Prologue
In the year 2532 the UNSC believed that they had lost Vekta, a small world in the outer colonies, due to an Covenant attack, but this was only half true, since something happend during the attack nobody had expected.
A single Covenant destroyer attacked the system and was about to glass the planet, , it had already enterd the planets atmosphere, when suddenly 6 slipspace ruptures opend, through which an equal number of human ships appeared.
They were smaller than the aliens ships and of human design, 6 old Gorgon-class destoryers, the last warships under the command of the Colonial Military Administration.
Those ships had been meant to be scrapped and taken out of service, but now those old ships would get their chance for glory, to at least restore a little of the CMAs lost honor.
The Covenant ship was commanded by a rogue Shipmaster, who had disobeyed the Fleetmasters orders and left the fleet to seek his own private glory.
But the rogue shipmaster and his crew wouldn't find fame or glory, all they got were 6 MAC-rounds, 4 beeing stopped by the destroyers shields, before the 5th and 6th teared giant holes into the ship.
The finishing blow was delieverd by hunderds of Archer Missiles, which turned the destoryer into a giant inferno, before it crushed onto the planets surface.
Vekta had been saved by a miracle.
2532 : After destroying the Covenant ship, the CMA destroyers decide to stay in the system, to protect the planet.
Reports of the destruction of Vekta are faked to make both the UNSC and the Covenant lose interest in this small community.
Their are supported by the sorry remains of the CMA, the few backwater stations left in colonial hands support the defected ships so that they wouldn't run out of supplies.
2533:
CMA commanders and civilian represantants decide to send out all civilian ships with Slipspace-drives they have, to save the refugees that are still stranded within the Outer colonies.
2533-43:
Over 300 million people are brought to Vekta, the colonies large agricaltural production allowed them to at least satisfy the basic needs of the people.
Basic industrial production is established with the little money CMA can still provide, while the survival of Vekta is still kept secret to the UNSC.
2545-2549:
Contact is made with several other surviving colonies, who were abondand by the UNSC after the death of Admiral Cole and the following complete retreat into the Inner Colonies.
2549 the ten surviving systems form an alliance to protect themself against possible future threats.
The few remains of the CMA completly leave the UNSC, which doesn't even notice, and join the independent colonies.
Scientist from the other worlds start to explore to wreckage of the Covenant destroyer, after it had been abondand for tat least 15 years.
2553 :
The search for refugees from the Outer colonies ends, while Vektan population has reached over 500 Millions.
Together with the other surviving colonies the Independant colonies have a population of around a billion people.
The building of the Vektsa Shippingyards has begun, a large shipyard which is meant to start an independent ship production, to increase the trade between the colonies.
Its on the planet since the colonies lack the technology to build space yards.
2553:
The independant colonies form the ISA, the Intersolar Strategic Alliance, a defensive and political alliance, which leaves much political independace for the single worlds.
Arcadia Shippingyards are finished and the building of new civilian ships starts.
Strong debattes start over the question if the ISA should form an own military and if new warships should be build.
Since 2550, when the last of the old destroyers had been put out of order, the colonies had no space defense and nothing but militias.
2553:
The first new ISA cruisers is put into service, the ship is built with both UNSC and Covenant technologie, the ships even posses energy weapons, but energy shielding is still not completly finished.
2555:
Contact is made with the surviving colony of Helghan.
Helghan was originally not more than an mining world, colonised by the Helghast Cooperation, a private mining cooperation.
During the war, the Helghast cooperation evacuated most of their people and millions of colonists to Helghan, since the partly poisionous planet was never discoverd by the Covenant.
The poisionous nature of the planet forces the people to life in bad conditions, while the corrupt Administration lives in luxury.
In 2552, a man known as Scolar Visari lead a Coup de etat against the administration, after which he established a fashistic regime known as the Helghast Empire.
He greatly militariced the Helghan society and used the growing economy to build a large army and fleet.
Shortly after both the ISA and the Helghast make contact, war errupts, since Visari seeks conquest.
