Chapter 1: Contact
Captain Joshua Haywood sat at the helm of his Prowler-Class Stealth Frigate, one of the more advanced models fielded by the Galactic Coalition. The newer class was fielded mostly by GCOMI, or the Galactic Coalition Office of Military Intelligence. The successor to ONI made constant use of Forerunner-inspired ship designs, even going so far as to produce Forerunner Alloy and Hard-Light weapons to mount on their new stealth frigates almost 600 years ago. Ever since the Milky Way experienced the Unification, Humanity has made incredible strides in both military and civilian technology. Haywood thrummed his fingers along the side of his chair as he waited for the trip to the Andromeda galaxy to finally come to an end. He always hated sitting at the helm of his ship with nothing to look at other than the empty void of Slipspace.
Haywood found himself, just for a moment, missing the older Prowler designs from the Human-Covenant War. Those older vessels had a constant thrumming of the Slipspace core and deuterium reactors to keep the crew company on extended missions. The newer Prowler Mk. VI was eerily silent, almost oppressively so.
Haywood had his crew, which was mostly Human and Sangheili, but the OMI spooks were about as personable as the Sangheili, and that wasn't saying much. Everyone on the ship, with the exceptions of the four-woman SPARTAN V detachment that was granted to him for "extenuating circumstances" and the ship's resident Artificial Intelligence, Aphrodite, were all-business. He glanced over to his First Officer, Aphrodite, who sat just below him in a slightly lower chair. Unlike the Artificial Intelligences from the Human-Covenant War and the Post-War Period, Aphrodite was a fully sentient AI with a synthetic body. Her body was that of a human woman in her early twenties with dark brown hair cropped at the shoulders. Her eyes seemed to glow with an iridescent blue light, reflecting off of her light makeup. She wore the standard gray GCOMI uniform with the insignia for "Commander" on her shoulder. Aphrodite was about the only other person on this ship who wasn't an emotionless freak, which led to a rather close relationship between the Captain of the Prowler and his First Officer.
"Something wrong, Captain?" Aphrodite asked, turning with machine-like precision to look up to Haywood. "We'll be in the 'Southern' arm of Andromeda in a few minutes, I thought you'd be happy to get out of Slipspace."
Haywood put on a false smile for the Australian-accented AI. "I am, it's just a lot to take in… we'll be the first in Andromeda."
"You didn't answer my question." Aphrodite responded. She could always see right through Haywood's little white-lies.
Haywood sighed "I dunno… It's just unnerving, being the only ones in this Galaxy."
"There's an Infinity-Class battlegroup behind us. We only have to be alone for a few hours, a day at most."
"I know… it's just an irrational thing." Haywood scoffed. "I'm a GC Captain that hates Slipspace travel, Jesus."
Aphrodite smiled. "We'll be fine, this ship's been through a lot."
Haywood nodded, resting back in his chair. His attention was immediately grabbed by the Sangheili sitting at the navigational terminal. "Captain, we are leaving Slipspace." Haywood's attention immediately turned to the "window", which was actually just a very lifelike holographic projection from the ship's forward sensors. Their exit location was a rather uninteresting system with a single orange-yellow star surrounded by five planets. One of these planets lit up the ship's sensor array as "Life-Sustaining, suitable for colonization". The preliminary scans showed the planet to be slightly higher-gravity than Earth, just weaker than Sangheilios. It was a planet with 96 percent land and a single small sea located at the equator. The rest of the planets were either barren or gas giants. "Captain… I believe the sensors have picked up a ship."
"A ship? Where?"
"It is a small Corvette-weight vessel that is currently on a collision course with the resident garden world. The ship will impact in about eighty seconds."
"Life signs?"
"Unknown, we are too far out to get accurate internal scans. Based on size, it would most likely hold roughly twenty humans at maximum capacity."
"Engage stealth systems, tail that ship. Bring the ship to yellow-alert status."
