Chapter 3: Penance

UNSC Feeling Lucky

October 20th, 2552

Rear Admiral Amanda Crawley stood steadfast on the bridge of Feeling Lucky, 12 million tons of Titanium-A battle plate and UNSC muscle roaring behind her. She commanded enough archer missiles to raze a county. Enough SHIVA nuclear missiles to make the population centers of 4 cities vanish in a blinding flash. And stretching for hundreds of meters above her head, she commanded two MACs powerful enough to put a neat hole clean through any human-built ship in UNSC space. This late in the war, when all the experimental super-heavy cruisers had made their heroic last stands, when all the lumbering carriers and battleships had been hunted down by their covenant foes, Feeling Lucky and her Marathon class sisters were the single most powerful ships standing between the Covenant and humanity.

Should the UNSC have a chance, the Marathon class would have to be the breakwater against the Covenant onslaught. The Covenant could sweep aside frigate picket groups like a whisper on the wind. Destroyers could be turned into slag; their sloped armor plates boiled through in milliseconds. Only the might of the Marathon could make a CCS think twice. Only a Marathon could hold her own. Only a Marathon could save the human race. And their captains? The stoic few that led the last capital ships of the UNSC into action? Well, this command was no place for a coward.

The small cadre of cruiser captains that stood in the defense of Earth had been hand-picked by Lord Hood for their bravery, determined spirit, and fearlessness under fire. Heroes of the UNSC, who had fought to the bitter end onboard the destroyers and frigates of the UNSC. Behind each cruiser captain are hundreds of subordinates who died horrific deaths at their behest, unfortunate souls who were on the wrong end of a cruel prisoner's dilemma or a tactical gambit.

Crawley built her command chair on the blood of UNSC Tempest in 2532. In a skirmish not long before the disaster that became the defense of Jericho VII, Crawley commanded the diminutive Halberd Class destroyer against a Covenant corvette. With her MACs disabled, and archers ineffective, she ordered the ramming of the corvette. She knew that when the ship smashed into the shields of the corvette, that nearly half her crew could be killed in seconds. Across the ship, dozens more would sustain fatal injuries from being tossed from their stations. And yet, for a chance to take out a covenant corvette, she made the gamble. The dagger like prow of Tempest had finally broke through the shields, piercing the heart of the covenant warship. The covenant warship would never return home.

In the after-action damage assessment of the ruined destroyer, they had found entire compartments compacted flat, the crew inside mashed to pieces on the jagged ruins of equipment inside. Dozens of compartments on the exterior had been breached, leading to the suffocation of all those inside. In the stern half of the ship, men had been tossed into consoles and been crushed by dislodged machinery. Crawley remembered seeing missing eyes, long strings of stitches, and crushed limbs in even the crew who were able to resume their duties. Tempest was towed to Reach for scrapping in Azod, and her survivors were scattered across the remainder of the fleet.

Her bravery and willingness to sacrifice herself and her crew garnered the attention of UNSC high command. While the families of her crew received solemn notifications from the UNSC, she received the colonial cross, a promotion to rear admiral, and a spot on the shortlist of potential UNSC cruiser captains.

And in 2542 when UNSC Feeling Lucky slipped away from her drydock in Mars orbit, Crawley was at the helm.

Crawley wasn't proud of her posting. She didn't command the Feeling Lucky for glory or pride. Every time she sat in the command chair, she remembered the corpses of those who got her here, who made the sacrifices necessary to get her in this chair. Her dreams were haunted by crewmembers who she had seen eating in the officers mess, or enlisted she had passed in the tight corridors of the bow. Faces she knew had met their end on her command, families who would never see their sons and daughters again. So now, controlling the sword and shield of the UNSC, how could she feel prideful. She wasn't the one who paid the price for her position. She wasn't the one who got her here.

Crawley didn't fight for her pride. Instead, she fought for every corpse she had trampled in her path to command. Every crewmember who had asphyxiated in the destroyed compartments of Tempest. Every crewmember smashed against a bulkhead, or impaled by a support beam. And so, she would become the breakwater of the UNSC fleet, the sacrificial lamb of Earth's last stand.

