From: CINC, UNSC Navy Fleet Admiral Lord Terrence Hood

To: All Members of the UNSC

Security Clearance Required: None

I will not lie to you, all of you. We are on our last legs. Reach, along with most of our navy, has fallen. Hundreds of millions of brave men and women died on that planet, and it's only a matter of time before they find Earth.

Many of you have lost families, friends, and loved ones to the Covenant. Most, if not all of you, have seen brothers or sisters-in-arms get slaughtered by the same Covenant. Many of you have given up in this fight, thinking that fighting just prolongs the inevitable.

I cannot say with any certainty that we'll survive if the Covenant finds Sol, and with it, Earth. Neither can I say that victory is in our grasp. No, it is very likely that when the Covenant finds Earth, we'll all die with it.

But before you bend over and die, ask yourself this. Are you going to resign yourself to a pitiful death, just standing there while the enemy murders innocents? Or will you fight, and take some of them down with you?

Think of your fallen loved ones. Think of your fallen brothers or sisters-in-arms. Think of the friends you have lost to the enemy that seems nigh unstoppable.

And I just ask you of this- would they want you to lie down and die? Or would they want you to fight, and to give the alien bastards hell?

I, for one, absolutely refuse to just lay down and die. I refuse for the human race to be a mere footnote in galactic history. I refuse to go down quietly.

And if we fall, I promise you this, hundreds of years from now, when the Covenant thinks of humans, they will shiver in fear. For even when the last human was cornered, he, or she, refused to surrender. Refused to go down without a fight. And I'll be damned before a human surrenders to these bastards. I- no, we, will give them hell. We will make them curse when they think of humans, and we will kill so many of them that when they finally kill the last of us, they would be an endangered race.

I know that I stand against them. And I ask of you this- will you join me?