All was still in the most barren part of the Milky Way.
The bright orange light of a nebula shone, not quite as bright as the stars, but up close it seemed to hardly matter.
Near the cloud of ionized gasses and space particles lay a massive asteroid field, the rocks were large enough to prevent larger ships from traveling into it, but also dense enough to make flying smaller freighters and fighters difficult, and dogfights impossible.
In the space between the nebula and asteroid field, there was nothing but the freezing vacuum, and two small metallic husks.
A closer inspection would reveal them to be two small stealth ships.
UNSC Prowlers, floating dead in space.
Well, not perfectly dead, but severely damaged anyways.
The engines on both ships were burnt out husks and the long-range com towers had both been violently ripped apart, though the short-range coms were still intact.
However, the hulls and other systems of the ships were operating just fine, and judging from the flurry of activity aboard the ship, so were the crews of both vessels.
"Shit, shit, shit!" groaned a man in his early 50s, his brow wet with sweat, and his face contorted with frustration.
"Is there anything we can do?" he asked again to another man who was inspecting a console.
The man shook his head, "Sorry Captain Armstead, the engines are going to take at least another week to prepare."
The attack had come suddenly and unexpectedly, a swarm of fighters suddenly engulfed the prowler, blasting the engines and communication systems to pieces. Armstead had to watch the same thing happen to the other prowler after it had come out of slip space, presumably after it had come to investigate the disappearance of their ship. The stealth capabilities of the ship had been useless, and the meager weapons the prowler had were hardly enough.
Now they were stuck, their engines a week off from being in any sort of operable status.
Armstead pulled at his hair in frustration, "Well, get this ship operable now! We need to out of here before-," Armstead was suddenly cut off by a helm officer.
"Sir, multiple slip space ruptures detected!"
Armstead watched in horror as one hundred portals opened and a hundred UNSC warships pulled into the system.
Runion looked out at the plain of space that was before him and his fleet. Directly to his "left" was an asteroid field, a large one at that. Ahead and right was the nebula that he had heard about in the debriefing, it shone a bright orange color that seemed to light up the space around it.
And directly ahead of him were the two prowlers that had gone missing.
"Sir, the Shadow is hailing us."
"Patch them through," Runion commanded.
The form of a ship captain appeared before Runion.
"Ah, Captain Armstead, it's very well to see you alive-"
"Turn back now!" the man yelled at Runion, cutting him off.
Runion looked shocked, "Captain, what are you saying?"
"Get out of here now before-"
His words of warning were cut off, as his transmission fizzled out.
"Sir, we are detecting an anomaly directly opposite our position."
Runion watched as nearly four hundred slip space portals opened.
From the portals came four hundred ships. The designs of the ships were sleek, with purple colorings. They seemed almost organic, especially compared to the more practical boxy grey ships under the UNSC banner. On their hulls, weapons bristled and hangars began to release fighters.
The Covenant had returned.
Runion stared at the ships with shock and a little fear.
These were the ships of old that had burned UNSC colonies. These were the ships that had ripped apart UNSC fleets. These were the ships that brought death, destruction, and chaos.
They were supposed to be gone, a ghost from the past to scare and remind humanity of what had happened when they weren't prepared.
The covenant remnant was no longer a ghost it seemed, the rumors were true, and they were very much real.
And now they were directly opposite of his fleet, and they were far more numerous than his forces.
Runion was shaken out of his reverie by the deck officer.
"Sir, they're, they're hailing us!" the officer said, astonishment in his voice.
Runion nodded, regaining his composure.
"Put them through."
The Prophet of Vengeance was having a very good week.
First, his scouts had reported to him of an anomaly in a seemingly useless part of space, deep within an asteroid field.
Then, he had come across a human stealth ship, apparently investigating the same anomaly that his forces were. Its stealth capabilities had been rendered useless by his new toy, and he had the ship, now ships, disabled. Then he pulled his forces back and waited for the inevitable UNSC move.
He was delighted to learn that his gamble had paid off, sure enough a large UNSC battlegroup had pulled out of slip space to investigate.
Judging from what his, toy was telling him, there were also other fleets waiting to reinforce the battlegroup if needed.
Vengeance smirked, they were behaving exactly as he had expected them to, the memories of Harvest apparently still fresh in their heads.
And once he defeated the fools in front of him, he would claim whatever Forerunner artifact was in the region for himself.
"Grand Prophet," a Brute growled, "the enemy fleet is answering our call."
The Prophet nodded at the creature.