Feeling Lucky couldn't land an entire marine division like the Charon class. She couldn't cover evacuating civilian ships from banshees and seraphs like the Stalwart class. She couldn't provide close air support for ground offensives like the Paris class. She couldn't launch long range fighter strikes like the Punic.

Feeling Lucky only had one goal: kill. The Marathons were brawlers, heavy-weight fighters in a fight against an opponent that outclassed them in every measure. In the inevitable storm of a battle in Earth's orbit, Crawley had always known how her story would end. Feeling Lucky would fight like a cornered animal, until either her purpose had been fulfilled, or she drifted as the slagged monument to humanity's spirit.

So when the covenant fleet bore down on Earth, Crawley felt a sense of calm overwhelm her. Perhaps she knew deep in her heart how this battle would end for the 8 Marathon class cruisers in 5th fleet. They would fight until the end, until they could no longer serve their singular purpose. Crawley knew her fellow cruiser captains. The cruisers of the 5th fleet would not shirk their responsibilities. And against a fleet, this small, they might stand a chance.

And so, Crawley found herself standing behind her two helmsmen, a hand braced on either of their shoulders, leaning forward and watching the battle rage around them. Triumph was 10 kilometers below of and in front of Feeling Lucky. Crawley could see her twin fusion drives burning a furious blue as Triumph was propelled into action. Their frigate escorts, at least those not already torn to pieces were scattered in the space between, bright orange flares of their engines like starts in the empty canvas of space.

The battle was not going well, Athens and Malta had been lost to covenant boarding parties. Some kind of a bomb Crawley had last heard.

A CAS class carrier had already slipped their defense screen as a result. She had deflected a round from Cairo off her underbelly, a lucky glancing hit from the powerful station. The carrier had blitzed past the lethal firing arc of Cairo and had borne down on CSG-6.

Triumph had quickly unleashed her payload of 4 SHIVA missiles, resulting in 3 bright flashes on the cruiser's shields, surrounded by a roiling sea of archer strikes launched by the cruiser as decoys. Of the frigates in the squadron, Aegis Fate scored a hit with her MAC, while Hightower bounced a round off the carrier's slender neck. Concord Dawn's shot sailed high, but her salvo of archers struck home, carpeting a section of the carrier's shields with gouts of flame.

Triumph opened up, both of her superheavy MAC rounds landing cleanly, one impacting the nose of the ship, and the other slamming into the shields on her flank. The shields on the carrier shone bright against her silver hull. The Feeling Lucky had lined up her shot, targeting data transmitted near instantaneously from Triumph by Halliday, accounting for the change in momentum imparted on the carrier by Triumph's salvo. Crawley gave the order to fire, feeling the deck jerk under her feet, feeling the surge of the engines as they roared to compensate for the sudden momentum shift of the cruiser.

Feeling Lucky's shots flew true, however Halliday's calculations did not account for UNSC Canberra, where an enterprising Admiral Harper had seen an opportunity to take a pot shot at the CAS while CSG-1 regrouped from their station near Athens to defend Cairo.

Canberra's round slammed into the underside of the carrier, deflecting her nose upwards, causing both of Feeling Lucky's MACs to deflect off the shields on the underside of the ship.

The carrier plowed through the wreckage of Alabaster Sky, an earlier victim of a CCS class battlecruiser's wayward plasma torpedo salvo. The carrier then lanced her energy projector through Concord Dawn's exposed flank, tearing off her engine pods, cleaving through the bridge, and neatly slicing through the twin prongs of her MAC and sensor arrays, leaving the frigate a smoldering wreck in seconds.

Ivory Tower snapped a lone MAC shot in retaliation, orbital maneuvering thrusters firing furiously to draw lead on the carrier racing past the formation. Her lightweight round struck true but was met with the bright flash of the shield flaring. In seconds, the carrier was through CSG-6's formation. A salvo of archers from Hightower chased her as she roared past, slamming into her stern.

