Chapter 10: Precious Cargo

            Orbital Defense platform #154, High Earth Orbit, Sol System

Chief Petty Officer Hokawa sat at the blank comms panel in front of him. The UNSC fleet was surprisingly quite devoid of chatter, just the usual "I'm moving to here," " Roger that," crap. He was about to get up when there was a rapid beeping. He walked back to his screen and looked for what was signaling him. He looked at the words scrolling across, what the… he thought. Hokawa opened up the slipspace logs for the day and saw no record of the incoming vessels. The E-7 immediately switched to FLEETCOM 7 and gave the warning.

" U.V. coming through slipspace all nearby vessels are to move to Victor Brava Delta immediately." After that he signaled the alarm for all of the orbital and super MACs to get online. There was another tone at the comms screen that called Hokawa back, it was another message for the ship, and this time it was giving info. He opened the message and was startled at what he read:

UNSC Heavy Carrier Trilon and supporting craft are inbound to Earth, ETA two minutes. Slip jump is unreported due to classification. Code word is: Shadow.

            Hokawa felt like an idiot, instead of replying he got half the UNSC Earth fleet on alert status. But to be safe he decided to hold off on standing down, the Covenant were sneaky bastards nowadays. The first of the MAC crew arrived fully alert. They began to open the huge observation windows flooding the command floor with sunlight that was automatically dimmed by the tinting. Hokawa sat at his consol watching the increased chatter between ships. He brought up a view from a spy drone that was close to the jump point. It finally hit him that the vessel was jumping in system. He knew that the Ascendant Justice, before being destroyed, had given them new technology but he didn't know that it was already being implemented. The spy drone had just gotten in place when there was a shimmering and an armada of ships appeared. The Chief Petty Officer was surprised at how loosely they used the term, Support Craft. There were at least thirty ships that he could physically count along with another twenty that were too small from that distance. But the most striking one was the Heavy Carrier Trilon. He'd only seen pictures of them, and even they were the pre-war kinds that were like lumbering beasts, shooting whatever came in front of it. The carrier was at least two kilometers long. It also wasn't very tall so it could maneuver better, unlike the older versions. Its support crafts were two more Carriers, five Battle Cruisers, eleven Destroyers, and twelve frigates. The rest were Longswords, Pelicans, and the new Trojan intra-ship transports. Hokawa looked at his panel and saw that communication was almost non-existent; everybody was in awe of the small armada.

" Heavy Carrier Trilon requesting docking clearance."

" I'm gonna have to find the nearest Heavy Carrier dock for you Trilon. Hold on a sec," said the controller next to Hokawa. He saw his hands quickly fluttering over the keys searching for a dock big enough for the Trilon.

" Here we go Trilon the repair dock number 28, that's big enough. I've marked docks for the rest of your vessels."

"Actually, we need immediate surface transport for a Frigate coming towards you, the UNSC Claire Ann has very valuable information that needs to be seen immediately," responded the Trilon.

"What? We have that ship listed as MIA. Okay, we'll have escorts get the crew to the surface."

            Captain Ronalds was sitting in the Fleet High Command Council room; the same room the three remaining Spartans had been standing in three hours earlier. He looked around the room and saw the glowing eyes of the ODST Heavy Recon team's escorts they had sent with him in the shadows (if you want a really good image of them, think of the Deep Eyes from FF: The Spirits Within).

"Captain we need a full recount of what happened to you and your crew," asked Admiral Reinhart.

"We were tasked with delivering the recovery team of ODST units and… Spartan-117, upon arriving we delivered the team but were met with a large Covenant armada. We decided to do as much damage as possible before initiating evasive maneuvers. I asked a technician to prepare for a slipspace jump following an archer missile barrage and a MAC shell. Once we fired the technician found a hole we could jump through that did not previously exist. Once we jumped we set a course for Polaria on the outskirts of the Epsilion Eridani system. Where it turned out, there was a surprise Covenant assault. But as we arrived the ODST 7th Heavy Recon Division arrived to break through the siege. At first the battle looked like it'd be a lost cause but some mistakes made by the Covenant command enabled us to take the upper hand ending the orbital bombardment. Then the 7th deposited their troops and took control of Borealis, the capital city. After telling them what had happened they gave us a portion of their fleet to escort us back here, without following the Cole Protocol. Which if I may speak bluntly Admiral," Reinhardt just nodded, "Is severely restricting our reaction time, I can understand protecting our military worlds, but Earth and the Sol System have been located, why pretend that they still don't know about it when they attacked just two years ago?" The Admiral looked down and nodded.

"You have a point Captain, we are cutting our own legs off, and as of right now the Cole Protocol is ineffective." One of the many young enlisted soldiers ran off signaling every UNSC vessel.

"Sir, if I may add," said a voice from the shadows. One of the Heavy Recon soldiers walked forward and removed his helmet revealing a man in his mid-thirties with brunette hair and a scar across his forehead, "The Covenant are assaulting worlds with renewed strength they are becoming more vicious, they are willing to sacrifice whole fleets to destroy one world. We need to pull our fleets back to the Sol System to defend it." The ODST kept walking forward, his urban camouflaged armor glistening in the low light. " We can't win this war if we have no stronghold."

"I know what you are saying Colonel, but we cannot keep hiding here fending off wave after wave of attacks, we need to assault their home world, which we still have no idea where it is located," interrupted Reinhardt.
 "That is not entirely true Admiral, we think we have a good idea of its location," replied the Colonel. This got the attention of the whole room.

"The precious cargo we have was not the Claire Ann itself but the information we have stored on it," said Captain Ronalds, "During our jump in slipspace we picked up echoes from a Covenant cruiser with certain coordinates that, when cross referenced with maps of the galaxy, are in the very middle of dead zone for the fleet, no ship has ever gotten past point." The holo display in the room came to life and showed one of the arms in the Milky Way. It was directly across from the band the Earth was in. The map zoomed in and showed an incredibly large system filled with gas giants and a few solid planets.

"The Co-ordinates point to this planet here," when Ronalds said that the map shifted to a planet that was eerily the same as the Earth, "But there was a second set that led to this planet," the map then shifted to a large purple planet almost twice the size of Jupiter, "This planet has at least fifty moons, if this were the Covenant's new home world, all they had to do was set large explosives in them and they could decimate any kind of enemy fleet. We need to strike what we has been called 'The Sanctum of the Hierarchs', we believe that is where the Covenant High Command resides. We attack their command at the top they'll be lost. It's suicide but it needs to be done," Ronalds paused as if pondering something, "If we were to capture a Prophet we might be able to negotiate a cease fire, or even a truce. This is our only chance to do something to end this once and for all."

The Fleet High Command council was silent; they had never been so close to ending the war.

" Colonel Anderson, I want you to formulate a plan for either assassinating the whole Covenant command or at least capturing one of their commanders. Your only restriction is that you must include a Spartan. I trust you and your men but I want an insurance that we can hit them hard and fast."

"I would be honored to fight alongside a Spartan," replied Anderson as he saluted, " Recon, move out!" The shadow warriors walked disappeared out of the room with Anderson. Captain Ronalds stood up and was about to salute when Reinhardt stopped him.

"You will be their escort seeing as you know so much, you need to move quickly and stealthily. I have a feeling time is not on our side anymore."

" Aye, Aye Admiral," responded Ronalds who saluted and left.