Soon humanity would be on its knees once more, and he, the Prophet of Vengeance would be a god.
Everything was going according to plan.
The Prophet smirked, yes this was a good week indeed.
Runion stared at the figure before him.
A Prophet.
Since the end of the Human-Covenant war, Prophets had been a rare sight. Most of the species had died off, or disappeared. This one was clearly one of the ones who had disappeared.
The Prophet sneered.
"Hello there, human, I am the Prophet of Vengeance, and starting now, the end of your pathetic species will be my doing."
Runion furrowed his brow, "The war is over, you lost, and we have the mantle," he spat.
"Your kind is not worthy to yield such an honor, when the Covenant found your species, you were weak and pitiful, not even advanced enough to take on the lowest species of the Covenant."
Runion shook his head, there was no point in trying to reason with this, thing. The Prophet clearly still subscribed to the old Covenant ways.
"Why have you done this, attacking and disabling our harmless Prowlers, and dragging us out here to the middle of nowhere? To gloat of past glories? You cannot possible hope to defeat all of humanity with just one fleet!"
The Prophet chuckled, "Ah, foolish creature, I have created a bargaining chip, my new artifact has allowed me to see the movements of your ships from light years away, I knew the second your stealth ships disappeared you would come running."
Runion looked shaken, a Forerunner artifact that could see the movements of fleets from vast distances?
"What do you want?" he intoned.
The Prophet's grin widened, "It's quite simple, you must simply call in all of the forces that you have in reserve to support you. Do not bother pretending you don't have reserves, my artifact can see them very clearly. If you call them in, your stealth ships will not be violently ripped apart by the plasma torpedoes I have locked on to them and I will spare your fleet from the destruction they will face."
"If you do not, the men on board those ships will die, and so will you."
The Prophet looked pleased with himself and finished, "Choose wisely Admiral, you have three hours."
The transmission cut off.
Runion weighed the options in his head. On one hand, bringing in the Strategos backup fleets would give him the numbers he needed to fight the Covenants forces here, after Vengeance inevitably betrayed them. It would save the men on the Prowlers too, who were helpless to fight back against the fleet.
On the other hand, it would leave the outer colonies in the immediate region completely open to attack, and he now doubted that the fleet ahead of him was Vengeances full force.
The option was clear, they would stay and die, to protect humanity.
"Sir, the Shadow's communication blackout is over, they are hailing us again!"
Runion faced the grim-faced image of Armstead.
"So now you know of our dilemma, Runion."
Runion sighed and nodded, "If we do as the Prophet says, it will leave the colonies open to assault, knowing the Prophet, he has fleets upon fleets ready to invade."
Armstead looked thoughtful for a second, then spoke, "What if I told you there was a third option?"
Runion placed a hand on his chin, "Do tell, Captain."
"Are you aware of why we were out here in the first place?"
The Admiral shook his head, come to think of it, he had no idea why the prowler was out here in the middle of nowhere.
"Well, its technically classified, but I suppose that hardly matters at this point," Armstead said.
"Spill it."
Armstead took a deep breath, "We were sent out here to investigate a strange signal that was picked up by ONI."
Runion nodded, "Continue."
"The reading was Forerunner in origin, judging by the type of signal it was sending out, it looks to be a super weapon."
"How could you tell it was a super weapon just by its signal?"
Armstead scratched the top of his head, "The only other signals we could compare the one we detected to would be the Halo arrays."
Runion stiffened with a jolt, "You think what you found could be like the Halos?"
Armstead nodded, "Yes, at first we did at least, but the Prophet knows about it and has left it alone so far in favor of setting his trap, if it was a Halo, he would have just activated it."
"So, what your saying is that it's a more conventional weapon whose importance isn't immediate for the Prophet," Runion said, suddenly beginning to understand the implications of what Armstead was saying.
"The weapon is in the asteroid field, that's why you haven't seen it yet, it keeps the weapon concealed from normal scanners and physical sight, I believe if we can get a team of people on that weapon, we can use it against the enemy fleet. From what we have gathered so far from scans of it, the weapon fires a kind of blast from one main cannon, could be very useful in dealing with their capital ships."
Runion nodded his head, "I have Spartans aboard my ship, I can send them to get the weapon, however they are going to need a distraction to keep the Covenant from attacking them and taking control of the station themselves, God, I'd kill for a Nova bomb right now."
"And how do you plan to do that, Runion?"
Runion looked out past the Covenant fleet, towards the Nebula, and a mischievous grin appeared on his face.