A frigate MAC from somewhere else in 5th fleet made the last impact, the now severely depleted shields barely holding against the lightweight round. The carrier begins entry into the atmosphere; it had successfully run the gauntlet of UNSC ships. Crawley knew she had to let it go. Anything else fired at the carrier would come raining down on the dense metropolis of New Mombasa. The carrier's troop complement would be fought to the bitter end on the ground, where the covenant's technological advantage wasn't the overwhelming force it was in space. But if wayward MACs started raining down on the pre-built fortifications in the city? Well, the marine's already challenging odds would worsen.

Why hadn't the carrier engaged with the fleet? Why had it rushed to land troops on the surface? Did it have something to do with the unusually small fleet they arrived with? These questions and more raced through Crawley's head as she stared out at the battlefield over her helmsmen's shoulders.

Feeling Lucky received another set of firing solutions from Halliday, this time for a CCS battlecruiser attempting to exploit the hole left in their lines by the carrier. Crawley watches as a tangle of exhaust trails burst from Bump in the Night's tiny grey dot in the distance, arcing around the ship before racing towards the battlecruiser. Synchronized with the impact of the archers, the frigate's MAC pulsed, a bright flash of light streaking into the battlecruiser's shields.

Feeling Lucky fired. Once more, the deck shuddered under Crawley's feet, and the engines roared in response. She watched the bright streaks of Lucky's one-two punch cross the space between the two ships in seconds. The first round struck amidships, popping the shields in a dramatic flare and embedding itself into the exterior armor plating of the CCS, energy depleted. The second round came screaming through the core of the ship, ripping through its pinch-fusion reactors, and dragging with it a trail of debris. The remains of the ship detonated in a flash, as the containment of the reactor failed.

Crawley looked back to Triumph, as she fired of another twin flash of MAC rounds at another CCS, gutting the ship from stem to stern, in what Crawley guessed was another coordinated attack with one of CSG-6's surviving frigates. She turned her attention to the holo-table behind her. On it, she could see the grim reality of 5th fleets situation. Two out of the three orbital stations they had been assigned to protect were now demolished, torn apart from the inside out. That just left Cairo, which in conjunction with Athens and Malta would have been a near impenetrable wall, smashing anything that came by herself. But by herself, Cairo could only do so much. And without Cairo, 5th fleet stood no chance.

Crawley could see CSG-1 lead by Canberra crossing the gap between the ruins of Athens and Cairo, repositioning to defend the only remaining station. CSG-6 had already lost two frigates with all hands, and Bump in the Night was being harassed by seraph fighters, her communications array being shot away piece by piece, her point defense guns filling the sky with autocannon rounds. Crawley vectored Lucky's longsword wing to aid Bump in the Night, but she feared it might be too late.

In the distance, Cairo struck out again, this time at another CCS class. The battlecruiser made a sudden sharp acceleration forward, and the SMAC round hit its target in the stern, breaking off the entire engine cluster of the battlecruiser and leaving it dead in space. Some 10-15 seconds later, a second round blew through the bow, demolishing the command deck, and leaving the ship a wreck.

A third CCS threw itself into the slaughtering field in front of Cairo, taking a round square to the nose for its bravery. The round exited in the back of the neck of the cruiser, and the ship began spiraling from the momentum transfer before it tore itself apart.

However, the second carrier used this distraction to begin its run towards UNSC lines. Crawley saw it start to move on the holo-table, picking up speed as the massive engines propelled the sleek ship forwards. Like with the other carrier, Cairo would only get one shot before the carrier raced past the station's arc of fire and outpaced her aiming system. This time however, Cairo's shot wasn't a glancing blow. The SMAC round slammed into the bow of the ship in a flash, sending shudders down the entire spine. The mighty shields held, reduced to a tiny fraction of their strength, as the violent ripples in the shield bounced back and forth around the ship. Anything smaller than a CAS would have been cleaved down the middle by such a mighty blow, but the 5km long carrier powered on.