2555-2560
The Helghast Empire sucessesfully conquer several colonies, which are only poorly defended, until the ISA is able to muster enough troops for an counteroffensive.
The new cruisers prove to be superior to the Helghast ships, which are relativly primative.
The ISA is able to get the upper hand in space combat, but the poorly equipped and also fanatic and well drilled Helghast soldiers prove to be a hard opponent for the unexperienced ISA Marines.
Both sides take heavy looses until all occupied colonies are freed again.
2561:
The long prepared assault on Helghan is completly crushed, due to the ships and weapons the Helghast suddenly developed.
The genius weapon manufrature Jorhan Stahl has supplied the Helghan Army with energy weapons and superior fighter crafts, which crush the unprepared ISA fleet.
But only shortly afterwards Stahl contacts the ISA and offers them a deal to end the war.
He and Admiral Orleck will bring down Visari and sign a peace treaty, if the ISA gives them 2 systems with several inhabitated worlds and all data on the energy shielding technology.
Hard debattes follow in the next weeks, since the ISA High Command is completly fractured over this question.
The war faction wants to end the war as fast as possible and crush the Helghast once and for all, while the Peace faction argues that an military victory would cost far too much.
Another factions argues that they should seek peace but not give the Helghast this much, since they could use it against them in another war.
Finally the decision is made to give Stahl the technology but no inhabitated worlds, they simply gave them the location of some nearby, inhabitable worlds.
Stahl agrees and finally launches the Coup against Visari, which quickly brings down the tyrannt, after Stahls personal army had crushed Visaris bodyguards.
2562:
An official peace treaty is signed between the ISA and the Helghast Dominion .
Both sides only see this as a small break to rebuild and reinforce their forces.
2565:
UNSC makes its firct contact with Vekta since 30 years, as an exploration vessel finds Vekta and shortly afterwards Helghan.
The three goverments have official meeting, but no satisfying results are achieved, since esspecially the Helghast block any possible sollutions.
2567:
After years of diplomacy, with many complications and disagreements, the Glassland-treaty is signed.
With this the UNSC accepts both the ISA and Helghast and as independent nations, who in return don't expand in the former colonies.
The Helghast enact a isolanistic policy, while the ISA and UNSC form healthy trade relations.
The reason for the UNSC to accept the idenpendent colonies is simple.
Both ISA and the Helghast are too weak to really threaten the UNSC, but too strong to simply annex, so they let them have their independace, but make sure that they would still stay weaker than Earth.
They give them 30 percent of the former outer colonies as terretory.
2570:
A joint UNSC-Helghast-ISA fleet, lead by Vice-Admiral Lasky, finds a gigantic alien relict, they call the god key.
Several tries to activate the relict, which is only slightly smaller than a Covenant supercarrier, fail until, per accident, the solution is found, in alien ruins on a nearby moon.
But not only this relict activates, several planetoids across human space break apart , releaving more god keys.
5 are located in UNSC space, 3 in ISA terretory and one directly next to Helghan.
Those god keys, now renamed mass relays, can be used for instant travel between the relicts, quickly becoming an important transportation system within human space.
2573:
A ISA cruiser gets send to an unknown relay by accident, finding itself far away from human soace.
As they try to activate the relay, several alien ships appear and attack as communication fails.
The damaged ship is able to retreat to ISA space and alerts Vekta High Command about the danger.
The ISA asks for help from both UNSC and Heghan, who mobilize their fleets to guard the relays.
The UNSC sends ships to all relays to make sure that no aliens gets through unnoticed.
12th May, 2573 ISA-colony Falos.
Falos was one of the worlds near a Mass Relay and until a few days ago, it had been a peacefull and also wealthy world, which had benefited from trade through the Relays greatly.
But now it was different, the ISA has mobiliced every ships could and now 15 Damocles-class cruisers were guarding the world, supported by several UNSC ships, mainly old Paris-class frigates, since Earth holded back its new ships to protect their own worlds.
Everybody had been shocked about new, obviously aggresive aliens who waited behind the relay and who had attacked an ISA ship for no reason.
