Prologue

Chapter One: Scheherazade

October 2, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)

New Tahiti, Pacificus System

I still remember my home; even though the last time I saw it was over ten years ago.

I remember the lush, tropical climate, with the sporadic rainfall and hot summers. I remember the white buildings and peaceful streets of Mariana City, the port city which our home by the sea was located outside of, where my family would frequently make shopping trips.

I remember the coastline of white beaches and sky-blue sea. I remember the swamps of Earth-introduced mangroves that grew further down the coast that had been brought to New Tahiti during the planet's colonisation era, extending into the lush jungle inland.

I remember seeing the giant zeppelin-fish – New Tahiti's equivalent to the great whales of Earth – cruising and feeding in the plankton-filled waters during their migration season. We would often take our sailing yacht out to see them, as their huge bulks filled the sea.

I remember our house – that large, beautiful white villa with a roof of red-tiles, alone with a scattering of other villas in the scene of natural beauty. I remember how my father would regularly maintain it, the car, the boat and just about everything else whenever he had the time. My mother also cared greatly for that house, always making sure it was just right for her family. I remember how I would play on the beach and swim in the sea with my friends and older sister.

I remember how happy those times were; and how they ended when my home burned.

I can still remember – the memory will never leave me – when the announcement came over the news that the Covenant had arrived in-system, along with the evacuation order for all civilians planetside. I was fifteen when I received the news.

My family had known that it was likely to happen to us throughout the war. I had gone through my earlier years with the bliss of childhood ignorance about the Covenant advance through the outer colonies. One heard about the war on the news and I knew that my father's business made its own healthy contribution to the war-effort, but as a child it all largely passed me by. Indeed most colonists were equally blissful about how dangerous our enemy was at that time, thanks to ONI's control of the media.

But as the war dragged on and I reached my teens, we all grew up. My first real lesson about the war came on the day my sister enlisted into the marines as a 2nd Lieutenant, five years before the Covenant came to New Tahiti. She kissed and hugged her ten-year old brother before she left, and my teary-eyed parents. I had the feeling I would not see her again.

The second lesson which I learned – along with all of humanity – came on August 30th, 2552. The news announcer, perhaps for the first time, gave us the honest truth plainly and simply. Not even the UNSC's official war bulletins could hide the scale of the disaster.

Reach, humanity's great fortress in the stars, had fallen in just over a month. Over 700 million people, military and civilian alike, had been killed. The best had been done – I was inspired then, and remain inspired now, by the incredible stories of courage in the fight against the unstoppable. No amount of courage, however, could ever change the fact that this was a crippling defeat for the UNSC. Our powerful military, which we had heard praised so much on the news, had failed.

All of us, including the fifteen year old boy who listened to the news with his parents and neighbours – I can still remember my mother's tears – knew what this meant. Much of the fleet had either been destroyed or had pulled back to Earth. Humanity was fighting for its very survival…and losing.

Our little paradise of a colony was one of the few worlds that remained untouched. Now it was undefended and ripe for attack. Then, on that same August 30th, my third lesson about the Great War arrived with a knock at the door from a Marine Corps Sergeant. I still pity that man to this day.

Lieutenant Fern Crawford – my older sister – had been killed in action during the fighting at Reach. I still can't describe how we felt then. The war had come home to us already.

It did not take long for me to see it up close. On October 2nd, just over a month after receiving the news of Fern's death, the Covenant arrived, along with the sound of guns and plasma.

The announcement was made on the emergency broadcast system. I leaned against the wall, my whole body shaking.

I dropped the glass I had been drinking from, which shattered on the tiled kitchen floor. My parents said nothing - they let the broken glass lie there. We would be leaving soon. They didn't bother to clean it up as we left.

The UNSC forces based on New Tahiti were outnumbered and isolated; they consisted of nothing more than three Army divisions, along with five frigates and a destroyer in orbit. The soldiers who formed the planetary garrison were demoralised. Their equipment was as ever inferior to that of those they faced in battle. However, no one who was there can deny that – as on Reach – they fought bravely and relentlessly to give civilians like us a chance to escape.

All but two of the UNSC ships were destroyed by the end of the battle – for the price of a Covenant destroyer, four Corvettes and a CCS-class Cruiser that had been destroyed in a suicide attack by the frigate UNSC Coventry. The survivors - the frigate UNSC Ottawa, along with the destroyer UNSC Zulu - escaped to the far side of the planet, where they covered the evacuation.

