UNSC Space Dock, Sol System Oort Cloud

July 4, 2620 21:30 hours Nova's Light shipboard time

Bridge of the UNSC Nova's Light

Fleet Commander Sarah Gorman sat in her command chair on the bridge of the most powerful ship ever constructed by the UNSC. She turned to the Beta Shift operations officer, Commander Sanada.

"Sanada, send me the feed from the exterior drone cameras. Link to terminal 2."

"Pulling feed now Commander, sending to your terminal." The feed popped up on the screen to Sarah's right. The drone feed showed the UNSC Nova's Light in all her glory. Her rounded shape is much more graceful than the rest of the UNSC's a few seconds of studying the Nova, Sarah stated,"Ok people, status checks. Weapons."

Lieutenant Kodai looked up from his half-dozen screens showing weapon simulations and status, swiveled his chair around and said, "Sniper pods A1-M50 just finished loading, with 4 reloads for each pod nearby in armored ready lockers. The fabricators are getting M51-Z100 loaded. That should take another 5 minutes for the initial shot and the reloads. Ammunition is in place for the Close-In MACs, Point-Defense MACs, and Super Heavy Deck Guns, and the quad 50mm gatlings are being loaded. Pulse lasers, plasma torps and energy projectors are hot and ready. Nova torpedoes are loaded, but not armed. I'm still running tests on the new turreted MACs and the prow guns. Each turret has 3 guns that fire 500 metric ton projectiles at 299,000 km/s. They take 1.5 minutes to charge up a full power shot. These new guns could probably go straight through 2 CAS-class Assault Carriers and damage a have 32 turrets placed around the hull, arranged so that I can get at least 4 on any one target. The prow MegaMACs are something else entirely. They fire 1,000 ton rounds at the same speed as the turret MACs. The coils for them run along our entire spine , emerging through the prow. They take about 3 minutes to charge up to full power. Honestly, I think that the MegaMACs could pulverize a planet as their kinetic energy is equal to 10.7 teratons of TNT. The largest bomb ever detonated on Earth was 50 megatons. The MegaMACs are 214,000 times more powerful than that. We should use these guns very carefully."

"Roger that,Weps. Operations, what's your status?"

Without looking up, Sanada replied, "We have material for the fabricators to last about 4 years with our current storage and usage. If we have to, we can mine a system's asteroid belt/Oort cloud/Kuiper belt for any necessary raw material. We have 2 Revolution-class supercarriers, Saratoga and Yorktown, 4 Infinity-class battleships, Yamato, Musashi, Shinano, and Hercules, each with their complement of 10 Strident-class heavy frigates, and 10 Ares-class super destroyers, Midway, Guadalcanal, Saipan, Leyte Gulf, Coral Sea, Philippine Sea, Okinawa, Tarawa, Jutland, and Bismarck. All told, we have 2 supercarriers, 4 battleships, 10 super-destroyers, and 40 heavy frigates. We have 20,000 squadrons of Broadswords split between the 7 largest ships. Each squadron is 25 strong with up to 50 replacements ready per squadron. We have 5,000 squadrons of standard Pelicans and 5,000 gunship squadrons. There are 4,000 squadrons of Albatross-heavy dropships. AI initialization is nearly complete. We have 5 AI in total. Hyuga manages the control of the ship when we are aiming the MegaMACs. Haruna manages the turreted MACs once targets are designated by the weapons officer. Kirishima handles point-defense for the ship. Takao manages acquisition and scanning of targets. Iona handles pinpoint navigation and helps the operations officer with operational matters. Each ship of frigate-class or above has their own AI installed."

"Engineering,status?"

Commander Tokugawa replied, " Main antimatter reactors are still being booted up. That will be at least another 45 minutes. This is the first time antimatter has been used in any significant quantities in our history, so my engineers are being as cautious as they can while still being as fast as possible. Secondary Autumn-type reactors are running at 30%. We are independent of base power. Antimatter storage bays are online and the docks are sending over what supply of antimatter they have. We are still warming up the particle accelerator, so we cannot yet produce our own fuel. Deuterium storage is full up. Main engines are in their final test runs, so we should have thrust within 5 minutes. Slipspace capacitors are at full can enter Slipspace on your order. The drives are rated for 10,000 lightyears per day, but that requires our main reactors to be online due to the massive power requirements. With the Autumn-type reactors running at 50% dedicated to the Slipspace drives, the fastest we can go is 500 ly/day. At full power, the drives can drop us onto a needlepoint. Covenant shield generators are online and ready to provide shields. Hardlight shields report ready as well. That gives us 5 layers of Hardlight shielding and 5 layers of CSO-class supercarrier level shielding."

"Communications?"

Lieutenant Commander Mori said, "All ships check in as ready to be deployed on 5 minute notice. Slipspace comms are online."

"Navigation, as soon as the engines report ready, move us out of dock then set a 20-hour course to Harvest."

Lieutenant Commander Shima replied, "Aye, aye ma'am. Leaving dock and setting 20-hour course for Harvest once the engines are ready."

"Captain Okita, take the conn. I'll be in Spartan Town."

"Aye, aye ma'am. I have the conn."

Sarah got up from her command chair, walked to the elevator doors, opened them, and jumped down the shaft. Near the deck she wanted, she grabbed the elevator cable to slow down. She opened the doors to the elevator and began to walk toward the Spartan-V quarters.

5 minutes later, the Nova shuddered to life as her engines ignited for the first time. She began to pull away from the docking platform designed specifically for her. There was no fanfare on the bridge, as the crew were all veterans who were used to pulling out of spacedock and moving into the icy blackness of space. A blue portal opened off the bow of the massive warship, then closed up once the ship had passed through. The UNSC Nova's Light was on her maiden voyage into the depths of space.