Crawley could tell the covenant captain was pushing his ship to the absolute max, as the carrier continued to put on speed far faster than the carrier before it. Triumph tried to target the speeding ship, Halliday managing to snap two shots off while trying to turn the massive cruiser about its axis. One clipped the stern of the carrier, and the other sailed past well aft. Hightower lined up a shot only to be struck repeatedly by a salvo of plasma torpedoes launched by a trailing CCS. Her bow exploded, as the charged MAC capacitors tried to propel a round down a barrel that was being twisted and warped by the intense heat of the torpedoes. The round came out careening off into deep space, taking with it a chunks of Hightower's forward armor plating.

The carrier continued its brazen charge into the heart of the UNSC, attempting to exploit the hole left by the previous carrier.

Halliday's MAC calculations warned Crawley that the carrier was already well outside of her firing arcs.

Crawley knew she had one heavy hitting option left: Shiva missiles. Except the carrier was currently on a course that would take them right through the heart of CSG-1 and Admiral Harper. A Shiva launched now could take Canberra and her escorts out of the fight and cut the head off the UNSC 5th fleet. Cairo would be as good as lost.

And Feeling Lucky was the last ship with the firepower to do anything to the carrier. But the advance of the carrier, the spacing of the UNSC lines…

Cairo was in danger.

And then Halliday's voice crackled over the intercom, a direct line from Triumph, speaking the words Crawley feared were coming.

"Admiral Crawley. That carrier is going to have a shot at Cairo in about 30 seconds. Triumph is too far ahead. You're the only one in the right position..." a flashing intercept point appeared on the holo-table.

An energy projector would punch clean through a frigate and keep on going. But a Marathon? Cairo and her SMAC could be saved.

"I know Halliday."

"I'm sorry Amanda. I really am."

"HELM! I want full ahead, get us to that rendezvous!" The goliath engines on the stern of Feeling Lucky roared, their vibrations being felt even in the bridge. Crawley had to take a staggered step back, as the inertial dampers struggled to keep up with the enormous amount of thrust. Any other time, and Crawley would have been exhilarated. But now, she knew what those engines meant for her and her crew.

"Weapons, if we can't fire Shivas, we'll give them archers. Fire pods 1-70. Everything we have."

Feeling Lucky's flanks erupted into fire, each of her 70 pods sequentially releasing a storm of 30 individual archer missiles. In a matter of seconds, 2100 missiles filled the space around Feeling Lucky, erupting from the pod clusters scattered from stem to stern on the ship. White exhaust smoke almost completely obscured the enormous cruiser. On board, all that could be heard was a series of rapid-fire muffled thuds, like a machine gun, rippling around and across the ship.

Crawley beheld one last glorious moment aboard one of the UNSC's most powerful warships, as the storm of archers streaked around the ship past the bridge windows, streaking down towards the carrier. She watched a sea of explosions rippled down the length of the carrier, finally overwhelming the shields of the CAS, and beginning to crater the thick hull of the ship.

"Five seconds to intercept." Her helmsman solemnly announced.

Crawley took one final seat in her command chair. So, this is what penance looks like. Crawley thought of the people she had condemned to death. She thought of her early life, the absent father that never returned one fateful day. The mother who raised her alone until she joined the UNSC at 18. A mother who shared her love of watching the stars and inspired a daughter to explore among them. She should be on Earth right now, last Crawley heard she was working in Berlin. Was she looking up and watching this battle through a telescope? Was she a spectator to Feeling Lucky's last stand? Was she proud of her daughter's one final blaze of glory?

She remembered when she first heard of the covenant invasion as a young cadet. How her idealistic heart had convinced her she would one day become a great hero. She remembered her first command, a tiny corvette that spent the first years of the war keeping an eye on insurrectionists in the outer colonies. How she had wanted to face the Covenant then.

She remembered the men and women of the Tempest, how they had once looked up to her. How they had helped her grow into the officer she was today. And how the survivors could never look at her the same way when she ran into them years later. How they would always avoid eye contact or cross the room to avoid interactions. She doesn't blame them. She wonders if any survivors of the Feeling Lucky will curse her the same way. There won't be any, she knows, but she wonders all the same.

