Disclaimer: I don't own Halo Universe as well as the Star Wars Universe.

Timeline

2553:

- March: A monument is erected in the Kenyan Savannah near Mount Kilimanjaro to officially mark the end of the Human-Covenant war, and in remembrance of those who gave their lives in the war – including posthumously promoted Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy John-117 who is labeled MIA.

- May: UEG and Covenant Separatist (now called Coalition of Allied Species) sign the Milky Way Treaty on Mount Kilimanjaro to signify helping each other make the universe become a peaceful place

- June: Operation: Rebuild Earth is launched by UEG to rebuild Earth. UEG also discovers out of the 800 planets they have, only about 90 or so were glassed before the invasion of Earth. UEG (along with the help of the CAS) then launches Operation: Seedling to recolonize all its glassed planets

2554:

- [CONFIDENTIAL] January: After much deliberation, UEG approves the funding for a second Infinity-class warship (code named Everlasting) right after the success of the first's mission. The Interplanetary Scientific and Engineering Commission theorizes that UNSC Everlasting will be finished by 2560.

- March: Upon the request of UEG President Ruth Charet and (recently appointed) Defense Secretary Terrace Hood, Thel 'Vadam agrees to donate one CSO-class Supercarriers to help advance the vehicles and equipment of UEG.

- [CONFIDENTIAL] March: In ISEC's monthly report, it states that the UNSC Everlasting's space faring capabilities will be notch better than the recently upgraded UNSC Infinity by a small margin

- April: The UEG and the CAS have agreed to allow the Huragok help ISEC in Operation: Back to Standard and Operation Seedling. With this announcement, ISEC theorize that the time to finish both operations will be cut in half.

- [CONFIDENTIAL] April: In its April report, ISEC states that UNSC Everlasting completion date is now moved around late 2558 thanks to the additional Huragok helping build it.

2555:

- January: Operation: Back to Standard is launched with the intent of rebuilding the entire UNSC military force back to its pre-war status but with additional upgrades.

- February: CAS Government (after deciding on a parliamentary-style government headed by a Sangheili) begins trade relations with the UEG. It is discovered that the Unggoy are master builders while the Kig-Yar are expert furniture makers and these businesses are what helps CAS develop and improve its economy. The Covenant armed forces are then reorganized as Armed Forces of the Coalition.

2557

- January: SPARTAN–IV Program is commissioned but all members come from either Marine Corp or ODST Companies.

- February: Public Commission of UNSC Infinity. At the same time, UEG grants all its colonies an autonomous status, finally crushing any Insurrectionist Movements.

- March: First general democratic elections are held.

- July 21, 2557: After over four years of drifting, UNSC Forward unto Dawn is pulled into the gravitational pull of the Forerunner shield world, Requiem. UNSC Infinity finds Cortana's distress beacon, on the way to Requiem. The First Battle of Requiem begins.

- July 24, 2557: The Raid on Ivanoff Research Station occurs. The Ur-Didact successfully steals the Composer from the facility and composes everyone, except John-117, in the facility. The New Phoenix Incident occurs causing the city to go into quarantine for eight months.

2558

- January: Operation: Reach for the Stars is half finished. UEG has terraformed all of the glassed planets but is yet to recolonize them.

- February 7 – March 3, 2558: The Second battle of Requiem.

- March: After much deliberation, UEG has decided to centralize all operations of the military after finding out that UNSC services all the divisions of the military. UNSC remains United Nations Space Command with four divisions: UN – Army Division (UNAD), UN – Naval Division (UNND), UN – Air Force Division (UNAFD), and UN – Intelligence and Special Operations Division (UNISOD).

- May: Astronomers at Mauna Kea Observatories discover that a previously undetected spiral galaxy (named Novus Galaxy) and discovers that it has planets around the edges. The Novus Galaxy is calculated to be about 9,120 light years away from the Milky Way Galaxy's edge.

- [CONFIDENTIAL] May: UNSC Infinity discovers a long curved metal arms surrounding a set of revolving, gyroscopic rings five-kilometers across Forerunner artifact that is capable of launching vessels to a similar artifact near the outer edge of the Milky Way. Data mined from a nearby Forerunner Research Outpost shows that the artifact is a gateway of sort to the newly discovered Novus Galaxy. A similar artifact is discovered there.

- June: UEG and CAS launch Operation: Novus Terra with the plan to colonize the planets in Novus Galaxy after a probing team reports of habitable planets. The operation contains three colony ships (rumored to contain Human, Unggoy, and Sangheili species) along with a joint UEG-CAS fleet escort. Thanks to the recently released information about the slingshot device, UEG and CAS plan to use it to a great effect.