Several mass driver cannons based in Mariana City held back the Covenant Corvettes – allowing any vessel in the vicinity to evacuate from there without interference. This was demonstrated in dramatic fashion in the sky above.

All of my family and neighbours saw one of the Corvettes shot down in a blaze of white and indigo fire as it tried to take position over the city; a shell from one of the mass drivers struck the alien ship right in the engines and ignited huge fires in the stern. A great flower of fire and black smoke burned and blossomed high in the sky where the ship had been hit; no doubt it could be seen for miles around.

The purple-coloured Covenant ship listed heavily as it fell from the sky before crashing into the sea, sending up a great spout of superheated water as it exploded on impact, boiling the ocean around it. A column of smoke and steam rose from the sea, and remained visible throughout the battle for miles.

It was scenes like that which helped remind us that Humanity was not mere livestock passing through a slaughterhouse. There was no escaping the fact that we were losing this war, that my planet was doomed and that the Human race's chances of survival were slim. However, no-one – especially not the Covenant – could escape another fact; that Humanity was fighting back hard and would continue to fight back until the end, while those who tried to extinguish us were paying a heavy price for their efforts.

But there was only so much all of that could accomplish.

The Army kept the Covies from reaching the cannons long enough for civilians to evacuate, despite the relentless onslaught. However, they did not hide the fact that they could not hold forever. We would have to leave while our troops could still give us the time. News travelled fast about the alien siege of our planet, and as such people were quick to draw up their plans of escape.

Everyone on New Tahiti also quickly learned something else about this Covenant assault on our world; it was lead and spearheaded by the Jiralhanae. This had grown increasingly common in the later years of the war. For reasons no one knew at the time, Brute-lead fleets were now leading separate, independent assaults from the mainstream Sangheili-dominated forces – and New Tahiti had the dubious honour of being a target for these unique assaults.

This only added to the terror. The Brutes had a savage reputation even among the Covenant. We all knew the stories of what happened to humans who fell into their hands. I have no doubt that as I witnessed the invasion as a frightened mid-teen, horrific scenes akin to those on Beta Gabriel that same year were being repeated in any populated area the Brutes entered. No one wanted to be in those areas for long.

My family, along with the other families that lived in our area, already had our own plan to evacuate. We were fortunate enough to still be miles away from the front-line – a good distance of over twenty miles in spite of the fact that Mariana City was still being heavily besieged. We were even more fortunate that we had a means of escape immediately available to us.

One particularly wealthy neighbour in our community of well-to-do villas, Mr Hessen, owned a private space yacht, the Scheherazade. She was sleek and impressive, coloured a gleaming white and was equipped with her own slipspace drive, which Hessen apparently often used for business trips and private vacations. He agreed – along with everyone else in the area – that his yacht should be our evacuation ship, and succeeded in obtaining clearance from the military to do so. He quickly prepared it for launch.

It was strange to prepare to leave the place I had known all my life as home. I had never left New Tahiti before, and it still surprises me to this day that I was able to cope mentally with doing so as it was reduced to ashes. That is not to say that it did not affect me - but I still consider it a miracle that neither myself nor my mother and father suffered a nervous breakdown.

We all made a decision to travel light - packing would cost time that we did not have. I left my home with nothing more than an extra pair of pyjamas, a wash-bag with basic toiletries and the clothes that I wore. It was the first day of my life as a hapless refugee - but I could have had it so much worse.

When we all gathered at Hessen's private airstrip to leave on the Scheherazade, hours after witnessing the shoot-down of that Covenant Corvette, it was plain to see that our world would soon burn.

The remaining Corvettes, staying out of the range of the mass drivers, were supporting their ground forces with plasma bombardment, softening up the Army troopers and driving them back further into the city. Covenant ships were already reported as having glassed cities and towns elsewhere on the planet at low altitude – perhaps that was the reason for the orange tinge in the sky, and the dark clouds further away. We could hear the explosions of heavy plasma and artillery fire for miles around.

For now, the Covenant was being held back from overrunning the area around Mariana City. Anti-aircraft batteries kept their Phantom gunships and Banshee fighters clear of the local airspace; I could see the bursts of flak combined with the orange-tinted streaks of SAMs, and Covenant aircraft being shot down.

