CH2.5

Yeah I know that the cameo was before the actual chapter, but don't worry.

Please to all those who read my story, the chapters are being overhauled.

So there are updates whenever but I have Preliminary exams… might take some time.

A minute passed as they were shot out of the relays grasp, the entire ship suddenly halted, Graves and most of the crew felt the return of normal space. The captain looked around the bridge to check on any external damage taken in the initial jump, from what he could see, the Jump was successful either than a few crewmen knocked off their feet.

The status over the ship reported no injuries, Graves had feared that something would have gone wrong, he then went to ask Tanya for the scan of the ship "Tanya what's our situation?"

She turned to face him with a smile and replied in her usual cheery accent. "The jump was good but the engines have been over charged some parts weren't prepared for the energy surge, either than that the system I have scanned shows that there is some activity in the nearby star systems, nothing else commander." Graves felt relieved. "Good keep me posted."

Graves knew that being blind and at sub-light speeds were not the best things to have when entering unknown space, he was just happy now they hadn't alerted anyone, or in this case bumped into anyone.

Tanya reappeared a few minutes with an external report. "The external sensors have done a full sweep, the relay that just sent us over this far had over charged the barriers, we can't activate cloaking for another half an hour and the same could be said for the FTL 1, 2, 3, and 4 engines, it'll take a while."

"The ship needs to get back up to combat status ASAP; can you call up the company engineers to help?" Graves asked.

"Of course sir, calling Jordan Hartman and his engineers now." Tanya then disappeared.

Graves turned his attention back to the view, the sight of the nearby star glowed, he could only wonder what was yet to come, the expedition into the unknown depths of space for ONI wasn't something he would do every day, especially this far out.

He knew the assignment for the deep space exploration and the search for Forerunner technology, but there had other alternatives than sending a prototype Stealth frigate.

"What was it?"

CREW DECK 13:30

The crew deck was a mess; most of the engineers were new, excluding Jordan and his team. The techs were originally sent over from the colonial training academies, they weren't actual professionals just whoever the UNSC could find in the remaining population since the war, they usually did the menial tasks of the regulators and systems engineering but they never worked in complex field tasks.

Jordan and his team now had to teach the techs the proper way of engineering, even though the ship was state-of-the-art and the only most advanced it hadn't the best technical staff, which had a rather interesting sense of irony.

Karl meanwhile was drilling in the ships gym; he had been there since they had arrived, it was the first thing he always did, it was also him and most of the others, the company had nothing better to do, they had already cleaned their rifles and done the weapons field strip over five times.

The sparring gym was the only thing most of the companies had to do, the companies themselves were: 343rd Company of Novara ODST, 49th Airborne Shock Troops and of course themselves as the 151st Marines.

Practically all of the companies were decorated veteran units, and had survived the whole campaign against the Covenant, the reason for three of the most veteran companies together was unknown.

Karl was now sparring with some of the Shock troopers, they proved themselves good, but he wanted to know how well, against a Venerator, though the same attitudes from the average ODST to the Nova sector is the same. UNSC ODST and SPARTAN II have had the tensions of competing for recognition and here it no different.

Down in the Hangar 13:50

Melissa Pham, did a recheck on all the ships internal clocks, the jump the ship took actually knocked a few bolts back, and her new sabre had to be up to scratch, she didn't want to be left hanging while someone took pot shots at her.

She knew what it was like in side of a ship that didn't really work, the Longan was lost when the EM wave struck, Michi her AI amazingly survived thanks to the shielding on the ship and self-storage device, but the crew and she were stuck onboard. It took a few hours but she and the others managed to a way to open the door, they had to take a walk in space just to get home, but thanks to the Few and None they made it back.

Now she was stationed aboard the Aspire because of her insane feat, the Militia would've court martialled her for the amount of damage that was caused, but the HIGHCOM of Anomia were glassed when the Covenant came, so she was tried by the other surviving commanders and Captain Vance, she was cleared of all charges, and sent back on the field piloting pelicans.

She really didn't like it at first, but the amount of desperation the colonists and Militia had suffered from took over her pride, she had to get as many to safety, the following campaign that followed was bloody, she witnessed more than she ever wanted to, now she was glad to be somewhere else.

The first time in almost 1 year since she had been given a new set of wings and a promotion, she had been happy to fly the new sabre's, they represented how far the UNSC forces had actually come from the Covenant war.

