2014-01-09
Most of the crew - not to mention your fellow jarheads - will be leaving the ship in lifeboats. They'll ride to the surface in air conditioned comfort, sipping wine, and nibbling on appetizers. Not you, however. Oh no, you're going to leave the Pillar of Autumn in a different method. Tell me boys and girls… how will you leave?"
— Major Antonio Silva
Prologue
October 21, 2552 [16:42] Human Military Calendar.
Inside SOEIV, above New Mombasa, Earth.
Sergeant Chiyo Murakami.
New Mombasa would burn.
Sergeant Chiyo Murakami didn't need to listen in on the com-channel to know that. She could see it plain as day. As her navigation system on her HEV gave up, fried by an electromagnetic pulse emanating from the slip-space portal. The Covenant Carrier would escape and the city would burn. Chiyo Murakami would die. She knew it. God or goddesses or any existing super natural being knew it. Her human entry vehicle shrieked trough the sky, on a straight course for the portal.
Sergeant Murakami's mind stopped. Her pod smashed into the portals event horizon after the pursuing UNSC ship had entered as it began to collapse.
Sergeant Chiyo Murakami watched her entire life pass in front of her eyes rapidly.
She watched herself as an eight year old, playing with her parents. The swing going back and forth every time her mother pushed the swing forward. While listening to the beautiful and clear voice of her daughter as she laughed, when her mother pushed again and again and the speed picked up.
Chiyo would remembered that day for the rest of her life. It was the same day as the Covenant attacked, the same day as first contact with another sentient species occurred. February 3, 2525. She lost both her parents that day, when a team of brutes with plasma weapons cut them down. Murakami was saved by a group of colonial militia. Harvest, the human agricultural world. Providing food and crops for the UEG and the UNSC. Now a molten slag of glass. Bombarded by plasma from low orbit. The first but not the last planet to fall.
Eight years passed. Humanity lost engagement after engagement in space and on ground. Few battles where won. Harvest was lost.
Chiyo now sixteen. Joined the UNSC Marine corps and where accepted for training on Mars. Few years back that would have been impossible. But the possible destruction of the human race changed a few things.
Chiyo Murakami shipped to Jericho VII on December the 14, 2534. Covenant arrived on February 10, 2535, Murakami evacuated with Master Chief petty officer John-117 two days later on 12 of February.
Murakami accepted for the 105th Marine Expeditionary Unit, ODST training on July 5, 2540.
Reach 2552, Human fortress world destroyed, Sergeant Murakami evacuated to Earth after the battle of New Alexandria.
All of this passed in front of Chiyo's eyes in less than seconds. Then the slip-space rupture collapsed on itself. Sergeant Chiyo Murakami watched her world explode, everything became brilliantly white before darkness swallowed her.