If we were to have a chance of getting away, the time was now. But events took a different course.

I remember that we were about to begin the process of boarding the ship, having left most of our possessions behind – when I heard the sound of Mr Hessen's hunting rifle firing from somewhere in the nearby forest, followed by an inhuman snarl and the sound of some kind of energy weapon.

We all froze. He had been checking the perimeter with several others who owned guns in the neighbourhood of villas, making sure everything was clear while his pilot got the ship started. Something had clearly gone wrong. Very wrong.

Several other shots were fired, and one of the other armed men came running back, shouting for us to get on the ship and leave, before he was silenced by a bolt of sharp green energy passing through his skull. We all stood in terror as he dropped without a sound.

It was then that they emerged from the trees; a dozen birdlike, reptilian creatures, some covered with feathers, others without a plumage but with quills on their heads – though these were absent on a couple of them. Several of the aliens carried the handheld energy shields their kind were said to favour in battle, but most were armed with long rifles of various designs. They moved like a flock of birds, staying close to one another and constantly squawking and quacking in an incomprehensible dialect.

I knew what they were, of course; I'd heard all about the Jackals and their Skirmisher cousins in the news bulletins on Waypoint. All of us present stood there, frozen in terror as the creatures closed distance with us.

What were they doing here? The alien forces were reported as being held back by the Army many miles away. Not that it mattered; they were here now and there was nowhere to run.

"My God…" my father gasped. Most of us were stunned in terrified silence. The younger children were mewling with fright, some of the women present were already weeping with horror, one or two of our party were becoming hysterical as others tried in vain to shut them up.

We were dead. The news had made it clear the Covenant planned to wipe out the human race, and the Kig-Yar had a particular reputation for savagery. Stories from the front suggested that they ate as well as killed humans who fell into their hands – in some cases POWs were reported as being eaten alive. Many massacres of civilians on the ground were carried out by Grunts, Skirmishers and Jackals that reportedly tore women and children apart with their bare claws.

I knew I was going to die, right there and then. I saw three Jackals armed with those elegant, violet carbines point their weapons at us, ready to fire. I closed my eyes and hugged my mother, waiting for the inevitable.

The last thing I remembered thinking was what the afterlife – if there was one – would look like when I reached it. I hoped I would see my sister again - perhaps dying would not be so bad, after all. I had often heard it said as being no different than going into the next room, whenever a grandparent or elderly friend or acquaintance passed away.

I'd heard it said when Fern was lost, too. If I was to pass into that room, I'd be with my family; all of us together again. I felt strangely content, as if nothing mattered anymore.

However, fate had a surprise in store for me – and everyone else who was gathered in that place, on that day.

The shots never came – or if they were going to come, they were averted by a low hissing sound. I heard it clearly - along with the persistent thunder of distant guns - and knew that I was still in this world. When I opened my eyes, I saw that the Jackals were keeping their guns trained on us; but they didn't fire. They remained in that position, squawking and gesturing with their gun barrels for us to keep our distance.

What?

They were then joined by another of the heavily feathered aliens - a Skirmisher. This one was clad in green armour, armed with a needle rifle and wounded in the arm, probably by a grazing bullet from Hessen's rifle. It moved closer, squawking and hissing at us, gesturing in a direction away from the Scheherazade. We all understood the message and stepped a distance away from the ship, where we kneeled on the ground. The three Jackals kept us at gunpoint, somewhat more content.

We were still frightened, but confusion was etched on our faces. Several people whispered nervously.

What was this? Weren't the Covenant supposed to be killing us instead of taking us prisoner? Why not put a few energy and needle rounds through our heads and get it over with?

There was another Skirmisher who I was quick to notice, standing in the midst of those who were holding us prisoner, looking like he was at the head of it all. I focused my attention on him.

He was armed with a particle beam rifle - the optimum weapon of all Kig-Yar snipers - and wearing the high-tech helmet and green armour that their commandos wore. I noticed that this specimen had several scars on its body, and a particularly deep, nasty one over its left jaw. On its left hand, one of its three talons was missing. It was also visibly older than the others - he must have been a veteran of many battles.

The beam rifle-wielding Skirmisher lowered its weapon, quacking in a calm tone to its comrades, which made it easy to see that this was their leader – perhaps the equivalent of a Human senior sergeant or petty officer. It turned to look at us, keeping a steady eye on its new captives. It then slowly and deliberately shouldered its rifle, before stowing it on its back, presumably onto a magnetic weapons strip similar to those used by UNSC personnel.