- [CONFIDENTIAL] June: UEG and CAS launch Operation: Reclamation with the plan to seek out what is believed to be a Forerunner signal coming from the outer edges of Novus. Three military converted Phoenix-class colony vessels containing UEG and CAS scientist and equipment are dispatched along with a joint UNSC and the AFC fleet escort.

- July: Operation: Novus Terra is a success. Three planets are found that can sustain the sent species in the newly-named Aurora System. Proelia (for the Sangheili), Ballou (for the Unggoy), and New Aurora (for the human) are the capitol planets in this system.

- [CONFIDENTIAL] July: Operation: Reclamation is fully under way. First planet (codenamed New Aurora) is made the headquarters of the Novus Exploration Fleet, considering it is the only planet void of anything Forerunner related. Planets codenamed Ballou and Proelia are found to contain Forerunner structures and are being explored carefully. Data from the Forerunner ruins suggest a prototype version of the slingshot was created but lost due to an explosion.

2560

- June: UNSC Everlasting is publicly commissioned and is announced to be sent to the Novus Galaxy as UEG's flagship in it. It is to be accompanied by a CAS-class assault carrier named AFC Era of Redemption.

- July: UEG is about half of its pre-war status while CAS begins to enjoy the fruits of its labors.

However, the story does not begin with the United Earth Government nor with the Coalition of Allied Species. It begins with a military converted Phoenix-class colony vessel floating in space in a galaxy far, far, away…

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FROM THE IMAGINATIVE MIND OF PINOY GAMER

IN COLLABORATION WITH [ENTER TEXT HERE PRODUCTIONS]

PRESENTS

THE TERRAN VARIABLE

Summary: The plan was set, the Father knew that. Its uncaring son, the Dark Side of the Force, has finally found a way to tip the balance in its favor – even though it took millenniums to make. Its Daughter, the positive Light Side of the Force, knew this and tried to counter it by creating a champion to defeat her brother's plan to rule. Father, however, knew it was not enough as it has seen the future – in fact, all of them did but there interpretations were different. The Son saw the future with him at its helm, the Daughter saw her champion finally removing the darkness that encroached into the lives of everyone, and Father…well, the Grey saw lives, bonds, and life in general suffer massively. It needed to act – after all, it was just as appropriate to ensure that the balance of power was kept among the three. Strong in the Force it was, Father found the perfect opportunity – yet knowing fully well the consequence it will bring to the galaxies beyond.

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ACT 1 | Part 1: Unintended Discoveries (September 2560 | 33 BBY)

29 Years, 8 Months, 7 Weeks, 6 Days, 5 Hours, and 4 Seconds.

That was what Serina computed as she stood on the holotable of the desolate bridge of the UNSC Spirit of Fire. For nearly 30 years, the Spirit has been floating aimlessly in the vast expanse of the Milky Way Galaxy ever since the…'Treasure Planet' incident. Apparently, the Covenant found a planet full of ancient yet powerful vessels that could wipe humanity in an instance. Thinking quickly, the Spirit had to sacrifice its Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine to destroy the planet that was housing the said vessels. It was a small price for them to pay but it was worth it – they had given humanity more time to stop the Covenant from destroying them in exchange of being forced to drift in space towards home.

Serina sighed before scanning the empty bridge. Every single personnel were sent to the cyro bay to sleep for obvious reasons. The Spirit was nowhere near any UNSC outpost or planet so all they could do was sleep and await rescue from anybody – preferably human. Frankly, Serina thought that everyone onboard deserved it. They've been (to borrow Cutter's words) 'into five years of Hell', so a 30 year beauty rest was more than perfect for them.

"Give me an update, girls! Sights, you first." shouted Serina, her voice echoing throughout the room. Suddenly, two AIs materialized on the holotable and looked at Serina. These two were like a carbon copy of her – only they had different outfits.

Sights, the AI on her left, was wearing a WWII Russian sniper outfit. She held a binocular and replied "We are approximately 2.5 trillion AUs from the 'Treasure Planet', nothing ahead of us yet Serina. Ship's point defense system is a-okay…although its ammo reserves are not enough to survive five waves of Covie attacks. You're next Ace!"

Ace, wearing a fighter plane jumpsuit, rolled her eyes. "Ship's speed at five miles an hour thanks to continuous thruster engine burst every five hours. Fusion Reactors are running smooth."