"Aye, sir." The entire bridge burst into activity as the Sangheili and Human ensigns worked side by side to fall in behind the falling ship. As they grew closer, Haywood could clearly make out the ship's design. It was a smaller vessel with three large engines in the rear. It was mostly white and red with a pair of defensive ventral and belly-mounted cannons. Haywood saw the Hard-Light scanning array burst forth from the Prowler, inspecting every little detail of the vessel before them. "Captain…" The same Sangheili said. "I doubt you will believe me, but there are humans aboard that vessel."
'What?" Haywood asked, walking over to the sensor station. "That's impossible." He said, scanning over the data. On board the vessel were six humans, all of them male. Five of them had identical genetic codes, indicating some sort of cloning procedure. There were also two alien life forms on board, both of them humanoid with a female frame. The two aliens lacked hair, with their heads sporting long "head-tails" in place of fiber hairs. Scans showed the head tails to actually contain neural pathways, indicating that these aliens had their brains spread throughout the head tails, as opposed to having a single, centralized brain. "Amazing." Haywood said, scanning the data. "What's the likelihood of the crew's survival."
"Ninety percent, Captain. The ship is coming in at a rather shallow angle. The crew should have no trouble surviving."
"Good, this is now a first-contact scenario. Standard procedures apply. Keep the ship cloaked and prep SPARTAN Team Gamma for drop."
"Sir?"
"I want to ensure that these people live, there's a lot to learn here. Bring the Prowler in behind their ship and drop SOEIV pods, make it look like debris. Plot the drop trajectory for a two kilometer berth."
"Right away."
As the Ensign returned to his station, Haywood turned to Aphrodite, finding her expression to be somewhat excited. "Aphrodite, you're going down with Gamma."
"Why, sir?"
"You're one of the most advanced AIs within the GC. If anyone can create a translation matrix to help us communicate with them, you can. While you're down there, divert some of your processes to tapping into their ship's internal network, find some of their language and begin translations."
"Already doing so. I'll go join the SPARTANs."
XXXXX
SPARTAN K-792, Kathryn jogged into the SOEIV drop bay, finding her team already assembled and climbing into their pods. She found that her team of three other SPARTAN Super Soldiers was joined by Aphrodite, the rather snarky AI that she had become rather decent friends with.
Kathryn climbed into her SOEIV pod that sat across the bay from her commander's pod. Her team, SPARTAN Team Gamma, was rather famous within the GC and OMI. Their team was one of the few groups of human super soldiers that were directly assigned to work under the GC's intelligence divisions, giving them a rather wide spectrum of operations from assassinations to VIP protection. Kathryn herself was rather new to the team, stepping into the shoes of a recently-deceased SPARTAN by the name of Madison. Gamma was also a team comprised entirely of women, which was highly rare even for the SPARTAN program's thousands of operatives.
As her pod's hatch came down and gave the familiar sealing "hiss", all of her team's biometric data popped up on a small screen on the inside of her pod. On the top was her data, showing a slightly elevated heart rate. Below hers was her CO's, SPARTAN A-122, Alice. Below that was SPARTAN J-133, Jane. And finally came SPARTAN W-231, Willow. Aphrodite's pod quickly linked with the others, her diagnostic data showing up as an error due to her being a synthetic.
Kathryn heard the sound of the ship's "Dumb AI" come in through her neural lance, causing her to jump slightly as the noise was fed directly into her brain's auditory neurons. "Prepare for drop in three… two… one… Mission away." The AI's words were accented by the familiar lurch of a SOEIV pod's screaming descent towards a planet's surface. Despite all of Kathryn's training, the gut-wrenching feeling of a terminal velocity fall from orbit still caused a fair bit of nausea.
As the pods cleared the Prowler's bay, Kathryn tuned out the familiar pre-mission banter between the other SPARTANs and looked out of her pod's viewport. She saw a strange looking vessel a few kilometers away, the occasional bit of debris falling off and striking against her pod's Hard Light shields, causing them to flare up momentarily. As the ship and pods entered the planet's atmosphere, the ship's heat protective plating began to give way from the massive amount of friction, sending the metallic plates sailing past the falling pods. Kathryn stole a quick glance at the surface of the planet as she fell, seeing a planet comprised almost entirely of widespread plains dotted by massive forests, the trees easily reaching a few hundred meters in height.