This senior individual then took several steps towards us, before moving his handicapped left hand to put a single clawed digit on the lip of his jaws, while reaching back with his right to tap the stowed beam rifle with a talon. The message was clear; keep quiet and don't try anything.

We took the hint.

Was that alien the one who had prevented the others from firing? If so, why would he do that? Why spare Humans now, when he and his kind had brutally slaughtered so many in the past? None of us who were there that day could bring ourselves to believe what we were seeing.

Four of the other seven Kig-Yar spread out around the perimeter and secured it, while the three that were armed with energy shields and plasma pistols ran up the ramp into the grounded yacht.

Within seconds two of them came back – the third stayed in the ship – forcing the pilot out of the yacht with butts from their energy shields. The man put up little resistance – he was unarmed – and joined the rest of us as we kneeled on the ground in front of our captors.

The pilot looked just as bewildered as everyone else, unable to believe that they hadn't just killed him. Still, he managed to tell us something even more unexpected and far-fetched.

"That buzzard bastard who dragged me out of the cockpit," he hissed, "he's firin' up the ship...didn't think they knew how to work it."

He was proved to be wrong as the yacht's engines began to hum and roar, readying the craft for immediate take-off.

It was now obvious what these aliens wanted. They seemed to be looking to get out of here quickly, just like us. For that, they needed the ship.

Even so, this whole thing was just so…odd to me, even as I knelt under the barrels of Covenant rifles. Why were they trying to get away with our ship? Were they looting it, or did their superiors need it for some plan? I did remember hearing that the Kig-Yar were pirates – there were regular reports of their ships attacking freighters and looting just about anything aboard. But that still didn't explain what they were doing this far behind UNSC lines – or why they had not killed us.

Everyone else was just as befuddled as I was - though many were still terrified. There was still the occasional whimper that occasionally had to be silenced. Yet this situation was so bizarre that the dominant facial expression was a dumbstruck, open-mouthed stare.

Whatever the reason, they were quick to get aboard the Scheherazade. The Jackals and Skirmishers around the perimeter boarded first, flocking swiftly up the ramp like agitated birds. They were just as swiftly followed by those that were guarding us, though they kept us in the sights of their weapons as they moved up the ramp. Their scarred leader was the last to leave.

As he did so, he looked back at us, regarding us with his old, weary eyes. In turn, I stared with incomprehension at this source of unexpected mercy as the sounds of war raged on in the distance.

In those alien eyes that I met - eyes which I would have believed were simply the cold eyes of a monster - I thought I could almost see something. Something more than everything I had ever been told about the Covenant. However, the moment did not last. The alien broke his stare, slowly turning his head away.

His movements seemed different now from the combat ready, aggressive, on-edge stance we had seen from him and his comrades earlier. Now they were drained, slow, wearisome - as if he carried a great weight on his shoulders. It was only after a couple of seconds that the Kig-Yar leader regained his natural alertness and dashed up the ramp.

No sooner had he boarded that the yacht took off into the sky, leaving us behind. I watched it soar higher and higher, until it vanished into the clouds. The UNSC anti-aircraft guns didn't fire on it – their controlling AI must have registered it as one of ours.

We slowly stood up again, struggling to make sense of what had just happened, unable to comprehend that those aliens had spared our lives. Not all of us had been spared though; Mr Hessen's body and those of the other three men with guns lay where they fell.

It was at least a quarter of an hour before the sound of several Warthog engines filled the airstrip, and the Army troopers arrived. Their officer was quick to the point.

"What the hell happened here?"

"Jackals," my father explained, though his voice was distant. He was still bewildered by what had just happened. "Skirmishers, too. They stole our escape yacht; killed the owner, left us behind."

"Probably the same Jackals we've been chasing these past several hours," the Lieutenant reckoned. "They were spotted after infiltrating behind our lines. We found and took care of some Brute Stalkers some way back from them." His face then took on a look of pure scepticism. "You're saying they didn't even try to kill you?"

My father nodded, while I gulped in relief when I heard that those cloaked Brutes had been in the area. If they had reached us, we would all have been killed for certain. Yet the same should have been the case when the Jackals reached us. It was the case every time Jackals reached human civilians, according to all the news I'd heard. None of what we had just witnessed made sense.

