Regret's Carrier/The Prophet of Regret's Fleet

And you are sure that there are no survivors? Regret inquired.

"I am positive, Noble Hierarch," the Elite answered. "The ship brought an end to the wounded battlecruiser with twelve, medium-yield nuclear weapons—the same type of weaponry we often face when combating the Human fleets."

The prophet laced his thin hands together in front of him, reclining in the hovering thrown his body rested in. You say you that you recovered a fragment of Undoubting Faith's outer shell. Can you induce any knowledge from this?

"Yes," the Elite fished a device from somewhere near his waist and held it in his palm. "The fragment is rattled with hundreds of holes where projectiles punctured the hull and continued onward into the inner bowls of the ship." The Elite pointed to several key areas on the holographic projection of Undoubting Faith's hull fragment. "Much of this type of damage appears to be the work of the point-defense turrets the Humans often wrap their warships in. They utilize them as a last line of defense against our Seraphs. But…"

Yes?

"There are larger wounds that this fragment shows—wounds that do not match any known weapon that Human ships carry with them, based on our records. They are too small to be the 'MAC rounds' human ships are armed with, yet are larger than the rounds used by the Human 'Longswords'. Either the ships that preyed upon Undoubting Faith are a part of a new line of Human warships employed to wage war with the Covenant, or they belong to an entirely different species altogether."

Regret pondered for several minutes. Most of his assault fleet had been wiped out when the treacherous Humans had destroyed Unyielding Hierophant. No doubt the surviving ships in his position would be outnumbered and overpowered when the Human fleet reared its ugly head to protect the precious gem it neutered ever so tenderly. They would be fighting a cornered animal; the Humans would be exceptionally dangerous in this position.

But the promise of a new species for the Covenant to employ? Perhaps if he journeyed to their homeworld and wowed them with the Covenant's power, he could bend them—break them even— and rally their entire fleet to his aid. Perhaps then he would have the strength to overtake the Human world.

But what if they resisted?

What if the aliens grew enraged that an unknown advisory was coming to stamp out their culture and merge them with the Covenant war machine?

The results could be cataclysmic.

But he could coax them into following him into battle. Shower them with gifts even just as the Covenant had done with the Hunters? Surely they were primitive to some degree, and could benefit from Covenant technology?

You say the ship left behind a residue of some sort when it vanished, correct?

The Elite bowed his head. "Yes Nobel Hierarch. Whatever powers these ships leaves behind some form of inert substance—possibly a gas or liquid of some sort. The substance may have been leaking from the ship itself; it may simply be exhaust from the ship's engines. We do not know. Whichever it is, the substance is easy to track."

That is all I need to know. Follow the ship. Make haste.

The Elite exited the prophet's quarters to relay the orders to the appropriate crewmen, and then tend to other matters.

Regret moved his hovering throne to the center of his quarters and continued to dwell on the issue at hand.

Battlestar Survival Group 1

Battlestars Triton and Alexandria had rejoined their fellow battlestars and the ships they protected moments ago. Other than the vicious scars Triton sported from the laser fire she took before delivering her payload of nuclear ordinance, the battlestars were unharmed. Repairs were underway as soon as the battlestars heaved to drift near one another.

The surviving Colonial Marines who ventured into the ghastly warship were dressed in civilian clothing; their armor and gear was still being analyzed and decontaminated. Fireteam Achilles had been assigned two captains. Fireteam Sunder and the bits and pieces of Fireteam Apollo were being questioned by five individuals. Captain Kara Thrace had refused to take part in any of the questioning sessions.

One of the groups had chosen to roost in Alexendria's left pod, while the other had taken position in Alexandria's eatery. Both locations were devoid of crew members.

Battlestar Survival Group 1/Battlestar Alexandria/Eatery

Private Scape, Specialist Mar, Corporal Baker, and Sergeant Nex sat in four chairs that surrounded a table. On the table were four glasses of water. In front of their table sat Captain Saul Tigh and Captain Lee Adama. Adama held a notebook with a pen sticking out in between its pages.

Adama spoke first. "Let's start from the beginning: What did you see in there?"

