En-route Slipspace UNSC Omaha, October 25 2539

"I thought I remembered your name! You were that crazy bastard who took down a Hunter with a combat knife during the Second Battle of Utgard weren't you!" Ivan said with a broad grin.

"Ha, you got that right" Maximilian laughed "I got lucky, the marines had already wounded it, I just finished the job"

"Yeah you finished job alright, why didn't you just shoot the dammed thing?"

"I was running low, thought it best to save ammo"

Ivan laughed a great hearty laugh that made the sofa let out a nervous creak under the weight of his armour.

"You crazy bastard" He sighed again before turning to Rebecca "So Bec, what's your best kill?"

It had been years since anyone had called her 'Bec' it brought a slight smile to Rebecca's face. Being an EVA Specialist Rebecca was mainly shipped out to be attached to one starship or another as they traversed deep-space, engagingly in primarily solo operations and she could not remember that last time she got to work with other Spartans. When you are the only Spartan on a starship, she knew better than most that after awhile it can get slightly lonely. Normally the marines said little to her apart from 'Yes Ma'am' and she guessed that they naturally felt slightly intimidated by her, hell she was taller than most of them and could snap any of them like a twig, while they respected her, she never had the pleasure of talking to anyone who considered her an equal. To most of the marines and swabbies she was some kind of silent protector, someone outside of their sphere, when she felt particularly low she wondered if they even considered her a person. It was nice to be back with her own kind again, people who she could talk to without worrying that they feared her.

"Oh I have some good ones" Rebecca said "But for me I think its gotta be when I hijacked a Phantom during the skirmish over Biko and drove the thing straight into the bridge of a Covenant frigate"

"You're just as bad as him" Ivan grinned, pointing to Maximilian who was also listening intently, Cyrus was stood slightly away from the three seated Spartans and was seemingly taking little interest in their conversation.

Rebecca liked to think of herself a fairly good judge of character but she could not get a read on Cyrus. They had been waiting for this Admiral who was supposed to have met them for quite some time now and yet while her, Ivan and Maximilian made small talk and exchanged a few stories Cyrus had said very little apart from occasionally passing on information. She knew he was their superior, being the only officer in the room and significantly outranking all of them, and sometimes in the marine core officers did not like to mix with those they considered grunts, but with Spartans there normally was at least some level camaradie between them, but he showed nothing and just stood apart stone faced.

"Well I had gone EVA" Rebecca continued, putting her uncomfortable thoughts about the Lieutenant Commander aside "All hell was breaking loose around us..." But before she could finish there was the unmistakable electrical whoosh of the elevator doors opening.

"Admiral on Deck!" Cyrus shouted firmly.

All of the other Spartans instinctively shot to their feet and joined Cyrus in standing erect, snapping to attention and saluting. Out of the elevator stepped a very stern looking man in a white uniform and peaked cap, bearing all of the gold epaulettes and other paraphernalia that his station commanded. Everything about him was neat and polished from his boots to the top as his hat; Rebecca couldn't help think he looked like a bit of a stiff-neck. Despite any harbouring discontent Rebecca sometimes felt when dealing with the formalities and ceremony of the chain of command she was smart enough to know not when to push someone's buttons to much. Admirals were some of the highest ranking and most powerful officials in the whole the UNSC, one word over the edge and he could have any other them court marshalled in an instant, and this one in particular looked like he was not ready for any nonsense.

"At ease" The Admiral said

"Good to see you again sir" Cyrus said

"You too Commander" The Admiral nodded shaking the officer's hand before turning to others "And these must be your strike team"

"That they are sir"

The Admiral stood silent for a moment and gave them a brief look over.

"Good. Are you sure they will do the job?"

"Yes sir"

"Designations?"

"Ivan -015, Maximilian -055 and Rebecca -108, sir"

"Well then, I hope you three are up to grade"

Rebecca felt insulted.

"I am Admiral Augustus Crane and I am in charge on this operation. You answer only to Commander Cyrus and he answers to me. Is that clear"

"Yes sir" The three Spartans said in unison

"You are with ONI now and for this mission you are completely off the record, none of this is happening and officially everything I am about to tell you is untrue. Is that clear"

"Yes sir" They said again

"To speak of anything you experience in this operation to anyone beyond those that I give permission to is treason. Is that clear?"

Once again, they responded in kind.

"Excellent"

The Admiral moved over to one of the wall panels and flicked up a sheet of the white plastic to reveal a control panel, he keyed in a number of commands and codes before a thin blue light shined across his eyes, a retinal scan. An automated voice spoke over a loud speaker and simply said 'clearance authorised' before a table with its top covered in a network of criss-crossed glassed squares rose out of the floor with a quiet hum. The Spartans watched in silence as Crane keyed in another series of commands and soon the squares on the table lit up and above them began to appear the blue light structures of a hologram.

"This is your mission brief Spartans" Crane said as the floating networks of light began to take shape. Rebecca recognised them quickly, they were the outlines of UNSC ships "As I am sure you are aware, a number of years ago the UNSC enacted The Cole Protocol that requires any UNSC ships returning to major population centres to jump first to a random location and then to their intended destination"

Rebecca of course knew this order very well having worked on starships for the vast majority of her career, it was designed by Admiral Preston Cole as a method of preserving the human colonies that were still standing since the Covenant had displayed the ability to be able to track slipspace jumps, if the ship first jumps to some random set of co-ordinates it made them harder to track. While the protocol to some felt like martial law as it majorly limited free slipspace travel for civilians the intial concerns about personal freedom were easy to put aside when you considered the consequences of if a Covenant ship traced your slipspace vector back to your home colony.