"They just took the ship and left."

The soldier seemed to be as puzzled as we were, but he let the matter rest.

"We'd better get you out of here," he announced. "The Covies are pushing closer and closer to the city – it'll only be a matter of time before they secure a position here. I'll arrange for you to be taken to Mariana – you can get a ride from the spaceport down there. There are still plenty of evac birds available."

The soldiers were quick to get us to the city. They loaded us onto the available warthogs, and called for other vehicles which soon arrived. We were driven to the Mariana City spaceport, but these events and those that followed were all a blur to me, and still are. Perhaps I was just too relieved at having survived the prior ordeal to commit anything to memory.

We were then loaded onto a slipspace transport liner. As we left, the last image I would have of my home was played out before me, through the porthole of the transport. What was happening right at that moment ensured that what I saw that day would definitely not remain a blur. The first glassing I had ever personally witnessed - and I hope, the last - took place before my eyes.

Many aboard were numbed to expressionless silence as they watched. Others turned away, while others watched only to break down into tears and wails.

Through the windows of the craft, we had a perfect view of the Covenant fleet as it began to turn the beautiful planet into a smoking ball of molten glass. This was still the early stages of the glassing, where the warships burned select areas of the planet from low altitude as well as from orbit. Their concentrated beams of energy painted the green, lush surface orange with their fire, while thick black clouds of dust, smoke and white-hot steam from the boiled lakes and oceans filled the atmosphere - the planet was being rapidly suffocated as well burned alive.

I knew that I was watching the death of millions of people. Not everyone had been able to escape as we had.

I kept my gaze fixed on the burning, smouldering sphere that just yesterday had been my home, with a perfect vantage in orbit that allowed everyone to see all those lush forests, all that beautiful coastline, all those memories – burned and vaporised into nothingness.

This world had been my childhood, a beautiful, well-populated, prosperous, happy world. And now it was gone.

Somehow, I did not tear myself away from the viewing port – but I felt the death of my home planet along with everything I had known, like a heavy, unbearable weight in my chest. Tears soon flowed. Sadness overcame me – while anger welled up like magma in a volcano.

It might have been impotent anger, but I didn't care. I wanted to get back at those who destroyed my home – who had destroyed my life. I cursed myself that I was not old enough to enlist and fight, to take up arms against those who burned away my beloved home.

However, I'm also not ashamed to say that I felt relief just as much. The Covenant might kill me later, but they had failed to kill me today. I also still had my family – something left of my former life, of this place…I was privileged in that sense. I knew there were others on board who had no doubt lost their entire families, left behind on what was now a ball of ash and molten rock. They would have nothing left of New Tahiti before it burned.

There was also another thought streaming through my mind that helped temper all of that anger and hatred; I was alive because of Covenant soldiers who showed mercy. Not because I'd been saved by fellow humans, our own soldiers whose duty it was to protect us – I was allowed to live by the Covenant. How could I ever make sense of that?

The view soon vanished into darkness as we entered slipspace.

It was two weeks before we arrived at our destination, as the ship took several detours to try to throw the Covenant off, in compliance with the Cole protocol. Our destination was Sigma Octanus IV, of all places. I had thought Earth would have been the safer place for refugees like us, but of course I was proved wrong; the homeworld was attacked three days later. That news only served to crush our spirits even more.

We remained at Sigma Octanus for the rest of the war in a miserable, decrepit refugee camp, which we shared with those already displaced by the failed Covenant invasion of that world. Some, though, had just as much anger for UNSC forces - it had been a HAVOC nuclear warhead that had destroyed Cote D'azur, after all.

Those many long months that we spent as refugees passed by slowly. Although we had calendars to tell the time, there was almost no communication with the other colonies or Earth – the COM grid on Sigma Octanus had been heavily damaged during the Covenant assault in July. It was a miracle that the UNSC was still able to maintain a single supply line.

It was a hard life, without much hope for the future as one piece of knowledge, one dreaded certainty, hung over us like an ever present dark storm cloud; that the Covenant would return to finish what they started on this planet. It almost felt like purgatory. Nevertheless, there was a sense of solidarity between all of those that had lost their homes, and that made the experience somewhat more bearable.

But shrugging off the loss of all you have ever known is no simple feat. Many of us made homeless by the war were now hollow husks, shadows of what we had been – I know that my parents were. They'd lost their daughter and their home within a week.