Serina nodded, having expected it all along. Nothing much had change for the past seven days since the last update since it was a weekly occurrence for Serina to request updates from her clones. "Thanks for the update girls. I'll–"

"Wait, I see something ahead of us!" cut Sights. "Bringing it up now…"

Waving her hand, Sights made a 3D hologram of what she saw, showing an elongated structure. After a few seconds of looking at it, Serina asked "Okay, so what is that?"

The sniper scratched the back of her head, thinking. "I'm not entirely sure. It looks like a gate and the designs are similar to the ones found inside the 'Treasure Planet' but leading to where…your guess is as good as mine."

Nodding, Serina looked at Ace. She had designated Ace as the unofficial AI pilot for the Spirit, giving her full command to direct the ship to where ever they needed to go. "Ace, just skirt around the structure and–"

Suddenly, one of the archways of the structure growled and shot a red beam towards the ship and made scanning motions at it. It happened so fast that none of them manage to react quickly. The scanning and growling lasted for one minute before dying as quick as it happened. No one spoke or moved as all three of them tried to comprehend what happened.

"…Okay, what the hell just happened?" Ace asked to no one in particular.

Serina stared at the structure before coming to a quick decision. "Sights, spin the MAC Drive. Ace, wake everyone up from the cyro bays. I'll go wake the captain personally." she ordered in her best drill sergeant voice before disappearing from the bridge quickly. Reappearing in Cryo Room 3, she stood in front of a pod and willed it to open. As it opened, she uttered four words that made the man inside wake up in a second.

"Captain, something had happened."

# # # # # # # # # #

30 minutes later, the entire crew of Spirit of Fire was now awake and on hand. Members of the 49th Infantry Brigade and 50th Helljumper Battalion grunted as they did post-cryo exercise to get the ice crystals out of their bodies, Engineers checked and scrutinized the vehicles and equipment to see if anything was damaged, and the entire bridge bustled with energy.

Meanwhile, Serina was staring at the Spirit's resident scientist, who asked "Serina…why are there two versions of you in different outfits?"

Ace glanced at Serina and quipped "You better answer Ellen, Serina. After all, we did come from you."

Rolling her eyes, Serina tried to control her anger at Professor Ellen Anders, the reluctant Office of the Naval Intelligence scientist who was assigned to them. She had been tasked to look for the 'Treasure Planet' that the Covenant had been referring to on the messages ONI intercepted. Of course, her question was warranted, but there was a fucking weird structure in front of the ship – how the hell could she not see that! "Look, we got a weird-looking structure in front of the ship and you want to talk about my clones and I? Fix your priorities first, dammit!"

At the last part, the bridge experienced a massive electronic ripple, causing the crewmembers running and talking about to quiet down. Shit… thought Serina. "Sorry about that…" she said meekly. Everyone just looked at her with confusion before a loud shout brought them back to their senses.

"Back to work boys and girls, let's leave the two eggheads and good ole cap to their business!" shouted Chief Engineer Andrew Prescott as he made his way towards the holotable. Serine mentally thanked the comedic personality of the engineer – and as well as him giving her an excuse to be forgotten.

"Captain Cutter, we've done are scans." the engineer told the captain, handling over a tablet. "Ship's at top condition with a minor damage at the side where we got rammed. However, I suggest that we find ourselves some ammunition soon. We only got 50 sets of missiles per ATAF Turret. Either way, we've got to thank Ace here for her wonderful job of maintaining the ship's engines. Damn, she gave me the report of the ship even before we began the assessment!"

Ace gave Andrew a thumbs-up as Cutter cleared his throat. "Back to the main topic: why did you wake up us again? You said something had happened."

With the wave of Sight's hand, a video feed of the structure up close was presented to them. "I found this after we've finished the weekly status update. We were discussing the similarities between the structures found inside the 'Treasure Planet' with this when it emitted a loud growl and scanned the ship."

Ellen stared at the structure, no doubt trying to decipher it. "Looks like a gateway of some sort." Ellen said after couple of minutes. "Sights…right? Can you give me a 3-D model of this…thing?"

Sights nodded and it was projected on the table. Ellen circled the table for a few more seconds before speaking up. "Look at the five archways leading towards the big structure…that looks similar to the Greek letter Omega. The five archways act like…a train station of sorts – you know, where the train stops to drop of its passengers – but this one just features the skeleton of the station." Ellen pointed towards the separated arcs.

She circled around the table to and pointed at the Ω. "My bet is that this...gateway, for the lack of a better term, is some sort of toll booth. Going where is another matter altogether." She crosses her arms and states "Whatever this is, I don't like it."