It had been the first real threat since the war against the Helghan, since the former Covenant species were, like the Brutes, busy killing themself or like the Sangheili ocuppied with rebuilding their nations.
But now the whole fleet was mobilized and reinforcement were already on their way towards Falos.
Rear-Admiral Archer was in command for the joint defence fleet, he was an old veteran of the Helghast war and one of the few captains who had survived the failed Invasion of Helghan.
He was an calm and popular with his man, a man who would do everything to keep his man alive and who hated to take unnecassary risks.
He had divided his fleet in two groups, the first, the 6 Paris-class frigates, was directly stationed at the Relay to monitor it, while the ISA cruisers holded their position near Falos to protect the colony if needed.
"Rear-Admiral, we are getting hailed by the Azincourts captain, its an emergency signal." the communication officer sounded scared, it seemed like it was getting serious now.
"Put him through." Archer faced the video screen on which Captain D'noir, a man of Afro-american descency, the commanding officer of the UNSC flottile, appeared.
He was relaxed, typical for UNSC officers who were far to well drilled to freak out during a battle :
"Rear-Admiral we have at least 30 unknown ships who just passed through the Relay, their still out of weaon range but are approaching us with high speed. Shall we intercept them ?"
"Negative Captain, your flottile shall fall back to planet and join with my ships, we need our forces concentrated if they prove to be hostile." Archer was just as gefasst as his UNSC counterpart, but he bit his lips the moment the screen went black, since this was not what he had hoped for.
Just a few hours, thats all they had needed until the reinforcements, 20 more Damocles-class cruisers, could have arrived, but now they were outnumberd and hardly had enough ships to cover the planet.
It only took a few minutes until the frigates had reached them and they were quickly followed by the alien fleet.
"The UNSC frigates will form a second line behind our ships, they lack shields so we will have to be their cover." Archers orders were directly set in motion, as D'noirs ships took positions, just in time before the alien fleet approached them.
"Try to contact them use any known frequence and everything you can come up with." the communication officer did as he was commanded, but it soon became obvious that it had no use, since the unknown ships simply kept their course and no answer was received.
"The alien ships are emitting an unknown energy reading, I would guess that they are charging up their weapons." slight panic spread across the bridge of Archers cruiser, this first contact was about to become a war and noone knew what would happen.
The last time aliens attacked humanity, they were technologicly superior and slaughterd billions.
"Send orders to all ships. All weapons ready, charge up Bombard-lasers but only fire with Mass drivers until I order it." it would only took seconds until the aliens were in effective weapons range and nobody knew what they should do, not even Archer himself.
Should they fire first or wait until they were attacked ?
"Aliens are firing, numerous projectiles are fired from the ships." it was strange, but this words let Archer relax a litte.
Projectiles, no fancy energy weapons or lasers of doom, projectiles were something they knew well.
The attack was answerd nearly instantly, as all human ships returned fire with their secondary Mass Drivers, small coil guns from the ISA-cruisers and Onager-guns from UNSC Frigates, but the alien projectiles reached their targets first.
The shields of the cruisers blurred slightly blue as the shells hitted them, and except for two ships who were hit by at least 5 projectiles, all cruisers survived.
One Frigate also turned into a fireball, as some of the shots passed by the cruisers and hitted one of the unshielded ships behind.
Turian Dreadnaught Palavens guard
Admiral Tilius was completly concentrated on the situation, it was nothing usual to meet an unknown species and to directly get into conflict with them.
But those ships seemed to be primitive, some of them had not even barriers and although most of the alien ships withstood the first barrage, there was no doubt that this would become a easy campaign.
Shoot down some newcomers ships, then send in the Asari and let them solve the rest and everything will be fine.
3 alien ships were gone and he had to admit that those larger ships barriers were quite strong, but the next salvo would finish this battle.
"Next salvo out." his weapon officer told him and although two of their frigates had been destroyed by the enemies mass drivers, no one doubted anything.