"I think I have an idea."
Julian Hatus ran through the halls of the Architect, followed closely by the rest of his squad mates in fireteam Phalanx. The team had just received orders from Runion. They, along with several other teams of Spartans were to take control of a supposed forerunner artifact, no, more like a forerunner weapon. Then they were supposed to use the weapon against the covenant fleet currently giving them trouble.
Easier said than done, thought Julian grimly.
"Let's hope the welcoming committee those forerunners send out is friendlier than the one we got on Requiem," said Wallace flatly.
Julian silently agreed, as much as he loved a good fight, time was of the essence, and fighting off whatever defenses the weapon had would take far too long.
"Whatever's out there, we'll take care of it." said Peters as they reached the Pelican that would be siphoning them to the artifact.
Waiting for them was Fireteam Banshee, and Fireteam Orion. Peters directed his gaze towards the others as the ramp closed.
"Alright people, our job is to get access, and gain control of the weapons main firing systems, at all costs. Time is not on our side, so we must move quickly, and don't worry about making a mess either, the other teams can handle that."
The pilot turned to them from the cockpit, "We're clear to take off, prepare yourselves."
Julian gripped his Assault rifle as the ship lurched and left the hangar of the Architect.
On the bridge of the Architect, the Prophet of Vengeance was back, looking the Admiral and his deck crew over with a pleased smile, as if he already knew the outcome of the battle that was about to take place.
His arrogance will be his undoing, thought Runion sullenly.
"So, Admiral, how do you choose?" the smug Prophet intoned, clacking his fingers together.
"I choose," Runion looked away for a second, "neither!" And with that he cut the transmission and roared, "All ships, micro slip space jump, NOW!"
Suddenly, the entire fleet lurched forward into slip space and reappeared within seconds, ahead of the disabled prowlers, except for a Paris-class frigate remaining behind at the asteroid field.
Micro slip space jumps were very risky, but a coordinated commander could pull them off.
"All ships, fire energy projectors and MACs!" Runion shouted.
As two Strident frigates moved to recover the prowlers, the ships of the fleet unleashed a hellfire on the covenant fleet.
The results were devastating.
The Prophet had clearly not anticipated the humans trying such a bold, yet suicidal tactic as a full-frontal assault.
The energy projectors burned holes in many Covenant ships, and stripped the shields from the others.
Then the MACs hit.
Many of the ships were simply ripped apart, some had gaping holes, while some outright exploded as their reactors overloaded.
"43 confirmed kills," the ships AI spoke up.
For a second all was calm as the Covenant Remnant reeled from the strike.
Suddenly, fighters roared from the Covenant fleet, which were quickly intercepted by UNSC fighters, and plasma and shells flew through the darkness of space.
The Pelicans closed in on the still Forerunner station as the battle raged on miles away.
The station looked like a giant gun, its barrel pointed at the nebula.
The "hangar" the pilot approached was open, and the Pelican maneuvered towards it.
"Spartans you are a go, happy hunting!"
The Spartans flew out the back of the dropship and flew into the hangar weapons raised.
There was nothing, but silence, the warriors lowered their weapons.
"Alright teams, split up and find that control room," Peters ordered. Fireteam Phalanx separated from the other teams and moved through the first entrance. The team moved rapidly through an empty hallway, coming to a closed doorway.
"Well now what?" Wallace grunted.
He soon got the answer to his question as the doors melted into nothing.
Standing behind the door was a Promethean Knight, its orange eyes blazing.
The thing let out a metallic roar and swung its sword at Julian.
Moving quickly Julian ducked the weapon as Peters shotgun barked out, stripping the creatures shields away.
Julian dodged another strike intended for him and brought his pistol under the things chin.
He fired.
The thing let out an inhuman scream as it dissolved into a million particles. Behind it was several other Knights, their eyes glaring menacingly at the Spartans.
This is where the fun begins, thought Julian as he and his team collided with the Knights.
The battle in space was at a stalemate.
Fighters roared past each other, getting into dogfights, or attempting to protect their bombers. The massive warships of both fleets battered each other with their plasma cannons and mass driver cannons.
So far, the UNSC fleet was holding up to the onslaught, their shields and weapons were superior to the Covenants aging ships.
However, the advantage would not hold for long.
The Covenant fleet was much larger than the UNSCs and the numbers would begin to whittle the ships of the UNSC fleet down to nothing.
Runion winced as a frigate simply melted out of existence after a plasma missile struck its unshielded hull.
