There is a certain hideous beauty in war.
The dreadnought breeched into the reality of physical space and the reconciliation of the old warship's journey washed over her metallic hull in a tide of stray photons and gamma radiation. The Slow Enlightenment's engines hummed as the blackness of Slipspace disappeared behind it and the light of a young blue star and the shadow of its sole rocky planet came into view.
And almost immediately, the human ships were on alert. Hard-light screens moved into view and the dozens of displays gave readings of relative velocities, identity tags, energy manifolds, gravitational fields and all the hundreds of esoteric variables that governed Forerunner warfare.
The Strategos and his Promethean senior command stood upon the raised platform in the centre of the command bridge. They were rooted to the floor by their armour, which were thickening and glowing intensely. Needle-fine beams of red light were flickering between each of their six fingers in each hand and arcs of energy were leaping over to join all four Warriors in a web of silent communication.
I was at my own terminal and the tools of war were at my command.
The presence of the Prometheans settled over my mind. My ancilla filtered through dozens of different viewpoints, only a fraction of the hundreds that the Strategos and every other Promethean in our battle-group observed and passed on.
The human ships were in high orbit over their planet, a predictable and versatile position that would offer the vessels opportunities to strike out over the vast spatial distances. They had been well prepared. The planet was shielded by two powerful orbital fields, advanced geometric displacement systems much like the gravitational lensing of star eaters. We and a portion of the battle-group were further down-star by a few light-seconds, the other portions spaced out around the planet in a ring, occupying different orbital corridors and attacking at dozens of different angles.
I knew little of the human species before the war. They were a powerful faction, a technological rival to the Forerunner might and an opponent of our dominance. They sought to be free from our presence and so they had moved their fleets and their people to the take the sections of the Galaxy which were not under our control and in peace, they flourished. There ships were elongated and angular, of a similar design to the Forerunner dreadnought within which I observed them.
The swarm of human ships broke apart and within seconds, the defensive fleet of approximately one thousand was reconstituted into separate defensive groups. One of which was approaching the Slow Enlightenment and her escort group.
My ancilla reappeared in my vision. As was standard in warfare, the ancillas of all the Warriors that were on-board the dreadnought had joined into a sub-metarchy. Ten thousand ancillas were running probability simulations and vector models. In such battles, their assistance was vital.
"The human ships will be upon us within minutes," she observed, adding to my terminal the command codes for a portion of the weapon-ships. "Good luck, Warrior." She vanished.
The Strategos's made his own communications with me. His mind felt fuzzy and his voice was thin and wavering in my head. "Trust your training and stay calm. Do your family proud."
The first plasma lance seared through the blackness of empty void, guided by powerful magnetic fields and as intense as any solar flare. Almost contemptuously, the Slow Enlightenment's energy shielding thickened at the impact site and two seconds later, the blue-white fire washed over the ship, harmlessly dissipating.
The ten thousand weapon-ships that were allocated to my use streamed out from their holdings within the hull, tiny and fast. In thirty diverging vectors, the ships streaked outwards. The humans had sent forwards their own defensive systems. Drones, they called them for humans relied more on ancilla-assisted automation than personal control. Within three minutes, the two forces engaged in a cloud of metal and pin-point energy beams, two light-seconds from the dreadnought's position.
While my mind was split into multiple, fractured reality streams, I could still afford the mental power to be aware on the wider picture. My battle-group of one hundred and fifty ships of varying sizes had engaged a human defensive group of one hundred and sixty-two.
Both sides had sent out various small craft. Weapon-ships flew in tight formations, acting as screens and swarming attackers. The clouds of sentinel craft zipped out into the night, intercepting more plasma lances and ionic energy pulses.
Constraint fields unfurled out in the open battlefield and there were jagged, silvery lines where geometries intersected and pushed against each other. Manoeuvring was becoming more and more limited with each passing minute as higher and lower orbits were cut off by energy fields. A ship of the Enlightenment's mass and structural stability could break through, but that option was risky when confronted with no less than fifteen triangulations of weapon fire at any given time.
Space was contorting as well. The practice favoured by the Strategos relied on precise and efficient strikes. Slipspace ruptures provided temporary respite for squadrons of swift vessels and fighters, while frigates and escorts were spatially shuffled to provide the cruisers and dreadnoughts needed support. But each rupture that was open left its mark on space-time – a reconciliation scar caused by temporal mending of causality. And this was having unpredictable effects on vectors and velocities, all of which had to be catalogued and compensated for by the ancilla as discovered.
Salvoes of plasma and gamma lasers burned white lines as the devastation blasted through energy fields and splattered against shielding. Sometimes a stray lancet would break through the hulls of ships, tearing them open. Thousands of attack craft shattered, and at these extreme combat velocities, the debris became blazing streaks of molten material, indiscriminate and everywhere.
The humans had a system of orbital defence platforms, locked into vigilant geosynchronous orbits around the planet. The attention of these massive installations was upon a battle-group much further up-star, and the brilliant violent energy that issued forth from the platforms was not such much a coherent beam but a wave that saturated arcs of space with high-energy death.
A rear-guard of the humans had separated and vanished into Slipspace. It was clearly a bold and risky move that would have cut the Enlightenment and the rest of the group off from the established orbits around the system, but the Strategos, a veteran of nearly every tactic and ploy, was to have none of that.
The ancillas confirmed a slipspace rupture. I angled the forward weaponry, in simultaneous concert with five other Warrior-Servants on different vessels and fired. The great gaping maw of Slipspace open up and the disgorging human vessels were immediately wrapped in a cocoon of devastation. Ships splintered and fell apart as inertia propelled the burning wreckage forward. This occurred within the heartbeat of a single second.
The ship had followed the orbital run and in the distance, emerging from behind the arc of the planet's surface, was a fine, spider-silk strand. The glittering star road was buried deep in Avalione's molten core and it looped gracefully up-star to curl and disappear from view into the white-light of the system's primary star's corona.
And even this view was marred by the chaos of war. Arcing jets of plasma leapt from the star road, evidence of the anchored positions of a human defensive platforms. More images and viewpoints came into my head. A battle-group had expelled their War Sphinxes at that location and now the battle-suits were engaging patrol screens of human drones and small gunships.
Bolts of blinding energy mixed with smoke and fires from decompressing cabins. With every minute that went by, another ship was delivered another death blow. The Enlightenment would have many scorch marks to show for her efforts. Slipspace portals opened and reinforcements soared into the battle. Some were Forerunner. Some were Human.
This was the Battle of Avalione. But in the scale of things, this battle would just one of a few early skirmishes, just one of thousands in the thousand year long war.
It took another half an hour to conclude the grim business. The humans had fought valiantly, despite losing ships at greater rates than Forerunner loses. The death-stroke came with the shattering of the last of the human's orbital cohesion.
Millions of weapon-ships were sent along the silver-grey star-road, their beams immolating the human structures into glowing, molten mess. Hundreds of human ships disappeared from the system, and without proper monitoring they were not traced. Many were warships, but the bulk of them were civilian craft, all making a quick escape once the last of the human orbital defences collapsed.
The Strategos made no effort to pursue. Flocks of War Sphinxes were sent down to Avalione's surface. The planet was a jewel, swathed in the natural garments of atmospheric water vapour and oceans of sapphire blue. The planet's night-side was brightly lit by the human's cities like verdigris growing on a continental copper sheet. Those cities had to be immensely tall with soaring and delicate towers poking out above the cloud over.
One by one, each of those great constructions vanished underneath a tiny, radiant flare of blue plasma.
One by one, those dreadful fires faded like the light of sunsets.
When we left, we left behind ash and echoes.