3 more alien ships exploded under the barrage and the Turian fleet was now closing the distance between them and the aliens, to finish this with Disruptor torpedos.
Those ships seemed to be primitive and since their long range weapons were only weak compared to their own, so he was sure that it would be finished even faster once they got into knife-fight range.
"We are in range for Disruptor Torpedos in 5,4,3,2..." the turian weapons officer would never finish his countdown and Tulius would never find out that he had underrestimated those aliens.
They were only a few hundred miles away from the enemy fleet, so they had no chance to to evade the barrage that hitted the Dreadnaught.
Two, by Citadel standard gigantic, slugs hitted the ship and while the barriers could barely resist the attack, they didn't offer any resistance to what followed only a millisecond afterwards, as two bright blue beams of light hitted the ship, vaporising the Dreadnoughts bridge and burning a large hole into its mid sections.
From a few second the heavily damaged ship still floated, but then the main reactor went criticall and the whole ship turned into a large,nuclear fireball.
Captain Segetiu, commanding officer of the nearby cruiser Cesario, could only watch in shock and horror, as not only the dreadnought, but also eight other ships, both cruisers and frigates were destroyed by the enemies volley.
The cruisers could hardly withstand the massive slugs, just to get finished by the aliens secondary weapons, while the frigates were simply crushed by the massive projectile.
And what was even worse, the larger ships seemed to posses energy weapons and the kenetic barriers were simply ignored by the energy beams, which melted the metal they hitted, leaving giant holes in what ever they hitted.
One cruiser somehow survived one hit, although atmosphere leacked out of the giant hole and tried to retreat, while the frigates were simply burned away by the massive energy.
The shock only lasted for a second, Segetiu was far to well trained to stay paralysed by this unexpected turn of events.
"Open com lines to all surviving ships, disruptor torpedos on the larger ships and mass drivers on the unshielded ships in the second line." the orders were directly followed and it took only seconds until the counter-attack started and two dozens slugs and a dozen torpedos made their way towards the human fleet.
They would pay for what they had done.
Rear-Admiral Archer had been nearly euphoric for moment as the main weapons of his fleet had shot down nearly a third off the enemy ships, but now D'Noir was dead, together with his ship and all that was left of the defense fleet were 5 cuisers and a single, damaged Paris-class frigate.
Those goddam aliens had some sort of torpedo, which seemed to disort space, and those things had destroyed 6 of his cruisers, while the enemy projectiles had destroyed nearly all UNSC ships.
"Admiral, the aliens are sending drop ships, should we try to intercept them ?" everbody on the ship had until now nearly lost their nerves, the ISA fleet may be considerd well trained and equipped, but most of them had never faced such a situation in which they were pushed into the corner like this.
Those who had were dead and maybe still floating in Helghan space, but Archer was one of the few who had survived the Helghans disaster.
"Send an retreat order. All ships will fall back and form a defensiv formation near Falos moon." the whole crew knew what this order meant, they would give Falos to the aliens, at least for now.
"Evade any attacks by the enemy, we will wait for reinforcements and then win this battle." the orders were set in motion and the few remaining human ships departed from the battle, leaving the planet to the aliens.
All that could now stop them was the planets garrision.
Jesus they were lost.
Falos Capital
At least 20 percent of the colonies 50 million inhabitants lived in the Capital city of Norwal, making it a giant and growing city full of life and wealth.
But now the city was in pure chaos, people hurried through the streets, searching for save places or trying to find anything they could use to leave.
But also thousands of soldiers from the local garrison rushed through the city, getting into position to defend it as good as they could.
Most of them had no battle experience, Falos had never seen any invasion, neither by the Covenant nor the Helghast, so nobody had experience with this kind of situation.
A large river divided the city and every bridge was now guarded by at least three dozen soldiers, while the rest of the troops were scatterd across the city.
A large number protected the goverment district, while the others had taken positions across the whole urban area, guarding important streets or barracks within the area.
You could say many bad things about Falos garrison, like for example that they sold military rations and equipment on the black market, but they had mobiliced very quickly within the few hours the defending fleet had been able to give them.