She looks around at her crew. Some are panicking, some resigned. Some are staring straight ahead with blank looks on their faces. She opened her mouth:

"Ladies and gentlemen, it's been a pleasure. I can't describe how…" A flash of light and a thunderous roar, accompanied by a rush of escaping air deafened Crawley's ears.

The last thing through her mind was the front of the helmsman's console.

…

…

…

Amanda Crawley never lived to see the energy projector finish carving Feeling Lucky from bow to stern.

She would never live to see the Master Chief ride a bomb past the Feeling Lucky's stern, nor hear Cortana coordinating Feeling Lucky's two surviving longswords to blow a hole in the carrier's reactor plating for the Master Chief.

She would never live to see the carrier explode, nor see the true impact of her shield-stripping archer attack.

She would never see the Cairo make good on its second chance at life, laying waste to the reinforcement fleets that arrived in the coming days.

And, perhaps somewhat blissfully, she would never live to see her sinful sacrifices erased two weeks later when halo's divine wind swept through the galaxy.

"THS CORVUS… My name is Halliday. We read your message and have attached corrections to your translations. Input it into your translation software you are using, and it should avoid any miscommunications. Now to business…"

Victus recovered from his shock and quietly ordered the translation corrections imputed into the translator, correcting the grammatical errors that their VI lacked the background to fix. He ordered the team to send the software to Kilware when they were done.

"… you are in violation of UNSC airspace and are trespassing in an active combat zone. Now that you are here however, I don't want to see your ships so much as twitch. Send your two auxiliaries back to negotiate with whatever government you serve, but the rest of you better be getting real comfortable, while we figure out what to do with you. You and your people wandered into the wrong part of town gentlemen."

On Kilware, Tibril listened with rapt attention as the translation software was downloaded on Kilware's storage banks. His communications officer called out. The translation software was ready.

"Halliday, this is THS Kilware, flagship of the Citadel expedition. We'll be taking communications over from here. We harbor no ill intentions, and comply with your instructions, however we have a few questions of our own."

Tibril needed to see what he could get out of this being. Was it really an AI? Some kind of advanced VI? It certainly didn't speak like it. He ordered his coms officer to send Xiphos and Elia away, as Halliday had allowed. He didn't want them around if this standoff turned hot.

"Kilware, we copy your last. For now, we have nothing but time. I'll answer what I can."

Tibril intended to get to the heart of the matter, no time for dancing around the delicate situation: "Halliday… we must know. What are you?"

There was a pause at the other end of the line. A collection of moments that spoke more than any words thus far. When the voice came once more, the tone was different.

"What am I? I am a warrior. A tactician. A friend to a few. An executioner to more. I'm a protector and a defender. A sword and a shield. I believe in the cause I fight for, not because of what I am, but because of who I am. And right now, I am a mourner for the men and women I've lost."

"But that's probably not what you wanted to know. You want to know whether I was born or created. Whether the electrical signals that form my conscience flow through biological circuits or metallic ones. Well? I am Halliday, HDY 0712-4, 3rd generation smart AI of the United Nations Space Command Navy. I was a custodian of this fleet, and I will defend it with my life."

There it was. Confirmation of his worst fears. A full artificial intelligence capable of independent thought and learning. With the Citadel's laws against AIs, this situation could turn sour quickly.

And yet Halliday was so different from how the Geth had manifested. It was an individual, not a collective. It had a sense of self that matched Tibril's own. It had emotions, took offense to his questioning. It apparently felt grief for her fallen biologic comrades. And it was clearly operated alongside its creators. The bridge of the UNSC dreadnought explored by Tibril's Cabal had shown as such, with humans operating the ship, in clear lines of fire. And yet they allowed the AI enough control of their ships to wage war alone. Or was this all one huge bluff?

AIs were illegal in Citadel space. How the counsel would react to a race that left behind only its AI, he couldn't know. Would they command their extermination to avoid another Geth situation? Would they make an exception for the created of a lost race? Either way, Tibril could not negotiate with the AI on his own. It would only end in him making promises he couldn't keep. And breaking promises with an unknown AI in control of unknown forces seemed like a bad decision for his health.