His own ship had taken a beating, its shields were still up, but that wouldn't be the case for much longer.
At least the prowlers are safe, he thought, for now.
Come on Spartans, I need a miracle.
Julian gunned another Promethean down, as his team continued along the hallway.
"How many of these god-forsaken things are there?" Peters shouted as he blasted a flying Promethean.
His answer was brought in the form of three more Knights.
"Apparently not enough." Lincoln said, appearing beside Peters.
Suddenly, another door opened and ten Sentinels flew into the hallway.
"Ah, for the love of-," Wallace growled as he raised his weapon to fire.
"Wait!" Lincoln said suddenly, causing the Spartans pause, and look at the AIs holographic image.
"All is not as it appears," he said quizzically.
The Spartans looked on as the Sentinels communicated with the Prometheans.
Suddenly beams of light shot from the Sentinels ripping the Prometheans apart.
A panel opened up and a floating orb with a green light in its middle floated towards them.
"Greeting Reclaimers, I am Void, the monitor of this installation. I am terribly sorry about the Prometheans, they are quite disloyal," the monitor said pleasantly.
The Spartans looked at each other, and Peters was the first to speak, "We need to get to the control center immediately, our time is very short."
"Of course, I am programmed to serve, please follow me, your presence stirred the sentinels and I from a deep slumber."
Peters nodded as the fireteam followed the Forerunner relics down the hall.
The Spartans stepped forward into a circular control room. Peters pointed at the monitor, "Tell us how to activate this weapon."
The monitor replied, "Certainly! Though I am not quite sure why you keep referring to this station as a weapon, the main cannon is only to protect the station and is not its primary focus."
"Then what is its primary focus?" Julian questioned.
"Why, its right there, in the middle of the room."
Julian's gaze followed the monitors and saw a sphere-shaped object sitting on a pedestal. It was roughly the size of a basketball, and had four glowing blue lines running adjacent to each other, breaking up the grey of the object.
"That object is a portable slip space generator, powered by a miniature star, very experimental, the cannon and this station are just meant to house it." the monitor informed them pleasantly.
"Yes, that's very interesting, now please fire the cannon at the nebula," Peters said impatiently.
The monitor looked at the Spartan, "But, that would-,"
"Just do it, please?" Peters added, hoping to keep the monitor happy.
"As you wish Reclaimer."
"All ships fire your Archers to cover our escape!" Runion shouted. He had received the word from the Spartans that they had the weapon intact and were going to fire it at the nebula.
The main reason he had attacked a numerically superior foe at such close range is because it would keep the enemy in their original positions.
And the enemy was lined up right next to the nebula.
Runion didn't have any weapons powerful enough to fire into the nebula to take out the entire Covenant fleet, but the main gun on that forerunner station would do the trick just nicely.
His battered fleet had already picked up the life boats from destroyed UNSC ships and the fighters were packed into their mother ships.
He watched as his previous order was obeyed and thousands of little suns lit up as the ships unloaded all their archers at once.
It was like a wall of missiles, some hit the Covenant fighters, some took the brunt of the plasma shots fired at the retreating UNSC ships, and most hit their targets, damaging or outright destroying them in a hail of explosions.
It gave the UNSC the perfect distraction and the remaining seventy six vessels micro slip space jumped away to the asteroid field.
That was when the cannon fired.
A white glowing projectile exploded from the main gun and it quickly closed the distance, passing through several Covenant ships, and striking the nebula.
The results were immediate.
A great wave of fire suddenly lashed out, miles upon miles wide, ripping apart the Covenant fleet down to the last ship.
Runion let out a sigh of relief as the men on deck cheered in victory.
The day is ours, he thought to himself as he looked back at the carnage.
Suddenly, the nebula seemed to pulsate as more and more waves of fire were unleashed from it.
Runion frowned as the mood quickly dampened, a deck officer suddenly spoke up in panic.
"Sir, the nebula is destabilizing rapidly! The star that developing inside of it is showing the beginning stages of a supernova! The shot from the station somehow destabilized the star!"
We can't leave, Runion realized, if we go into slip space so suddenly after that last jump, our engines will overload and kill us just as effectively as that supernova.
Runion watched in horror as the nebula began to rip itself apart.
The Spartans watched the nebula keenly.
"What is it doing?" Wallace asked, more to himself.
"The star inside is collapsing in on itself, and will supernova because of the shot we fired into it," the AI replied nonchalantly.
The Spartans all whirled around and exclaimed at the same time, "WHAT!?"