"So this is like the one that we went through when the ship entered the weird ass planet?" quipped Andrew, getting a confused look from Ellen. "Sorry, you weren't with us when we entered the 'Planet'. We went through like six to seven rings inside the planet's crust before coming out the inside – or were it outside the curst? You know what, never mind. You get the idea right?"

Ellen nodded and opened her mouth when the ship lurched forward and slowly headed for the structure. Grabbing hold of the table to prevent himself from falling, Cutter looked about and shouted "Status report, now!"

"We're being dragged towards it sir! I don't know how, but the computer's suggesting that the structure is some kind of gravity well!" yelled back one of the technicians.

"All hands brace for impact!" Cutter shouted immediately as the entire ship lurched forward again, slightly hastening its speed towards the structure. Everyone on the bridge immediately strapped themselves to the nearest chair.

"Captain, permission to fire MAC at the structure." Serina asked.

"Denied. Ace, give me an update!" Cutter shouted hurriedly to her temporary AI Pilot, as the real helmsman was forced to sit down.

"We've just align ourselves towards the entrance of the gateway, speed at 30 mph." Ace shouted back, looking at a virtual dashboard she created in front of everyone.

"Great, now the structure wants to eat us! Anybody got salt, 'cause I know we don't taste too good." Serina said sarcastically, earning a nervous laughter from everyone on the bridge.

"Oh boy, you'd think that 29 years is enough to dull her sarcastic comments but nooo, it had to get better!" Ellen groaned while having a faint smile on her lips.

"Hey," replied Serina. "I should say the same thing about you. We got a weird looking structure outside of our ship and you're asking me why I–"

"Passing the first archway at speed of 35 mph!" cut Ace, stopping the two from bickering immediately.

"Wait, how long is the structure?" asked Ellen immediately, eyebrows furrowed.

"Uh…35 kilometers, why?" replied Sights.

Ellen gulped from her seat, her facial expression scared. "Cutter, the structure's going to sling us to somewhere really fast."

Everyone looked at Ellen in confusion when Sights shouted "Passing second archway, speed's at 45 mph people! Shit, there's a portal being created by that thingy-majig!"

Everyone became silent as the ship continued to race towards the Ω and not a single person breathed as everything outside the ship elongated. "Third archway passed, speed at 85 mph! Fourth archway, 110 mph! Brace for impact!" screamed Ace as the ship entered the portal.

For three minutes, everything around the Spirit was elongated before it stopped as quickly as it happened. They just sat there in complete silence until Andrew asked "Alright, what the hell just happened? I thought that was supposed to be a slingshot?"

"It was," answered Ellen, her voice wavering. "We just experienced being shot across space. The question is where?"

Andrew raised his hands up in confusion. "You're telling me that was it?"

Serina huffed. "You of all people should be glad nothing else happened. If something did happen, you'll be the one in charge of fixing it." she said with a smirk.

Andrew stared at her before walking towards the door. "This wasn't part of my job description, Captain. I'll leave it to you guys to solve this shit. I'll be in the Engine room if you need me!"

Cutter cleared his throat after Andrew left and asked "Serina, give me a sitrep."

"Nothing broken, all systems green." Serina listed down. "Sights, what do you have?"

"I'm not entirely sure. We were about 8e+14 miles from the 'Treasure Planet' when I spotted the structure. After passing through it, I got nothing." Sights replied.

"Thought so," Ellen said. "It was a sling shot after all and–"

"Uh...guys," Sights cut, no doubt trying to get everyone's attention.

"–we'll be disoriented to our position because of it." Serina finished.

"So," started Cutter. "We're completely blind now."

"Yup. Damn, I knew we should have just fired–"

"Guys…" Sights said more forcibly.

"–a MAC round at it." Serina said to Cutter, who chuckled.

"It would have exploded Serina," interjected Ellen. "The structure was powering itself. Blow it–"

"GUYS!" shouted Sights, making everyone look at her.

"What?" Serina asked.

"May be we could just ask that ship over there for directions." Sights said, pointing towards the front of the ship, where a few miles from the Spirit's bridge, a sleek, silvery-colored vessel was facing towards them. Everyone on the bridge just looked at the vessel in confusion, no doubt wondering where it came from.

Up Next:

ACT 1 | Part 2: Making New Friends

Character Visualization:

Serina (Halo Wars) as Serina and her Clones

James Cutter (Halo Wars 2) as Captain James Cutter

Ellen Anders (Halo Wars 2) as Dr. Ellen Anders

Kenneth Donnelly (Mass Effect) as Chief Engineer Andrew Prescott

UPDATED 02/05/2017