Prologue: Rouge Contact
Brining Up Requested System Logs ...
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Accessing Logs ...
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Error: Data corrupted
Date Unrecoverable
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Suspected Cause Of Error:
Catastrophic System Failure
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Attempting To Load From Backups ...
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Backups Unaccessible
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System Shutdown Imminent:
Deleting Navigational Data In Compliance With Cole Protocol ...
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Task Complete: Shutting Down
The rear half of the Forward Unto Dawn drifted aimlessly in uncharted space, well outside of UNSC territory. Lying dormant within the cryo bay was a single, massive figure: Master Chief Spartan II John 117. As he slept the artificial intelligence program Cortana watched over both him and the rest of the Dawn so that if anyone picked up on the distress beacon within the ship they would not be taken by surprise.
Cortana had activated the Dawn's remaining sensors, and made impure copies of herself to handle the few remaining weapon systems on the Dawn in the event of an attack, though firing any weapons would place a considerable strain on the already damaged reactor in the extreme aft end of the damaged frigate. Without such precautions however, she and the Master Chief could be killed by anything that came across them, which would be an inglorious ending for the two heroes of the UNSC.
She had just begun to enter standby when something woke her up. An unknown contact had just appeared within the Dawn's sensor range, despite the unlikeliness of anything appearing in the deep space between solar systems. The contact seemed to be broadcasting with an outdated UNSC IFF transponder, but the ship was too far out for Cortana to be able to make visual scan and confirm the ship's identity. Cortana's avatar frowned as it flickered to life on the holographic pedestal in the cryo bay, accompanied by a slight hissing as the cryo tube beside her began to thaw.
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1952 Hours February 2, 2555 (Military Calendar) /
UNSC Spirit Of Fire: Uncharted Deep Space
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Unidentified Distress Beacon : Alerting Ship's Officers
"Captain. Wake Up. Something has happened."
Captain James Cutter awoke to the hiss of thawing cryo tubes and the voice of Serina, the Spirit of Fire's resident AI, who had been watching over the ship as it made it's slow way towards UNSC held space. The Spirit had been rendered incapable of slipspace travel since Sergeant Forge had detonated their slipspace engines in the heart of the forerunner shield world, destroying a massive forerunner fleet before the Covenant could acquire and reverse engineer them.
Five minutes later Cutter walked out onto the bridge of the Spirit and looked over the primary view screen. "Alright, Serina, bring it up on screen."
"Done. Captain, the beacon appears to transmitting from a derelict floating roughly twelve hundred kilometers of our bow." Serina appeared on the bridge holotank as a magnified view of the ship appeared on the view screen. "I wouldn't have woken you, accept that when we reached a distance of fifteen hundred kilometers a power surge ran through the wreck."
"Fine, Serina. It doesn't really matter at this point, anyways." Cutter stroked his mustache, and asked, "What do initial scans show?"
"The ship's schematics have no matches within my database, but the architecture is close to that of standard UNSC ships. It has been twenty years, sir, and they could have changed the designs in the meantime."
"Very well. Serina, wake everyone up and bring the ship up to combat alert alpha. Have Forge get his squad... " Cutter trailed of for a moment, grief in his eyes, then spoke up again, "Have Red Team prepare to board the derelict. Tell them to be prepared for possible hostile contact, and that their priority are the engines. If it's slipspace drives are intact, we'll send over a work crew to retrieve them so that we can get out of here."
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End Recording
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