"For the most part this has gone off without issue. Normally ships end up in some uncharted part of deep space and simply continue on their destination with no other concerns apart from a slight delay" Crane continued, walking his way around the hologram in the centre of the room. "But it appears that one of our jumps has gone awry"

"Have we lost a ship sir?" Cyrus said

"No Cyrus, I wish that were the case" The Admiral said, Rebecca was surprised he didn't snap it the Spartan but it was apparent the two knew each other well, she imagined if any of the others had interrupted they would have been shouted down quite quickly.

The hologram behind the Admiral began to expand and reveal the shapes of a number of other ships and their designations. Rebecca recognised all the shapes as if they were old friends, the classic unmistakable silhouettes of UNSC warships, but as she scanned through their names and allotted classifications she began to feel a knot tie tight in her stomach, all of them were listed as missing.

"We haven't lost a ship, we have lost a whole god dammed fleet" Crane spat.

"How can you lose a fleet?" Rebecca blurted out in shock, encouraging the Admiral's face to contort into a scowl.

"That's what you are going to find out for us S108" Crane said "Now if you please let me continue Petty Officer"

"Yes sir. Sorry sir" Rebecca said like clockwork.

"Sixth Fleet was part of the defence of Lys in the Outer Colonies. But unfortunately it was a battle we could not win, Lys was dam important in our production chain, it was a shame to lose it, so the remnants of Sixth Fleet were ordered to retreat"

Crane hit a switch on the control pad and the holographic images of the fleet were whisked away and replaced by one of a star map with one sector marked with a ring.

"Sixth Fleet made a slipspace jump together to a part of space we assumed uninhabited and arrived in this sector here" Crane pointed to the one highlighted on the map "This is their last recorded position before they dropped completely off any UNSC scope. Eighteen ships, gone in an instant, without a single transmission or warning beacon deployed. What makes this situation even more dire though is that the fleet's flagship, Together We Rise, was carrying an AI. As it states in the Cole Protocol 'Destruction or capture of a shipboard AI is absolutely unacceptable' and for her to fall into Covenant hands could turn the tide of the war"

"So the story that Sixth Fleet had been wiped out defending Lys was a cover sir?" Maximilian said flatly.

"Well of course Spartan" Crane said bluntly, Rebecca knew that constructing a web of lies and propaganda must have been second nature to him.

"We couldn't hide such a disappearance of ships, such a thing is unprecedented" Crane continued

Before Maximilian could speak again Cyrus cut across "What are we dealing with then sir?"

"Honestly Cyrus, we have no dammed idea. We expect Covenant. Originally we theorised that Sixth Fleet had just got worst of the odds and jumped straight into a Covenant battle group or appeared near one of their more well armed installations and been destroyed but that does not explain how they would fall off the grid without a single transmission"

"Quite right sir" Cyrus said

"But this is where you come in Spartans, we are sending you to the last recorded location of Sixth Fleet and you are going to find out what the hell happened to our ships"

"So you have no idea what we are dealing with?" Ivan snorted

"No"

"Well you are the Office of Naval Intelligence, isn't Intel what your pay-checks are for?"

"Know your place Spartan" Crane hissed "We will be outfitting you as best we can"

Rebecca felt a large surge of anger welling up inside her and she couldn't help herself, she said "So you are sending us in completely blind and judging by what happened to the fleet, you might be sending us to our deaths?"

"On every mission you might be sent to your death Spartan"

"On most missions I at least have a fighting chance and know who I am pointing my rifle at"

"You over step your bounds Spartan" The Admiral clenched and was starting to become very red in the face.

"Sounds like this is something ONI should be dealing with, your agents seem more suited to this then wasting a team of Spartans" Ivan cut in

"Exactly" Rebecca agreed

"Don't you think we have already tried that?" Crane growled, before removing his cap and smoothing his thinning brown hair down slightly in an attempt to calm himself. The admiral sighed took a breath and continued "Our first plan of action was to send one of our Prowlers, which we of course did. The Romero was dispatched just over a week ago as soon as we had confirmed Sixth Fleet's disappearance, we haven't heard from it since"

"I see" Cyrus said "So what is our brief sir?"

"It is simple Cyrus. Get in, find out what the hell has happened to Sixth Fleet, try to recover the AI and get the hell out of there. I know I haven't given you much and some of you" He glared at the Rebecca, Ivan and Maximilian "May have your qualms and doubts about our methods, but we are trying our best to make sure that you will be successful in your mission and you have your orders. We need to go in quick and quiet with a small team and you II's are the best we have. If the Covenant have a weapon that can disable our ships without a moments notice then everything we know about modern naval warfare changes. I need not tell you the stakes are high, and you must not fail, for the sake of every man, woman and child"

"Do not worry sir" Cyrus said "I will make sure we get it done"

"I trust you will Cyrus, you are our best man and I will reserve judgement on your choices in squad until the job is done"

Rebecca considered rising to this jab but decided she would rather just leave it lie, best not get on her CO's bad-side even more than she already had. While she had her worries about the mission and may put on a slight front of reluctance, Rebecca knew she would do what she needed to and she would try her best to make sure they found out what on earth was happening in that sector. Being herself a swabbie for the most part, she thought the idea of the Covenant having a weapon that could take their ships out of commission with a single punch, was absolutely terrifying and of course if the covvies got their scaly hands on an AI, it could be the beginning of the end for man.