The falling ship was the first to impact, kicking up a large cloud of dust and smoke as it skidded a few hundred meters before coming to a lurching stop. Just as the ship came to a stop, the five drop pods slammed into the ground a few hundred meters away from the ship's initial point of impact, Kathryn's stomach nearly doing a backflip in response to the high velocity impact. After a few moments, Kathryn pressed the three release keys on the inside of her pod, causing the pod door to slide open with the hissing of hydraulic pistons.
She climbed out of her pod, her knees trembling slightly from the heavy impact. The air on the planet was crisp and natural, unlike the putridly sterilized air on board the Prowler. Kathryn always hated starship air; it was too unnatural for her. Kathryn drew in a deep breath as she activated her neural lance's main function, calling her armor from the depths of Slipspace. Tiny Slipspace rifts opened for the slightest fraction of a second, allowing the light Forerunner Alloy plates to slip through, all of them perfectly assembling each other over Kathryn's skin-tight black bodysuit. She intentionally gave her lance the command to leave her helmet's plates in Slipspace, preferring to savor the first clean air in almost a week.
Kathryn saw the rest of her drop group doing the same, most of them also choosing to keep their helmets in the void. Alice called out to Kathryn through the neural lance network. "Kat, we're moving."
"Copy." Kathryn responded, falling into place behind her squad and the AI. As she walked, Kathryn was amazed at the flimsy nature of this ship, with dozens of heat-resistant armored plates scattered around the area. As they neared the main wreck, the grass grew taller and taller, eventually stopping just below Kathryn's chest, a rather impressive feat since she stood at nearly seven feet tall.
Alice motioned with her hand as they came into view of the main wreckage, her neural lance relaying her order to kneel down. Kathryn knelt down, peering through the tall grass. She saw a group of five humans in pure white armor with black accent pieces. These soldiers carried strange black weapons across their backs as well. She also saw a pair of aliens carrying another human man. These aliens both had a set of head-tails in place of hair follicles. One of the aliens had turquoise skin with two head tails while the shorter, obviously younger one had orange skin with symmetrical white markings on her face. The orange-skinned one had three head tails, one running down her neck and resting at the base of her neck.
The human man being carried by the two aliens appeared to be peppered with lacerations and burns across his face, arms, and legs. He wore a strange set of armored robes that were tattered and burned in many places. Kathryn's Neural Lance crackled in the back of her mind as Alice linked Captain Haywood into their communication channels. "Captain, are you seeing this?"
"Affirmative, what's the current percentage of the Translation Matrix?"
"Approximately ten minutes and I should have enough of their language decoded in order to create a rudimentary program for our universal translators." Aphrodite responded.
"Excellent. Keep your heads low for now and keep me posted. I'll relay this information to FLEETCOM Alpha." Haywood cut the communication from his end, returning their neural lance network to its original state.
Fireteam Gamma watched as these clones and the aliens created a rudimentary shelter for the wounded human, using pieces of the ship's plating to block out the setting sun's rays. Kathryn, thanks to her augmented hearing, could make out a faint conversation in a completely alien language. She could easily tell that the younger alien was frustrated, while the older one managed to remain calm.
As she watched the exchange, a loud growl sounded out from somewhere nearby, causing the clone troopers to scan the area with their weapons and helmet-mounted flashlights. After a few moments of rather frantic conversation in the alien tongue, four of the clones and the two alien women broke off from the rudimentary camp site, heading south. Only one of the clones was left behind to guard the wounded human. This clone had blue markings on his armor with a black pauldron around his shoulder, obviously a symbol of some kind of command.