Others burned with hatred, and quickly enlisted into the forces the first chance they got. I know I would have – I tried to soon after arriving. I even lied about my age to the recruiter, but my father caught me and brought me back to our allotment.

I remained angry at him for a long time. Now I firmly believe I owe him my life – a fifteen year old boy-soldier, rushed through training as new recruits were at the time, would not have lasted long in the final battle for Earth. My parents didn't want to lose another child. I was all they had left.

Then a very different piece of news came months later, via a courier ship sent from Earth, due to the on-going repairs to the planetary communications relay. A piece of news that was sent to every home in the refugee camp, that we had to play again on a recorder and watch several times before we could accept it as the truth.

The war was over. The Covenant had collapsed. Their advance had been halted at Earth. The threat of three decades was ended overnight.

We couldn't believe it. A good deal of us didn't believe it; after all, the media had lied to us before about holding the enemy back. To hear this news now only to find it to be false later would have been an even greater emotional blow than the sight of our burning home. We had had too many of our dreams and hopes shattered to believe yet another optimistic news report.

But then, as the battered colonial communications network came back online, we learned it was the truth. When the war was formally declared over that next March, I cried with joy.

The rest, as they say, is history.

September 8, 2565 (UNSC Calendar)

Vancouver City, URNA, Earth, Sol System

All of these thoughts, all of these memories; they came back to me, in the dusty sunlight of my office in Vancouver, when I read the almost unbelievable letter I received one day in September. The smoke from my latest cigarette climbed and drifted from the ashtray on my desk and around my head, mixing with the hot, stuffy air as I struggled to believe what I was reading.

It had been a long time; thirteen years – since my homeworld fell. The memory will never leave me. But in that time, I've been able to rebuild my life.

My parents and I remained in that refugee camp for months. I was luckier than many others – the precise number of orphans created by the Great War is still unknown, thought it probably extends into the many millions. I still had a family, if not a home.

Eventually, we were able to apply for a resettlement programme on Earth – my mother and father had no desire to live on any of the remaining colonies, some of which were reportedly turning insurrectionist. The homeworld was the safest place right now.

We arrived on Earth in the summer of 2553, and found a home in Vancouver city. Although the Covenant assault on Earth had affected areas of every continent it had largely been concentrated in Africa, where the giant Forerunner artefact still stands; there were still many parts that were left untouched. The Northern territories of the United Republic of North America were among these, albeit swollen with refugees from the Covenant attack on Cleveland.

My father found himself a new job; I found myself a school and then a college, where I developed my interest in journalism. Once I finished college, I made it a career and became a reporter, starting at my local paper and eventually moving to Waypoint.

I reported on the uncertain post-war atmosphere of the time and the brushfire conflicts with the insurrection in the Outer Colonies, wrote articles on colonial relations and took part in documentaries on the victims of the war which I had experienced first-hand in my young life. One award-winning documentary film which I took part in as an interviewer told a full account of the war from stories of UNSC veterans and commanders – including the stories of the legendary Spartans.

Yet somehow, I felt this was not enough. I found my obsession with the war wouldn't go away – and it soon went beyond looking at humanity's experience.

I realised even then that as painful as our story was, it was not the whole story. The other side, which is still hated and feared throughout humanity's recovering population, was still shrouded in mystery. Regardless of my feelings towards the Covenant and its soldiers, I couldn't deny my fascination with this historical blind-spot of the war, and wanted to know more.

But when I brought this up during meetings with my editor, I was frequently chastised by my colleagues – not always in jest – as a "Covie lover". This is still a time when asylum seekers from the former Covenant Empire are kept in guarded and segregated zones on Earth. Many others said I was playing with fire – relations with our former enemies, including the Sangheili, are still far from friendly. Covenant remnants and loyalist cultists remain active years after the war. It could be a ridiculous form of suicide for any journalist to ask the other side for their accounts.

However, I fought my corner – to truly understand everything that had happened, the Covenant story also needed to be told to humanity. No doubt some of my fellow human beings were beginning to ask the same questions I was asking; how did our former enemies justify to themselves what they were doing? What was their experience of the war? How did they come to view the species which they had tried to wipe out, and had been indoctrinated to believe were vermin?

