After six long years.
The UNSC Megalodon is about to exit slipspace.
"Captain we're exiting Slipspace in ...3...2...1" said the AI.
The AI is called Blue Ball or as the crew simply refers to him as BB and as the name suggest his avatar is in the shape of a blue ball.
The ship exits slipspace and the stars came in to view.
The came in to existence on the edge of an unknown system deep in space and far from UNSC space.
"Status ?" William asked.
"all system are green" BB replied.
"good, now scan the area and report anything unusual " William ordered,
"Scanning... Sir sensors are picking up some strange readings on the third planet from the star. I can't say anthing for certain without having a closer look. "
"take us into an orbit and scan the planet again" then the ship went closer to the planet and orbiting around it.
"sir, sensors are picking up some strang readings on the planet you might want to look at this." BB said drawing William's attention to the screen showing cites and human beings going about their day.
What was showed on the screen completely baffled him as he stared at the screen motionless of a few seconds before regaining himself and asking BB.
"what am I looking?"
"visual telemetry of the planet's surface" BB replied as if not noticing the elephant in the room.
"i mean are they humans?" William can't help but asked directly, some times william wondered that is the AI stupid of just antagonizing him.
"more or less but until i can get some DNA samples i can't say for sure"
'how could they be here on the other side of the galaxy?' William wondered. 'maybe this has something to do with the back up plan, but then...' william stoped that line of thought. It'd be better to find actual facts rather than speculate.
"what about the strange readings? Is it some kind of alien technology? "
"as far as i could tell it's made by a crystal like mineral native to this planet" then BB changed the screen to show a mine, then it zoomed in to show crates full of bluish crystal being transported from the mine and loaded in to trucks. "sensors shows that this crystal is the source of the strange readings, it is also interfering with our scans from penetrating the planets surface"
"can you clear the interference?"
"already tried but if we study it we'll figure something out" BB said that confidently.
"how long will it take?"
"can't say but i'd estimate it'll take from a few months to a few years a decade at most"
"guess we better plan long then" william reluctantly sighted. 'should have expected this mission wouldn' he thought to himself.
"any suggestions to set up a base" he asked the AI
The BB displayed the world map and high lighted a few locations. William looked at it thought before saying " can you show where there is concentration of these crystals"
Then BB high lighted area with crystal with blue. William looked at it again and thought 'better set some where near the large concentration of crystals, i have this gut feeling that there is something there'.
"launch satellites in to orbit and land the ship here" he points at an island north of gallia.
The island is large enough hide the ship and small enough to remain hidden from the locals. William decided to stay away from the locals until he know more about them, also it has a small deposit for the crystal.
The ship descends and lands on the island. Once they landed they immediately fortified the entire island. Making the entire island a fortress, with a lot automated turrets place all around the island.
The fortification took a month but it was worth it, if any of the locals try to invade it they will find it virtually impenetrable with the weapons they got. Unfortunately not every thing is smooth sailing, the scientists still haven't figured anything to cancel the crystal interference it will take more time and more of the crystal to figure it out.
Unfortunately the small deposit on the island is used up so they will need to find another way to get them, meaning making contact with the local.
From what they could tell from the satellite images, the technological level of the locals seem to be around the early 20th century. While the UNSC do have technological superiority they will be hard pressed if the locals do decide to mass up and come in hordes. Although William could always nuke them but he decided that he will only us it as a last resort.
The radio communication of this planet is relatively new so can't get much information there.
With out information William couldn't decide the proper course of action, so he sent in a spartan along with a squad of ODST equipped with covenant cloaking device to spy on the locals.