If the monitor had shoulders, it would have shrugged them, "The blast from the main cannon is an energy drainer of sorts, a very powerful EMP, if you will. The shot stripped away a lot of the energy from the star, without that energy, the star will collapse under its own gravity.
The Spartans stood in shocked silence.
"I tried to warn you, but you simply would not listen and my mission is to obey the Reclaimers," the monitor added.
Peters was the first to speak, "The Admiral just pulled his ships back with a micro slip space jump, if he tries to leave, his ships slip space cores will melt."
Wallace groaned, "Well, I guess that's it, it was nice knowing you all."
Julian was about to lose hope as well when he suddenly remembered one key detail in the room.
The slip space generator!
He whirled around and picked up the sphere and said, "Not all hope is lost yet!"
Peterson smacked his faceplate, "The generator! Of course!"
"Can we use this to get us and our fleet to safety?" Julian question Void.
Void looked back at him, "Well, the generator has no star charts programmed in, so the jump would have to be random."
"That hardly matters!" Julian exclaimed, "come on let's get to the Pelican and get the hell out of here!"
The team took off running down the hallway.
"Void, get us a portal open, now!" Peterson ordered.
"To get a stable portal open would take several minutes, any shorter and-,"
"That doesn't matter, just do it!"
The AI seemed flustered, "This is highly irregular and dangerous!"
"It's the best chance we have!" Wallace reminded the monitor.
They reached the hangar bay where the other Spartans and the Pelican were waiting for them.
"Ok fine, I will do it, I was never told how unnervingly uncaring you Reclaimers are for safety standards.
Wallace laughed, "We're Spartans! We don't do safety standards!"
They reached the Pelican and flew away to the frigate awaiting them.
Admiral Runion was about to give his final speech of remembrance to the crew, when suddenly a gigantic, shaky slip space portal opened up directly in front of the fleet.
His com flared to life as Peterson, the leader of fireteam Phalanx, appeared before him.
"Sir, if you want to live, fly the fleet through that portal, now!"
The transmission quickly ended.
Runion looked at the portal with doubt, it was very unstable, shaking with bolts of lightning appearing at the edges.
However, his mind quickly changed the nebula suddenly exploded.
"GET INTO THAT PORTAL NOW!" he screamed in desperation.
The fleet obeyed him and the ships began to disappear into the void of the portal.
"Hold on people, this is gonna get bumpy!" he yelled.
The last ship entered the portal and it closed behind it, a wall of flame passing by it and ripping apart the asteroid field and the ancient forerunner station.
Zeb was suddenly and violently awakened from his sleep by a scream.
He quickly shot out of his bed and noticed that the scream had come from the top of his bunk.
It was Ezra, pale faced and sweating, while twitching and moaning and groaning in his sleep.
"Kid!" Zeb exclaimed in worry, "Kid! Wake up!"
The door behind him opened up, and Sabine walked in, her face twisted with worry.
"What happened Zeb?!"
"I don't know, he just started screaming and woke me up!"
Suddenly, Ezra shot up so quickly that he fell off the bunk.
Zeb quickly caught him and cradled him, his face filled with worry.
He had grown rather fond of the little loth-rat, and being helpless to stop whatever happened was not fun for him.
Ezra was now awake and panting, the color slowly returning to his face.
Sabine slowly kneeled down in front of him, brushing the hair out of his eyes, "Ezra, are you ok? What's going on?"
Ezra looked at her and groaned, "It's like the force was ripped open for a second, I don't know how to describe it."
"The same thing happened to me too."
The group turned around to see Kanan standing there with Hera helping support him.
"It's back to normal now," Ezra said confused, "Kanan, I don't understand, what's going on?"
Kanan shook his head, "The force works in mysterious ways, I know about as much as you know."
"In that case, we should worry about it later, we need to get rested for tomorrow, if anything else happens, let us know," Hera said, reluctantly.
Ezra nodded, he was exhausted and desperately needed some sleep after their last assignment had gone dreadfully wrong.
Whatever had happened, they would deal with when the time came.
Palpatine growled in anger as he gripped the sides of his thrown, recovering.
In almost an instant, it seemed as if the force had been ripped open, then just as quickly repaired itself.
There had been no premonitions of this occurring, it was a complete and total shock to the Emperor.
And he hated surprises.
He got up slowly, still shaky from the event.
It was time for a talk with Lord Vader.
A/N: Here's an extra-long one for you all! This is where the story starts to really get going!