2536

Graduation from the Anchor 12 Flight officer training course came sooner than I had expected. I had my shiny new Ensign rank clipped to my collar and orders to Vice Admiral Kowalski's Battlegroup Totem Lake. The minute I stepped onto that ship, I began feeling like an ant in a city. The Air Wing stuck together, though, and my O-1 rank got me into the club, where I could drink and gossip with other pilots. As luck would have it, I joined the ship at the very beginning of the group's R-and-R cycle, and so was able to spend plenty of time groundside on Reach, bar-hopping in New Alexandria. But the fun ended soon after. One day I woke up and keyed my datapad for daily orders. It read:

UNITED NATIONS SPACE COMMAND TRANSMISSION 177574-45

ENCRYPTION CODE: RED

FROM: VICE ADMIRAL LEE KOWALSKI, COMMANDING OFFICER UNSC TOTEM LAKE,\/ (UNSC SERVICE NUMBER: 00475-24383-LK

TO: ALL CREWMEN, BATTLEGROUP TOTEM LAKE

SUBJECT: IMMEDIATE RECALL FROM LEAVE

ALL CREWMEN OF BATTLEGROUP TOTEM LAKE ARE HEREBY ORDERED TO REPORT TO THE NEAREST GROUNDSIDE STARPORT FOR IMMEDIATE RECALL BACK TO YOUR SHIP.

I groaned audibly when I received that message, because I had some plans to hit a particular flip music club in the city that day. On the ride back into orbit, I found out just why we were being recalled. The atlas moons, a collection of colonies around the gas giant planet Atlas, were under attack by enemy forces. What was more disturbing, however, was that the Atlas moons were inner colonies. Never before had the Covenant hit so close to home. Their strikes had always been more confined to backwater colonies, mostly ag-worlds with populations under 50,000. But the moons had a combined population of over 4 million. High command was throwing everything to their defense, including us. As we settled into cryo-tubes for the month-long slipspace voyage to get there, all we could do was hope that there would still be something there to rescue.

As I awoke from the black depths of cryosleep, something felt off. And more than usual, because waking up from cryo is a horrible experience any way you put it. As I collapsed out of my pod and vomited into the grated floor designed for exactly that purpose, I was suddenly and violently thrown to the ground by an explosion. The red emergency lights flickered, and just then I heard the distinctive sound of Totem Lake's MAC Gun firing. That could only mean one thing- we had just dropped out of slipspace right into a warzone. I followed standard procedure, which was to immediately don my suit and sprint down the corridor towards the lift. I would need to go up three decks to reach the hangar, and I could only hope a bolt of plasma wouldn't detonate in my vicinity in the time it took to get there.

I was pants-shittingly scared, but also curious. This would be my first chance to put my skills to a real test, and the first encounter I'd have with the enemy. There was no chance for a tactical briefing, I just made it to my fighter and keyed the reactor start sequence. The Com and sys-ops officers were a man and woman I had never seen before, and this was not a great time for icebreakers. I would find out later that a hit to Totem Lakes' ventral surface had wiped out the cryo bay my regular crew had been in. The first of many cruel reminders that I would receive that you can lose your life in an instant. As I accelerated out of the hangar bay door, I could see other ships in the group throwing out a serious point defense screen, 50mm slugs flashing in the vacuum of space like shooting stars. The entire battlegroup was synced, and on my HUD It would throw up the vectors of every ship's firing solutions, enabling me to not get destroyed by friendly fire. A large red bar and exclamation mark traced a line from a destroyer out into space, indicating it was about to discharge a MAC round. I followed the round as it streaked off into the blackness of space, and could just make out some specks in the distance. That must be the enemy. "Sys-ops, please magnify" I said. The specks were magnified on the screen and there they were. The bulbous shapes of the enemy vessels. The destroyer's MAC round impacted one, and a tremendous explosion obscured it from view. I silently cheered until I realized that the enemy vessel was not destroyed- or even damaged. The strange, alien energy shield took the brunt of the round and showed no sign of failing. In return, the ship generated two intensely bright, bulbous globs of what looked like pure hell- these were plasma torpedoes. I watched as they streaked across space towards the offending destroyer. The destroyer fired it's emergency thrusters, attempting to slide out of the way. But the torpedoes, like magic, simply altered their course to impact the destroyer on it's starboard side. I watched as the meters of Titanium-A armor, molecularly modified for maximum durability and heat resistance, boiled away and the atmosphere flooded out of the breach. The destroyer's engines sputtered and gave out, and the ship drifted uncontrollably through space. I thought about the hundreds of people that must have died in that instant, and what hell must be going on in there if anyone was still alive.

This disparity in power struck me greatly. And in that instant, I knew why we had thus far been fighting a losing war. That realization struck me even harder as I gazed out towards the looming, purple ball that was Atlas. The moons were tiny in comparison, but they were known for their fertility and temperate climate. In the pictures I had seen of them, they looked green and luscious, but as I gazed I could see one was glowing a sickly shade of red.

Glassing. We'd been briefed on this extensively. The covenant vessels would rain their plasma down on a planet until nothing was left alive. The moon of Hesperius had already suffered this fate, by the looks of it, and Pleione would soon follow. The combined fleet the UNSC had sent only comprised sixty-five ships, to the covenant's 20. But those were still losing odds. It took four of our ships to rival one of theirs, by all accounts. My tactical readout indicated several enemy ships destroyed, mostly smaller CCS-class battlecruisers. But several of their heavy-duty DDS-class destroyers remained, hurling plasma at us. And at the center of it all, one massive CAS-class assault carrier, it's size magnitudes larger than anything we had, even the super-massive Punic class supercarriers. I would find out later that Pleione was spared immediate glassing because the covenant had decided to land troops there, recovering a museum artifact in a week-long campaign. Can you believe that shit? They spent all that manpower and all those resources in pursuit of an old piece of rock. And after they recovered it, they burned Pleione right down to bedrock.

I snapped back to the present and gunned the reactor. My squadron was already formed up, skimming along Totem Lake's starboard side. I formed up with them and accelerated towards the enemy. The nimble longsword fighter closed the gap quickly, and within half an hour we were in fighting range.

"Katana squad, this is Katana Leader. Enemy squad at vector 453. You know the drill. Break formation on my mark."