Unknown
40,000 BCE, 60,000 years after the firing of the Halo Array.
Soell system.
Near Installation 04/Alpha Halo anchored to Threshold.
A lone starship flew through space at speeds approaching that of light. Its prominent features being a blue-silver hull, several prongs sticking up on the top and down on the bottom as landing struts, and one on each end at the rear. The front narrowed to the bridge and a large window. A wavy prong was attached to each side of the ship. There were few angles, as most sides had curves.
The sublight drive left a long blue trail on its way through the system.
Within the vessel, the halls were dimly lit and the purple of the metal made the halls that much darker.
All the occupants were in cryo-sleep tubes made of the same purple metal, having been frozen for nearly all of the journey.
Said beings were of an alien race, undiscovered by the UNSC or Covenant in modern times. Possessing four eyes on their head, a flat nose, large mouth with teeth, four arms ending in six digits each, and two legs.
An artificial intelligence in the systems maintained the ship's course.
It kept track of everything, even the years. It had registered that thirty five thousand years had passed.
The reason for their journey could be traced back to thirty five thousand years ago. The species had spread to colonies in their system. But due to their star becoming unstable and several disasters rendering numerous planets unlivable, they decided to head to other worlds. Seven worlds in fact.
They had seven groups of seven vessels each. Each carried several thousand, while the command vessel of each group held several hundreds of thousands.
The other six should be at their destinations. Each of the six worlds could be reached from their original homeworld in less than twenty thousand years- one in "only" seven hundred years, a thousand years, seven thousand years, ten thousand years, fourteen thousand years, and nearly twenty thousand years respectively.
They didn't want to put all of their eggs in one basket.
They should have arrived twenty five thousand years ago. However, when they did, the planet was dead. So the artificial intelligence put the entire crew on indefinite stasis until it can find a world.
However, the ship wasn't designed to last so long. Systems were failing, and the AI was getting desperate.
The others were lost. Some to total system failures that killed everyone, some to fatal radiation leaks, and the command vessel exploded due to sabotage brought on by crew members pushed below the despair event horizon.
Upon detecting the ring world, and the fact life could survive on it, the AI piloted a course for it.
It was a strange world, appeared artificial. The materials used in its creation matched an unknown race which vanished long ago, only known in their ancient writings as "The Ancients" and "The ones who came before."
The ship started to enter the atmosphere of the ring world. The AI attempted to activate the reverse thrusters to slow their speed but some of the thrusters exploded while others burned out.
The ship rapidly descended and leveled out. Moments later, it landed hard, leaving a long landing trench along the ground in the middle of a vast plain pocketed by hills, large rocks, and mountains.
According to protocol, the AI started broadcasting the distress signal, despite how futile it was. The AI didn't even need to check to know all the frozen passengers and crew were dead, their stasis units having failed.
One week after the crash, the signal; suppressed by 343 Guilt Spark according to protocol on Installation 04, terminated.
A containment sarcophagus was built around the ship, a tomb. Which would preserve it for many thousands of years.
The group that arrived in "only" seven hundred years after take off landed just fine. But the world fell prey to terrible plagues and droughts that eventually brought the planet to near lifelessness, killing the colonists.
The group that reached their world one thousand years after take off arrived just fine, except the planet was inhabited by natives who were hostile and extremely xenophobic, and wiped them out upon their landing.
The group that arrived seven thousand years after take off arrived smoothly, everything had gone well and the colonists settled on their new homeworld. A diverse world full of life undiscovered by the United Nations Space Command or the Covenant for now.
The group that arrived ten thousand years after taking off arrived, only to find a black hole devouring the system. Its pull was so great the group was pulled in, and ripped apart.
The group that was supposed to arrive at their world in fourteen thousand years never did. The crew of the command vessel went insane, and subjected everyone to their rule. Their whereabouts are unknown.
The group that reached their world in twenty thousand years arrived, only for the star they didn't realize was unstable until now to go supernova, destroying them along with the entire system.
AN: This story was inspired by Terminal 5 and 6 of Halo Combat Evolved Anniversary. I always wondered what race was in the ship. And the fact they developed spaceflight within 60,000 years of the firing of the Halo Array...something must have happened to spur such advancement.