The SPARTANs remained in the grass well past sunset, watching the clone trooper inspect his weapon a few times, check on the wounded human, and pace around the camp more than a few times. Kathryn was surprised to find the human attempt to walk out of the makeshift shelter, falling onto his stomach after a few moments. The clone rushed over to the fallen man. "General!" He shouted, dropping to a knee next to him. Their translation software was working, a good sign for contact procedures.
Kathryn watched the General point to the bushes behind the Clone, causing him to turn around quickly. The clone, despite his armor's apparent weight, was pounced on by a strange four-legged beaked predator that took one of the Clone's arms in its beak and threw him to the ground, quickly pinning both of the clone's arms under its powerful feet. Alice, without a moment's hesitation, willed her handheld Hard-Light Bolter out of Slipspace and fired at the creature, sending a bolt of Hard Light through its head, killing it instantly.
The animal slumped over to the side, allowing the clone to stand up and draw his own handgun, pointing it in the direction of the SPARTANs and the AI. "Who's out there?" The Clone demanded.
Alice made a motion to her team to stand upright as she tossed her weapon back into Slipspace, hoping to avoid a confrontation. As the SPARTANs and the AI stood upright, the clone appeared to tense on his grip. "Come out here!" The clone shouted. "Come towards the fire, but keep your hands at your sides." The clone was obviously surprised at both the number of people watching him and the fact that there were four human women that towered over him.
The SPARTANs stepped out of the brush and into the clearing with no quarrel, keeping their hands at their sides. "We're not here to hurt you." Alice said, raising her hands in a defensive stance. "We saw your ship was crashing on this planet and followed your trajectory."
"You have a ship in orbit?" The clone asked, lowering the pistol to his side. "Why aren't you helping us?"
"It's a long story, but this is technically a first-contact scenario."
"What do you mean? Are you natives to this planet."
"No… we're not even from this galaxy."
"What? That's impossible. How could human life evolve in two places at once?"
"Beyond me, but that's partially what piqued our interest."
"Where are you from?"
"We're from a galaxy approximately two point five million light years away, called the Milky Way. We're soldiers for a government entity we call the Galactic Coalition." Alice explained. "Our official designation is SPARTAN, or a genetically modified soldier. I'm SPARTAN Alice, and this would be my team. This is SPARTAN Willow, SPARTAN Jane, and SPARTAN Kathryn." Alice pointed to each of the helmetless SPARTANs as she said each of their names. "And the one in the back is Aphrodite, our ship's resident artificial intelligence."
"Well… I'm Captain Rex." The clone responded. "Nice to meet you, I suppose."
"Where did the rest of your crew go?"
"They headed off South, hoping to find some of the locals to help our General here. He's in bad shape."
Alice nodded. "Aphrodite, relay this information to Captain Haywood in orbit and keep him updated."
"Of course." Aphrodite responded.
"We'll stay here with you until the others get back; we'd like to meet them,"
Rex sat around the makeshift shelter with the group of abnormally tall women, surprised at their rather friendly and pleasant nature as they explained their situation and listened to his. Both Rex and the SPARTANs shared information regarding their government's current situations, Aphrodite taking special interest in the Clone Wars situation. Kathryn found the Clone's description of this "Galactic Republic" to be highly interesting, especially their capital world of Coruscant. Apparently, Coruscant was a single massive city that spanned the entire planet.
The SPARTANs and Android remained with the Clone all throughout the relatively short nighttime, only about four hours in total. As Kathryn stood up, she saw one of the female aliens running back, missing the four of the five clones that had left with them, along with the taller alien. In place of the clones was a small lemur-like creature that stood at around two feet in height with grey and black fur. The two aliens and the clone came to a stop, the female alien surprised to see Rex joined by five different humans. "Rex, did the Republic send a rescue team?" The shorter orange-skinned alien asked.
"Not exactly." Rex began. "They're here to help us, but they aren't from the Republic. Hell, they're not even from our Galaxy."
"How is that possible?" The tall, girl asked, inspecting the SPARTANs. "They look human."