"The ship's interior is completely foreign sir," Sergeant Nex began. "It's definitely not Cylon; we didn't see a single Centurion or any skin jobs prowling around in there. The ship's crewed by numerous creatures. From the looks of it, they're sentient, as they have some sort of language. We heard them speaking it as they opened fire on us as we tried to make our way back to the Raptors."

"Sounds like they had weapons. What did they look like?"

Sergeant Nex rose from his seat and went over to a cart that held numerous alien objects. Everyone in the room eyed him tentatively, unsure of what he was about to do. The fire team leader retrieved a large, blue object. He strolled back over to his seat and sat down with the object on his lap.

"This is one of the weapons they were using to cut us down sirs," Sergeant Nex began. "It fires some sort of ball of liquid—probably plasma. It melted clean through some of the ship's weaker interior plating when Private Scape thought it best to 'test fire' the thing."

Sergeant Nex placed the object back on the cart. He retrieved several other weapons and showed them to the captains, explaining what each one did. The captains made a note to take the weapons to Alexandria's firing range to get a thorough understanding of them.

Sergeant Nex then showed his superiors two other weapons. One of the weapons appeared to be an oddly shaped variant of a brass knuckle that was of a silver color. The other was round, similar in shape to the grenades the Colonial Marines often used during combat situations.

Sergeant Nex drew forth the brass knuckle and flexed it slightly, summoning forth a great blade forged made up of pure energy. It hummed slightly, with tiny arcs of lightning firing off on the sides of the blade. The blade was split into two sections, like some sort of oversized fork.

"Holy frak…" Saul Tigh whispered, inching his head closer to the weapon to get a better look.

"I held the same expression sir," Sergeant Nex began. "It's some sort of sword. As far as we know, it's carried by only an elite few. The body we plucked it from belonged to one of the larger creatures. It was dressed in white armor, and looked like a high-ranking official. He was killed by a fallen support in one of the ship's many halls."

Sergeant Nex , still holding the massive blade at his side, took a sip from his glass of water.

"They can cut through a wide range of substances as far as we saw." Specialist Mars chimed in.

Sergeant Nex flexed the sword. The blade disappeared in a grand display of lightning. The sergeant then withdrew the small, round device. It was blue, with some form of green symbol on its front.

"These are grenades. They work on the same principle as our grenades, except they're energy based, and actually stick to organic matter and even metal. Once they're stuck, they're stuck. The only thing they leave behind is an ash pile."

When the captains and marines concluded their discussion on the weaponry used by their worthy foes, they moved on to the photographs. The pictures were passed around the room. There were 32 pictures in all, with each one coming with a wide range of questions from the two captains. The Colonial Marines could not answer them all; answers were in short supply.

Three hours had passed since the meeting had begun. The marines and captains were tired of both answering and asking queries. Hands were shaken, and the two groups departed. The captains returned to their ships, while the marines remained on board; they belonged to Alexandria.

Each captain save Kara Thrace had obtained a large amount of knowledge pertaining to the enemies they faced. The aliens appeared to be an alliance of numerous species, possessed energy based weaponry, and powerful ships that were protected by strong energy fields. Some their troops possessed personal energy shielding as well, with this personal shielding coming in two varieties: A handheld energy shield which was mounted on the wrist, and an energy shield generated by a set of battle armor.

What powered the alien technologies was completely unknown—most of all the alien ships, which was the largest threat the fleet faced. Perhaps it exceeded the Tylium-based engines the battlestars and civilian ships utilized for space travel. Tylium was an ungodly powerful source of fuel with an abnormally high energy yield—up to six times more powerful than nuclear fusion. While it didn't have the endurance nuclear power possessed, its ability to propel ships farther and faster offset the downsides tremendously.

If their battlestars didn't have the advantage of weaponry and endurance against their foes, perhaps they were gifted with greater speed…

UNSC Heavy Frigate Undignified Squealer/ Sol System/ Unknown Location

Undignified Squealer's mission was simple enough on the books, but in reality it was much harder, and was exceptionally stressful for the crew and captain of the frigate. The frigate was tasked with listening for anything "odd"—with odd meaning the Covenant. Normally, a prowler would have been dispatched to carry out this mission; they were better suited for circumstances such as these, where stealth was key and an acute sense of hearing was the sole barrier between life and death.