How were they trying to rebuild their societies after finding, suddenly and dramatically, that everything they had been told and taught their whole lives was a lie? Would it ever be possible to reconcile with them, after all they had done? What could their stories tell the Human race about us, including our own dark histories? Could we learn from their stories?

I also had to fight my own demons and lingering hatred. Visions of my home, burning at the hands of those I proposed to interview, would not stay away. They visited me again and again in nightmares, often after discussions about Covenant interviews. I soon found, through much self-reflection, something which I had not initially acknowledged but could no long deny; that my own contradictory experience in New Tahiti's last moments - losing my home to Covenant and then having my life spared by them - also played a part in my curiosity about the other side.

I soon realised that I had, for my own sanity, to go through with my proposal. Perhaps, in a strange way, meeting our former enemies was a form of therapy in itself.

For that reason, I was one of the first to interview Sangheili veterans of the war. Accounts from their perspective had come into the public domain in the wake of the peace treaty of 2553, as well as from the immigrants on Earth and the colonies – but access to their territory was not available for some time due to lingering tension with the UNSC and Sangheilios's own civil conflicts.

When the chance finally came to hear the full Sangheili story in 2560, I seized it.

The compilation of accounts I assembled was published and became a bestseller on Earth, in addition to being adapted into a television documentary which I co-produced, using my audio and visual recordings made for my writings. In that book, I attempted to explain how a process of indoctrination from birth – along with the fact that the Covenant had stood for thousands of years – enabled the former protectors of the Prophets to obey their masters without question.

I heard accounts of brutal battles and world-burnings from former shipmasters that glassed our colonies, who explained how they were numbed by a duty they were constantly told was honourable. And I learned from every one of my interviewees, from the lowliest minor to the most honoured Zealot, just how costly the fighting was for the Covenant forces – costly enough for some of them to consider humanity to be the bravest and most tenacious enemy the Sangheili have ever faced.

I also learned first-hand how a process of disillusionment with the war began among portions of the Sangheili as the conflict dragged on, which laid the foundation for their rebellion in the Great Schism. I discovered the devastation that was wrought upon their society by vicious internal conflict, both within the Covenant and among themselves, that left all the promises made by the Prophets shattered with the sacred Halo rings.

Yet as privileged as I felt in hearing these stories, I realised the full story of the Human-Covenant war still had yet to be told. The Covenant was made up of eight intelligent species in total – the Sangheili were the second-most powerful, but they were not the only one.

More often than not, they were not unbiased in their opinions; many still referred to their fellow Covenant races with derision. The Jiralhanae and other species were still fiercely hated. There is even greater bitterness within the former Covenant Empire than there is between the former subject peoples of the Covenant and the human race.

All the time I wrote about the war, I kept thinking about those Kig-Yar that spared the life of my family and neighbours, who stole the Scheherazade while we looked on. Even as I listened to the Sangheili side of the story, I wanted to someday hear the stories of the other soldiers and servants of the Covenant – but that would be virtually impossible for a long time.

The Jiralhanae were out of the question – the myriad packs of Doisac are still violently hostile to Human and Sangheili alike, and their homeworld is still a no-go area due to their on-going civil wars and the Sangheili blockade. Many who venture into Brute Space are frequently attacked.

The Yanme'e homeworld of Palamok, along with its colonised moons and neighbouring planets, remains closed to outsiders to this day. Commerce with that species is restricted to trading posts established on the outskirts of that system, and communication with the Yanme'e Hives is still limited to a basic level.

The Unggoy were a possibility, as asylum seekers of that species can be found on the colonies – but the majority had returned to their own homeworld, and those who still serve in the Sangheili economy and armed forces have little freedom to speak under their masters. Those Unggoy that I was able to talk to were only able to give basic accounts of what they experienced, though I do hope to find a more substantial account from a member of that species one day.

Several other Covenant races were also out of the question. Communication problems with the Lekgolo continue to persist, while the level of access and communication with Huragok is highly restricted by the Office of Naval Intelligence. And no San Shyuum has been seen alive since the end of the war.

That left only one other species – the one that I had direct contact with as a teenager. The Kig-Yar clans, like the Jiralhanae, remained classed by the UNSC as hostile for some time after the war; not least because of their persistent love of piracy and links to insurrectionists.

However, the Earth-Eayn agreement of 2555, formally signed by their crudely established clan authorities, changed the situation. This was followed by trade agreements and the profits created helped to further rebuild the economy of the UEG. Kig-Yar pirates persist in their activities, but the majority have settled for peaceful trading.