Since the fall of Reach and the near destruction of Earth, the UNSC forces had been desperate to get level with the rise of the Separatists faction of Elites. UNSC started rapid construction of new fighters and ships, the light wave barriers from the Hypress development division had been given generous amounts of resources to develop new shields, both for projectile and energy, though it would take longer than they wanted, it was necessary to get the shields properly functioning rather than risk it.

She sighed, the war had only ended over a month ago but the UNSC was still mopping up the loyalists in the outer colonies, and the Venerator project had been successful, the launch of the mysterious project Venerator that the UNSC had named them.

She hadn't known much about them, either than the un-killable WMDs of the UNSC, they seemed to wage a relentless war against the Covenant during the last years of the war; the personnel made up of them were originally from Nova Stratus, taken as children and used to create them.

She felt sad at the thought of using children as a means of fighting, but then again most of the Militia forces were just kids, and that was including her friends and a some of the higher ranked, she couldn't help but feel that they had lost much more than just family though.

She shook the thought out, right now she had work to do, and thinking about the Covenant war wasn't going to help speed up the diagnostics, she burrowed herself in her work again.

Mess hall 2 hours later

Karl finished his sparring with the other members of the Companies; he won for the most part, but was impressed how rigorously they trained. 'Those boys have room for improvement, but I can't say I wouldn't have them watching my back, good bunch those guys.'

Karl was in the mess hall, most of the crew and Marines had joined for the night's dinner, Karl and a few new guys he met were sharing a table.

One was a marine named Jonathan Reyes, Karl met with him in the cafeteria line, and for being who he was Karl wasn't surprised that the marine was bumbling about with what he was saying just like a kid meeting the very hero they wanted to be. It was no surprise though, UNSC had made the Venerators take the spot light to boost morale since the loss of the Spartan II's, and most Militia forces had seen Karl in action.

He had never understood why they had to single him out as a high ranking unit within the Venerator ranks, but it was ability to command, the Militia forces that had been left to believe that he could do nearly impossible things.

Another fellow was an ODST named Thom, the young man was quiet unless he didn't want to be, his nick name was 'BOY' it was marked on his name tag, either it was an old school name or some family one, he wasn't too sure. But from what he could see in Boy was familiar, the young man had lost his family during the first assault on Anomia, he'd been fighting the Covenant ever since. Like many he had gone through the war with suicidal belief that he could take as many as he could, though he never did get KIA he stayed around because he nowhere left to go.

The next was a young lieutenant named Julian Yeoman, her family was alive mostly, and her older brother was a Venerator KIA some time back in the war. But the unit was never recovered or recorded, he and the others weren't capable of identifying who it had been though, the records had been sealed off by ONI and civil security. Even though Julian had lost her brother to the Venerator program she seemed to respect them, she did speak at times if asked but never spoke about.

At another table Grey and his old family were eating dinner, they had also brought most of the others under their command with them.

Grey could see the newer face of Venerators of second and third generations, each were younger than them, and each had yet to fully serve command, the journey through the relay to this part of space seemed like an adventure for the younger ones, while to him and the first generation, it was just another day at work.

15:39

Meanwhile on the bridge, a few active techs and crewmen stayed to continue bridge work; Graves meanwhile was looking at different star maps from the pulse signals they had sent out, he noticed the power signatures from different stars systems.

But what seemed to get his attention was that each system had some form of life, he wasn't sure why ONI had sent them this far to scout out other alien species, but it felt more than just scouting, the maps from the Cortex back on Anomia suggested there to be some type of beacon located on one of these worlds.

But from the star charts and how old the position of each originally detailed, it would take a couple of days to figure which one it was, and that's where he had suspicions. 'ONI knows that there's other life out here, so why send us out, there was also probes SECIII had sent previously but weren't sent looking for the beacon.'

Tanya had been working to find the beacon as fast as she could, but the fact that each of the planet's surfaces was completely altered by the new inhabitants, it was proving difficult to locate, she estimated the same amount of time narrowed down to at least a few hours each, while also scanning she was updating all her translation and decryption software to deal with this new species technology.

She had noticed that much of these species were under a single intergalactic government called the Citadel council, though on closer inspection she had noticed a number of interesting events and situations within their space. There had been a recent increase on forces within the borders of their space mainly here; the area designated as the Phil'ious Cluster, the reports indicated a discovery to a massive and ancient installation in a system called Praxis Amphora.

Tanya had a sure idea what the installation was, but she couldn't just jump there on assumption, she decided to weigh this one out with a few of the other AI currently residing with the IVI (151), the assignment from ONI had also gotten on her to look into list. But right now she had to finish the scans and all systems check. NEXT