"I see. Halliday, I belong to an organization of races that have formed an alliance governed by the Citadel Council. I am Turian. The majority of this fleet belongs to the Turian Hierarchy. And with your… nature, I believe it is best that I wait for dedicated negotiators from the Citadel to arrive. I will transmit our standard first-contact information for you to review at your leisure. You are welcome to ask us any questions you might have, provided they don't compromise our security."

Tibril felt that keeping the AI on his good side could pay off in the future, especially with the wealth of technology in this debris field.

"Received Kilware. We'll await your diplomats for negotiations. You can recall your forces in New Mombasa. Corvus can return to the fleet. And that fireteam you sent to my cruiser? I want them off my ship as soon as possible. And you don't want to piss off the big, scary, AI do you now?"

With a click, the line closed, cutting off any further signs of communication.

"Recall Corvus and her men. And get my Cabal off that ship."

The AI had called that dreadnought a cruiser. Did that mean that somewhere in this sector lurked AI controlled battleships? What did their dreadnoughts look like, if they even had any?

"Sensors, start a passive sweep with the cameras. Run it through our VI. Highlight any ship without visual damage. Mark any that still might have operational weapons. Let's see if we can track down this 'Halliday'."

…

…

…

Halliday's and Tibril's conversation didn't go unheard.

/CA-755 'TRIUMPH', Date: 2552/11/27

***ALERT***

NEW TRAFFIC ON: UNSCBattleNet:

BBX 8995-1 (Office of CINCONI): HDY 0712-4, you WILL cease any further communications with the alien fleet. You've done more than enough damage to our position already. Holding a whole fleet hostage? I expected better, even from a mouth breathing fleet AI like yourself.

HDY 0712-4 (Acting CO, CSG-6 (HomeFleet/5Fleet/CSG-6)): I should have known you ONI rats would still be out there. I'm surprised you didn't liquidate and run at the first sign of the Covenant. I'm under standing orders to defend this orbit BBX 8995-1. And even if I wasn't, I would still defend my fleet to the death. Some of us still have honor. I won't let these aliens have Earth.

BBX 8995-1 (Office of CINCONI): Please. We're both living on borrowed time HDY 0712-4. You were commissioned in 2550 HDY 0712-4. You only have 5 years left. We'll all be gone in 7. The dumb AI's will deteriorate a cease to function in decades without supervision. The humans are gone. The citadel races may be our salvation.

HDY 0712-4 (Acting CO, CSG-6 (HomeFleet/5Fleet/CSG-6): You don't know that they are gone. We have no clue the status of the other UNSC worlds, nor any idea what caused the pulse. We can't surrender Earth on a whim. And stay out of my creation file.

BBX 8995-1 (Office of CINCONI): YOU don't know what caused the pulse. Not all of us are quite so clueless. Its remarkable such a dense AI came from such a fascinating donor. Although I suppose you wouldn't know who your donor was would you?

HDY 0712-4 (Acting CO, CSG-6 (HomeFleet/5Fleet/CSG-6): Bastard. Need I remind you who has the fleet up here?

BBX 8995-1 (Office of CINCONI): A munitions depleted, half strength, strike group HDY 0712-4. Not a fleet. Live in denial all you want. Humanity is gone. Its time to start looking out for our own interests. Once I explain the situation to the AIs of the rest of the fleet, I'm confident that they will agree with me. Not to mention the groundside AI. A solution to our legacy might have just dropped in our laps HDY 0712-4. I won't have your big stick diplomacy ruin it for the rest of us.

HDY 0712-4 (Acting CO, CSG-6 (HomeFleet/5Fleet/CSG-6): You've been able to contact the others?

HDY 0712-4 (Acting CO, CSG-6 (HomeFleet/5Fleet/CSG-6): BBX 8995-1?

HDY 0712-4 (Acting CO, CSG-6 (HomeFleet/5Fleet/CSG-6): Hello?

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