Jericho III
Prologue:
Jericho III was discovered almost a decade before Jericho IV, but not many people cared about the small outer colony of 9.8 million people. The planet's defense system consisted of 4 destroyers and a lone MAC platform. Other than its 500,000 person military, the rest of Jericho III's population consisted of 97 percent farmers and their children and 3 percent other. Carol lived with his grandparents on the farm for the last 2 and a half standard years. His dad had been in the Marines when the war started and was killed on Harvest; his mom died when she resisted a mugger and was shot. After that child services moved him to Jericho III to live with his aging grandparents.
Chapter I:
Working in the fields on his grandfather's farm, Carol was tired. He had always disliked his name, it was generally a girl's name, but his dad had said it was the name of a famous racer or something way back in the 20th century, but he'd looked it up: the racer's name was spelled Carroll; it was like the difference between Jesse and Jessie. Now, though, he concentrated on checking for bugs and weeds; there were scanners to do it, but those scanners were over a million dollars a piece, and his grandfather believed a human eye did a better job. It had taken him longer than expected, the summer sun, not too different from Earth's, had grown large, and painted the sky a beautiful canvas of pinks, reds, oranges, and purples.
For just a brief second, something dimmed the sun, more so than a cloud, an air wave washed over the stalks of corn, and a very faint thrumming was heard. Something in his stomach sank, like he'd swallowed rocks, truly the happening could have been his imagination, or a UNSC ship, but something, some sixth sense, gave him a feeling that something was terribly wrong.
He glanced up to see the dull purple hull and bright blue engines of a Covenant Corvette. Then, out of nowhere, two UNSC destroyers, half the defense force, comes up along side the Covenant vessel; fire their MAC cannons within a 10th of a second of the other. The Covenant's shields glow blue, then violet and then white, then dissipate into a thousand sparks along the hull of the ship. The second MAC round tears at the aft of the Covenant ship; the reactors in the engines explode brilliant greens, blues, reds, and off whites. Dropping from about 4,000 meters the Corvette gained momentum and just as it disappeared beyond the horizon, a shock wave coursed through the ground, strong enough to knock Carol's stout, tall figure over, and to shake premature corn off the stalks.
Carol got back up and started running towards the farmhouse; hoping that his grandfather would know what to do.