Unfortunately, all available prowlers were tasked with lacing a good portion of the Sol System with hornet mines, which forced the use of select frigates as recon vessels.

Undignified Squealer was headed by Captain Timothy Sinclair II. Sinclair had once captained a Marathon-class cruiser, but was discharged when he struck a superior officer, thus landing him a ninety day sentence and a dinky frigate that was one-third the size of his original ship.

The charge seemed to tame the beast within Sinclair—at least for the time being. Since that day, the middle-aged man has maintained a love-hate relationship with the UNSC.

His frigate was now speeding past Mars. After checking in with the base stationed there, his frigate was allowed to pass into the firing range of the planet's ground-based weaponry. The ship sped on for two more hours until it reached the area where it was supposed to remain. The engines were switched off and Undignified Squealer's "ears" were opened up.

Past recon missions for Undignified Squealer were all the same. Hours of boredom bombarded the crew, and the captain checked and rechecked documents that had to be handed in to some "book boy" once he returned to Earth. Sinclair hated procedures with a burning passion.

But today was different however. Almost immediately after the ship settled down, the ship's A.I. alerted the crew in the bridge that a series of objects of varying size were exiting slip space—on top of the frigate.

"Get our drive up and running and get Mars on the horn, we gotta warn the force before—"

The Sol System

The battlestars entered the system first one by one. Galactica first, then Triton, then Gladius, with the others following suite. The civilian ships entered last. The warships encircled the civilian ships in a nest of armor and weaponry.

Unknown to all save Undignified Squealer (which lay beneath Alexandria), one of the battlestars had completed their jumps too close to the frigate. The result was a series of crimpling blows to the frigate's rear shell and superstructure. Its engines were knocked offline, and the energy discharge from the shockwave had disrupted the ship's targeting systems, rendering the ship's A.I.'s ability to track targets all but useless.

In short, Undignified Squealer was a sitting duck. Oblivious to the frigate's plight, the fleet lurched onward towards their rumored destination.

UNSC Heavy Frigate Undignified Squealer/ Sol System/ Unknown Location

Captain Sinclair coughed. "Report!"

"System's fried captain," the nearest crewman answered. "MAC gun is disabled. The engineers are working as fast as they can to get it up and running. Mira's down for the count too, but she's running self-diagnostics as we speak."

The captain waved a cloud of smoke from in front of his eyes. "Thank god the emergency power's kicked in, "Sinclair said, looking at the red hue the lights bathed the ship's bridge in. "Guess those engineers aren't good for nothing after all. What's the status on that Covenant fleet? Tell me you got a shot of it before the system went out…"

"Yes sir, I did." The crewman said, pressing a button on his console. "Take a look."

The screen switched from a pitch-black view to a stilled image depicting a cluster of spacecraft. More than half of them were exceptionally larger than most UNSC craft. Sinclair noted several specks on the hull that appeared to be guns, but what really stood out was the clear writing on the sides of the ships.

"What the hell, that ain't Covenant. That's English." Sinclair squinted harder at the image. "What the fuck kind of name is Galactica?"

The captain veered his head away from the image and glanced at a woman to his right.

"Put me through to their lead ship. They aren't Covenant that's for sure, and they can't be Insurgents."

The woman obeyed. When the connection was completed, she relayed the information to the captain with due haste.

Captain Sinclair cleared his throat, then began:

This is Captain Sinclair of the UNSC Heavy Frigate Undignified Squealer. I am a captain of the UNSC Navy, and you have ventured into UNSC controlled space. Without proper authorization, you WILL be fired upon by outside forces should you continue your current course. My crew and I are not here to bring harm to you, nor are we here to hinder you. Through visual and computerized confirmation, we have determined that you are indeed not Covenant, and that you are most likely Human.

The frigate waited for several minutes for a response. The ships stopped their advancement. Two of the warships separated themselves from the group, and converged in on Undignified Squealer's position.

"Well here we go…"Sinclair whispered.