"Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."
- Winston Churchill

Tayari Plaza, New Mombasa, Earth

0932 Military Standard Time

Just another open-shut case of people with access to guns and too much time on their hands, Senior Detective Cole Perez thought to say out loud, but kept his mouth shut as he looked down at the corpse. Most of the blood had already started to dry on the polycrete street and would probably make a mess for the sweepers later. At least there weren't all too many people on the streets, they were all probably glued to the set watching the awards ceremony involving one of those Navy special forces types.

That wasn't his concern, though. The body was. Caucasian male, approximately in his mid-forties with dusty brown hair, conservatively-cut three-piece suit that was now unwearable thanks to a pair of holes through the belly that Perez had a sneaking suspicion he could fit a hand through. Picking out another morsel of meat from his usual breakfast of kjøttkaker smothered with acai jam, he chewed and looked at his partner thoughtfully.

His partner was fresh blood, if there was such a thing nowadays with the war going on, and despite whatever the vids were chattering about. The kid looked no older than his mid-twenties, still clean-shaven and snappily dressed. He also looked about ready to lose whatever it was that he had for breakfast. Young enough that maybe the Commissioner hadn't gotten to him yet. A member of a rare breed, Detective Jorgen Tseng was. Cole didn't want to see the kid wind up on the take. He reminded him a little too much of his kid brother.

"Looks like go-mag work," he grunted as he swallowed and picked out another meatball to chew on. "You see anything?"

"Looks, uh, looks about right," Jorgen said, a hand over his mouth and nose. "The technicians said the time of death was about under five hours ago. Did they find any ID on him?"

Perez knelt down to examine the body. "Nothing intact, nothing we can read at least." He pulled his police-issue chatter out and keyed up a NMPD access code, speaking when the screen flashed green, "Perez, Cole. I need some playback on my chatter. Tayari Six, five hours to now. Sixty to one dilation."

His chatter's screen suddenly switched from the basic NMPD interface screen to surprisingly clear security camera footage of where he was standing now. It showed only the passing crowds of the pre-dawn day, most of them civilians with jobs with any number of the various industrial and commercial concerns who occupied New Mombasa. With each minute of the surveillance footage compressed into a second, the crowds were blurred into a non-stop mess of color and shapes. Now all he had to do was wait for something to stay long enough to pin down…

There. At four hours and thirty minutes ago, the body suddenly appeared where it was now on the pavement during a break in the crowds. It was already sporting the go-mag holes then. So this was getting a little more complicated with a transported body. Why didn't they just drop it off in an Olifant? That would have cut down on the possibility of anyone actually seeing them, as well as cleaning up after themselves quite nicely. Things were looking to become even more complicated.

"Pause. Rewind to marker Seven Sierra. Decrease dilation to five to one."

He watched as the crowds moved much like something for an early twentieth century celluloid film, almost at normal pace but just a little too manic to be "real" to the viewer. A moving van rolled past the camera, and when it passed, the body had appeared.

"Pause. One step back. Pause."

The AI mainframe obliged and he was looking at the shape of the moving van. Gray and blue with no livery colors. It looked like a late model Michelin-Vance Ground Mover from what he could see. No license plates, but they were on the grid.

"Tag playback segment. Save to mainframe under Perez, Cole, Delta-Oh-Oh-Seven-One-One-Alpha-Three-Niner-Mike-Papa-Delta."

His chatter screen winked green in confirmation before he shoved it into his pocket. Finishing his boxed breakfast, he made a mental note to double-check with the lab once they were finished. Ever since Kinsler had taken over, things tended to disappear and appear at random. Perez knew he shouldn't be one to criticize the take system, but by God, there used to be standards about it.

He threw the food container away and looked at Tseng, shoving his hands into the pockets of his worn suit jacket. "Got any theories?"

"It's go-mag work, right?"

That's what I just said… Cole sighed and wished he had some coffee. "If you're figuring what I think you're figuring…"

"Well, Ki-" Tseng began.

"Keep your mouth shut," Perez hissed suddenly, interrupting him with a glare before jerking his chin at the nearby camera. The idiot, we're still on the grid! "Everyone uses M6s nowaways. Seems like the military's handing them out like candy. For all we know, this here stiff just happened to be on the wrong side of an organized business transaction gone wrong."

He shifted slightly in place, his arm brushing against his holstered standard-issue M6B. Loaded with department and military-issue semi-armor-piercing high-explosive rounds, they would leave exactly those sorts of holes he was looking at. Perez had been involved in exactly two altercations that had required him to draw and fire on a suspect. He knew how those sorts of wounds turned out, the victim sprawled out on the street, hopefully dead but commonly alive and screaming as they tried to keep their shredded internal organs that way. And the smell…

"Standards," he muttered darkly. Turning, he looked at his partner. "Come on, we're going. Leave collection to the corpse-humpers."

Tseng shrugged and started to follow him as the crime scene investigators got their chance at the body. Blue-gowned, they seemed to swarm all over the body and the scene like a boiling mass of insects. Cole repressed a shudder and walked toward their department-issue Genet. It was only 9:30, and things were looking dark in the October morning.

The sky suddenly lightened as if in response to his thought. Brow furrowing, Perez looked up. It wasn't a cloudy day, so why the sudden shift? What he saw left his jaw slack. His eyes had to have gone bad for him to see things in double. There couldn't be two suns, right? Shaking hands wiped at his eyes as he joined the rest of the pedestrians in staring up at the sky. Two suns…

Squinting, he could barely make out that the second sun was an oblong shape. Not a sun then. A ship, then? Transfixed by the image, he continued to look upwards. His eyes adjusted enough to see smaller flashes of light fill the sky.

The tiny crowd that had gathered was speaking in hushed tones, many of them still staring up at the sight. He couldn't hear what they were saying exactly, but he caught the general tone. Awe, wonder, and fear. He was feeling plenty of the first and third right then and there. The lightshow suddenly grew in size, a pinpoint flaring up into a radiant star for a moment. And yet the second "sun" grew larger. A gnawing thought dug its way out of his mind. Those had to be ships, or the Orbital Defense Platforms…

Just then, the public address system crackled to life. "All New Mombasa Police Department personnel, please report to your closest precinct house as soon as possible, Code Guardian-Three-Four. All civilians and non-essential personnel, please find your closest City Shelter, pending relocation. Message repeats. All New Mombasa Police Department personnel…"

That wasn't good. "Guardian-34" was a long-standing and commonly-amended general order for the NMPD and other Civilian Security Forces of the UNSC Colonial Administration. It meant an imminent invasion of the planet, and it meant that they would have to mobilize to repel the invasion, or at least provide a delay before real soldiers could arrive on the scene. Cole didn't even want to think about what could be the cause for the declaration of the order. The Covenant.

Tearing his eyes away from the spectacle, he reached over to grab Tseng by his shoulder to haul him toward their car. "Come on!" he screamed. "We need to get-"

Something flashed through the air, silvery and purple at the same time. The air crackled and seemed to ignite around him and his partner. Detective Cole Perez had only a moment to scream before the overpressure wave from the plasma burning into the nearby pavement slung him head over heels into the side of the Genet where he saw one last thing before the darkness claimed him: a sleek purple alien vessel descending on the city, its sheer size blotting out the sun. The Covenant had come to Earth.

Well, here's my first effort at fan fiction. Or at least the first one I'm putting up. This'll be updated hopefully semi-regularly. No promises, though.