But now this wasn't important, as hundreds of enemy dropships filled the sky and all AA-guns across the area opend fire.
"Where is our Airforce ?" Corporal John Bradley was in command of a five-man squad, with which he was supposed to reinforce a platoon near the central city bridge, as the hundreds of enemy dropships appeared in the sky.
Those planes didn't make much noise compared to the roaring that now filled the sky, as half a dozen ISA heavy fighterplanes flew over the small squad, engaging the dropships.
Heavy machine guns came to life and riped two enemy planes apart, until the aliens escort fighters appeared.
The ISA planes directly left their formation and engaged in dogfights with the aliens, who proved to be more agile than their human counterparts.
But this wouldn't be worth to much, since those six planes were only the vanguard of a larger force, as now the whole city was filled with roaring of large fighter engines, the engines of over 60 fighters attacking.
Dogfights, laser beams and machine gun fire now filled the air, as still hundreds of dropships made their way to the ground, unloading the troops they carried.
"Dig in soldiers." John and his squad went for cover as two dropships landed only a few dozen yards away from them, unloading at least 10 alien soldiers on nearby street.
The ISA-soldiers ducked behind some cars which were still standing on the street, and pointed got ready to face the attackers.
The aliens noticed them, slowly aprproached the small unit, ducking behind cover and slowly making their way towards their opponents and finally opend fire at them.
It took a few seconds and hundreds of enemy bullets until the human soldiers finally returned fire, but their rounds simply bounced of the aliens personal shields and this fact made the aliens now simply charge .
"Not so fast you good damm dinosaurs." a female soldier raised her head out of the cover, Private First class Sarah Fennigon, an old friend of John and armed with an battle rifle, which had a far large caliber than the Assault rifles the others were using .
She fired two burst on the nearest alien, whos already strayend barriers shatterd, while the last two bullets penetrated the chest armour and directly killed him, since his body now hitted the ground motionless.
The rest of the alien went into cover again, still firing supressive fire on the humans.
"Sarah !" the brown haired woman hadn't noticed that her comrades had already retreated a few yards away from her, so John grabbed her arm and teared her away, while the rest provided suppresion fire.
"Incoming bombing run !" was all he could screem to his old friends, before the noise of nearby engines roaring supressed any other sound.
Two heavy fighters flew over the streets, low enough to race between the buildings, while one of them dropped several small bombs over the aliens.
The shockwave of the explosion knocked John and Sarah over, so John landed on top of her and when they had finally recoverd from the explosion, Sarah asked pertly :
"John, you'll need to kiss me if you want to stay on top of me longer." everbody knew of their history, the fact that Sarah and John had been in a akward on and of relationship until Sarah had also joined military.
Since then John had permanently ended the relationship, since he didn't want to be the superior of his girlfriend.
Sarah had still not accepted this, so she teased him when ever she could.
"Not the time for this Private." John now came back on his feet, trying to ignore what Sarah had sayed.
He then screamed into his radio, telling the pilots that they should warn them earlier than next time, but the pilot only replied joking :" Just gotta keep your heads lower next time Bradley." everybody knew which pilot was flying in one of those fighter planes, Dimitry Chrustow, one of the best and also most arrogant pilots of the garrison airforce.
"Just shoot down aliens, asshole." John changed the frequence of his radio, trying to avoid the pilots mocking.
The rest of the squad was now checking on the alien soldiers, most of them had been tored apart by the bombs and the only one who was still living was already taking his last breaths, since a large shrapnel had penetrated his chest.
One of the soldiers seemed to fell pity for the alien, who was obviously in pain, so he drew his sidearm, pointed it at the aliens head and pulled the trigger.
Blue blood splashed across the body as the head was torn apart by the bullet and the alien body stopped moving.
"Lets keep on moving, the nearby barrack is attacked and asks for reinforcements, so lets get moving." John orderd and everybody got ready to depart again.
The battle had just started and they wouldn't stop until their homeplanet was save.