack,"

"How the hell did you 'accidentally' jump away from two Covenant destroyers... Don't worry about that now. Thank you Captain for telling me about the current situation, it was a mistake anyone could of made, Lord Hood out."

"Well that went well," said Leon.

"Captain, Covenant fleet inbound, at least a hundred frigate size ships and around fifty Covenant destroyers, they will reach Earth's defences in two minutes," said Thor.

The captain reached for the bridges intercom and tapped it on. " Chief, get your troops ready, it is going to get hot!"

"Yes ma'am, we will leave Gladys soon in our pelican,"

"Ok Chief, Jones out."