Many have commented that Kig-Yar are more tolerant of humans than other former Covenant races, the Sangheili included. Granted, this is largely because they consider trading with any species to be in their best interests as long as it is profitable for them. Earth and colony-based businesspeople have praised the traders of that species for their pragmatism, which they have said to know no bounds.

They also have a difference that marks them from the rest of their former allies – the children of Eayn enjoyed autonomy within the Covenant that many others did not. One faction of Kig-Yar, mostly pirates and smugglers, even enjoyed independence under the nose of the Prophets. Not even the mighty Covenant Empire was able to fully contain the "Jackals" and their independent nature. High Charity often had to make concessions to ensure Kig-Yar loyalty – usually at the expense of their long-time rivals, the Unggoy.

The experience of the last moments of New Tahiti still fresh in my mind, I soon became fascinated with the Kig-Yar. Even years working on my Sangheili accounts would not dull my obsession as a reporter. I wrote articles on the new trade agreements and the relationship between our two species.

Co-operation and trade between Human and Kig-Yar is common knowledge - but it still fascinates me that even during the height of the Great War isolated pockets of humans, usually insurrectionists, found partners in the Kig-Yar as well as enemies. Even as early as the Battle of Installation 00 in December 2552, the species was trading peacefully with the remaining outer-colonies, isolated due to the breakdown in the UEG communication network. These trading efforts undoubtedly helped in the colonial reconstruction – and influenced the rise of the so-called "Second Insurrection" after the Great War.

I wanted desperately to interview a Kig-Yar veteran of the war – but it would be another five years before I finally got the opportunity to do so – and it would be a greater opportunity than I had ever imagined.

And so it was, on September 8th 2565, I found myself reading an extraordinary message in my Vancouver press office that shook me to the core. The office secretary delivered it to me personally before running it by my editor, having already read it in the internal e-mail system before printing it for my viewing.

In my profession as a reporter where I have to deal with multiple messages, reports and pieces of information every day, I've developed a distaste for staring at screens too often. If something can be read on a piece of paper, I instantly ask for said paper. This message was no exception.

"It's what you've been waiting for Mr Crawford," the secretary said, her expression as ecstatic as it was emotional. She knows my life story – I've written about it often enough. That is also why the sender of this message knew that it would strike a chord with me.

The note came from the PR department of a private freight company. They had apparently read the article I wrote about my experience on New Tahiti for Inter-System News, along with my book and other pieces of work I'd previously done. They had watched the documentaries I had contributed to on Waypoint, which is broadcast throughout the colonies. They were kind enough to inform me of an interesting development regarding one of their company assets.

There were three surprises in this letter. The first surprise was that this company – which operated shipping routes between Eayn, New Harmony, Venezia and other outer colony worlds – and was reportedly expanding into the Inner Colonies – was not entirely human. It was a partnership, a private company founded by a Human businessman from New Harmony – and a seasoned Kig-Yar merchant. The company was staffed by members of both species.

This isn't entirely unheard of course, given the level of trade between our two species.

This company was also not based on Earth or one of the Inner Colonies; rather, it was based on an Outer Colony world that had long been considered of ambiguous loyalty to the UNSC - Byzantium, in the Thracia system.

This world, though one of the UEG's outer colonies, has over the past twelve years come to be considered a major trading hub, a cosmopolitan, inter-racial meeting point for traders, travellers and wanderers. In short, a galactic melting pot. So much so that the colony's own independent defence force - and recently, even the autonomously governing administration - is known to include non-humans. Most relevant to my interest, however, was that the planet is one of those Human worlds known to be most frequented by Kig-Yar traders.

Kig-Yar trade and commerce guilds have more contacts with UEG colonies these days, thanks to the trade agreements. Most of these guilds have either based their operations on Kig-Yar and Human colony worlds - with this company, that was clearly the case. They utilised a diverse fleet of space-freighters; not just Kig-Yar ships but also human vessels, most of which were old and no doubt once pilfered in piracy. I read on with interest, and then came the third surprise – which proved to be the biggest revelation of all.

One of these human vessels was a yacht converted to a cargo freighter, manufactured by Sinoviet's luxury engineering branch. This particular yacht dated back to the Great War.

A yacht named Scheherazade.