This is a continuance of 'First Strike' and will either end in the beginning of Halo 2 or in an alternate to Halo 2. To entirely understand this you should have read the third book, otherwise none of this will make sense, I'm keeping the Eric Nylund's writing style but I prefer the Chiefs character in 'the flood' so
A Fighting Chance
Now What?
1835 hours, September 13, 2552 (Military Calendar)Aboard UNSC vessel Gettysburg, in Slipspace.
Spartan-117 stood at the bridge of the Gettysburg staring into the black forward view screen. Everyone stood silent.
Approximately five-hundred covenant ships had been destroyed. But John still wasn't sure that would be enough to buy Earth enough time to prepare for a full Covenant assault.
What's worse they had lost two of the finest men he had ever served with.
There was no doubt in his mind that the Covenant would not make the same mistake twice, they would get every single ship available to annihilate Earth and her inhabitants.
John saw a stir off the corner of his eyes, Spartan-104, Fred. "So…now what?" he asked. And got his answer from Spartan-058, Linda, who seemed to have read the Chiefs mind answered "Now we wait."
"Cortana status report." said John. "ETA to Earth thirty-five hours and counting." she answered. "Should I prepare the cryo tubes?" slightly annoyed by the interruption.
"Negative" he wondered for a moment what had her so distracted it wasn't easy to get an AI distracted.
"Isn't there any way of getting there any faster?" asked Sergeant Johnson. "That's not possible Sergeant, velocity, acceleration and even time have no importance in Slipspace nothing I do will accelerate the process" she answered in the same distracted voice.
Cortana had resigned to analyzing the Covenant data she had gotten from the Ascendant Justice. She knew it would have taken her hours even working on full power.
She gathered all the data from the Ascendant Justice, factored in her available processing matrix and calculated it would take her forty-seven hours of non-stop work to process all the data. She sighed and started. The first few files were recorded human battle strategies she checked over all of them to make sure she knew them all and erased them.
Slowly time ticked by and she was getting tired, there was nothing of significance in the documents. She decided to stop processing for a moment and scanned every single one of the files. She started dividing them into several groups.
She quickly wrote up a basic program that would divide all the files based on their encryption level. It was a very handy program she had come up with several years ago while cooked up in ONI headquarters which directed her to the most secured, thereby the most important, files and documents. Saving her a lot of time, uselessly checking the unimportant files.
Let ONI worry about those files she thought. She continued processing in silence waiting for the files to finish their sorting. It would take a few minutes until all was finished. She kept on looking for anything interesting to occupy her.
She did a random selection on the files to see if she got lucky. She pulled out file #267…nothing. She pulled out another one, file #841 she paused and tried to read it but her translation software didn't react to the Covenant writing she rechecked and made sure everything was working properly. She checked every single line in the document just to be sure.
Yes…it was definite, this had to be a new Covenant dialect, the probability of no word in the document being recorded in her translators was approximately point twelve percent, and even if it was a known dialect it would not have made any sense. She copied the document and deleted the original.
She went through another four files before she again got lucky with something worthwhile. It was a file named: Weapons Systems.
She remembered she had already copied the plasma workings several days earlier. And was about to erase the file when a sub file caught her attention, it was labeled: Pulse Laser. She hesitated and then opened the file. She started reading it slowly making sure she understood everything.
Of course, she thought, it's so obvious. All ships, human and Covenant alike, used nuclear energy to fully function. It was efficient and easy to make. But the UNSC ships only used a portion of the particle radiation, the other part and the gamma rays were then wasted.
The Covenant ships used up all of the energy, the particle radiation was used for the plasma bolts and the gamma rays were for the pulse lasers, they worked as a kind of explosion but without the destruction it only sent out EMP rendering any UNSC ship useless or "dead in space".
She thought there had to be another factor involved, there was just too much power, something else must have used up the rest of the energy. She put that thought aside, copied the file and again erased the original data.
She checked on the sorting program she had written and then on the crew, everything and everyone was in working order.
0758 hours, September 9, 2552 (Military Calendar)Aboard UNSC destroyer Envoy, in orbit around Jericho VII, four days earlier.
Commander Andrew Mitchell stood at the bridge of his recently appointed UNSC ship the Envoy. He was having a hard time taking in everything that had happened. He felt he didn't deserve the title of 'Commander', at least not yet. He then for the seventh time checked his CSV.
Five years at the academy, top of his class and four years of navy service, no kids no wife…just the corps.
He had always thought he should fight for what he wanted and earn it, he felt that they had just given him the title out of the demand for ship commanders, after Reach the UNSC ship count dropped as well as those with the ability to lead them.
Well there was no use complaining about it now the least he could do was prove his abilities to the ones that had trusted him with this position.
Their first assignment was easy enough just a quick sweep of the system and back out to the protection of the Epsilon Eridani system.
"Lieutenant Beness bring us into a tight orbit see if you can slingshot us around one of the closest moons and finish our sweep of the system" he barked at the woman on the control panel, she sat back down on her seat, and answered "Aye sir, course correction in five" she typed into the keypad and the ship made a slight course correction. "Done" she answered.
He could have asked their AI but he wanted the crew to know that he was not about to allow any slacking, he would also make sure that he didn't overdo it, otherwise he could lose all respect from his new crew and that was something he was not wiling to sacrifice. Trust and respect in battle was a necessity.
Besides their AI wasn't yet fully operational, therefore it was still prone to error, so for now he would maintain his trust on his crew. He had learned long ago not to be too dependent on technology.
"Lieutenant Anderson weapons status?" he asked at the man sitting in the weapons control. He checked the monitor in front of him and reported "All weapons fully operational Commander." Good he thought to himself.
At least he had a decent ship .Two MAC guns, 26 Archer missile pods and a reactor in perfect conditions. He felt a small change in gravitational pull and noticed they had begun their slingshot around a small moon.
"Lieutenant what's our status?" He asked at the woman in the control panel. "ETA to completion of orbit is twenty-seven minutes sir." She answered.
"Lieutenant take us to flank speed, I want out of here ASAP!" he barked at her.
Lieutenant Reynolds suddenly sat up straight. "Sir!" he said from behind the radars and communications systems. "Slipspace ruptures!"
The captain watched as motes of green light appeared less than nine-hundred kilometers away.
"Course correction sir? Or should I warm up the Slipspace generators?" asked Lieutenant Beness. "Negative" he answered sternly and turned to the communications officer "Send out a signal on the E-band, get me every UNSC ship in range here pronto! And get me FLEETCOM on the line" he turned to the weapons officer "Lieutenant Anderson, charge up the MAC guns and get me a firing solution!"
"Sir what exactly do you plan to do?" asked Lieutenant Reynolds, his tone grave and worried.
"Do?" asked the Commander in a softer voice. "Exactly what is expected of us" he said
"Our duty"
Authors note: I updated this chapter since I never got around to fixing the anomaly in the chapter anyway its still almost exactly the same