"That's because we are." Alice answered, stepping over. "We're Humans from a nearby Galaxy called the Milky Way, about two point five million light years away."
"Three million light years?" The younger alien asked, amazed. "How long have you been travelling?"
Alice shrugged. "About two weeks."
"That doesn't seem possible, how can you cross that distance in two weeks?" The Clone asked.
"As far as we can tell, we use a completely different method of faster-than-light travel than you do. Ours is based mostly on a method known as Slipspace travel, which involves opening a rift in space that allows us to pass into a parallel pocket dimension where the relation between distance and time is much shorter."
"That sounds incredible…" The short alien said. "But who are you?"
"We're a group of elite soldiers under the command of our government, the Galactic Coalition. We're called SPARTAN Vs. I'm Commander Alice, this is my team, SPARTAN Fireteam Gamma. The other SPARTANs here are Willow, Jane, and Kathryn. The other one over there is an Android, or synthetic humanoid. Her name is Aphrodite."
"I am Commander Ahsoka Tano, and this is Commander Bly under the command of General Secura." The alien explained. "I'm with the Jedi order based on Coruscant."
"Commander?" Alice asked. "You look no older than sixteen."
"And you would be right." Ahsoka responded. "I'm a Padawan Learner, attached to the Jedi currently under the metal sheets there." She pointed to the human male that Rex identified as General Anakin Skywalker, another member of the force-wielding Jedi Order. The SPARTANs and Android were completely shocked by the innate ability to manipulate matter via a biological chance known as force sensitivity. The GC had something similar, Slipspace Manipulation, but that was done through technological means, not biological. "This is a healer from the native populace." Ahsoka explained, gesturing to the short lemur creature that made its way over to Anakin. "Do you have a ship nearby?"
"We do." Alice answered. "But sadly, our class of vessel is highly classified and unable to land on planets. It's a forward scout vessel designed for orbital support and logistics data." Alice knew that she was lying about the true purpose of the Prowler in orbit, but she wanted to keep these aliens away from the GC's relatively advanced technology until she could trust them. "There's a fleet of support and exploratory vessels about a day behind us, they should be able to help out if the Republic can't."
As the Healer made his way over to Anakin, he slowly came to and attempted to stand upright, holding himself up on the makeshift shelter. "Master!" Ahsoka shouted, making her way over. "This is a healer, he can make you better again!"
"Thanks Snips…" Anakin said, looking over to the five women standing behind her, wearing black jumpsuits. "Who's that?"
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you." Ahsoka said as the healer began fashioning a makeshift stretcher to carry Anakin on. "They're from another galaxy and they want to help us."
"Another galaxy? Not quite the strangest thing I've ever seen."
"I'm not even going to ask." Ahsoka said as the SPARTANs and Android made their way over.
"Are we bringing him back to the local population?" Alice asked. "If need be, Kathryn here is our medical support woman, so she can help when we get there."
"Much appreciated." Ahsoka said, nodding to the tall, redheaded SPARTAN.
Kathryn walked over and helped the blue-accented Captain Rex heft the stretcher carrying Anakin up. The group began making their way towards the small village that the local lemur-esque population called home. After two and a half hours of walking, a small village consisting of what appeared to be a collection of large tree pods came into view. A group of the lemurs came out to watch the SPARTAN and Clone carry Anakin in on a stretcher, the rest of the group following close behind. Ahsoka remained relatively close to Anakin and by extension, Kathryn. Throughout the entire walk, Ahsoka had bombarded Kathryn with questions about her government, society, lack of force-sensitivity, military, and home. Kathryn happily answered all of Ahsoka's questions, even returning a few of her own questions.
Kathryn and Rex laid Anakin down inside a central pod and allowed the healer to begin his work, taking their leave along with Ahsoka. The group of SPARTANs introduced themselves to the local population and Secura, electing to keep their extra-galactic nature a secret from the locals for now. After meeting with the locals, Kathryn and her team gathered under a shady tree along with the Jedi and remaining two clones for some rest, giving the healer time to work.
