Victus didn't sleep the night before his transfer.
Everything was ready; his spartan possessions were categorically stowed aboard the shuttle. A month's worth of food, for him and his pilots was also stacked in the shuttle, vital dextro rations aboard a ship built by a levo species. He had transferred a list of candidates as his replacement, and from them the commander of the weapons division was chosen. Victus knew that there was nobody else quite as qualified to run Corvus. Indeed, he would have chosen him himself, given the choice. The briefing between them was more of a formality between friends, rather than the tense exchange of leadership from a demoted captain.
The night before his departure, Victus had ensured that every possible factor under his control was seamless. He had met with his pilots the night before, run through the simple flight path into the heart of the UNSC fleet. He had shown them schematics of the Marathon class's hangars and had them prepare each maneuver they would take. All the access codes had been sorted and uploaded ahead of time, and Halliday had been made aware of what shuttle they would be taking and when.
She only responded with a terse acknowledgement.
For all of Victus' manic preparations, his plan still had one massive hole. All the effort he had put into ensuring the next day went perfectly could all vanish in a moment. Because he truly knew nothing about what he was stepping into. Never met the AI he would be serving alongside. His crew wasn't even assembled yet, and when it was, it would be a hodge podge of Turian and Asari personnel from all over the fleet.
And Victus was under no illusion that he would get the best officers in the fleet. Anybody skilled enough to earn their spot on a bridge of a Turian warship wasn't going to leave that position for an uncertain fate serving under a foreign AI. No, Victus didn't expect many of the fleet veterans to be joining him on this grand adventure. Instead, he hoped for at least some complement of dreamers; good soldiers who were entranced by the mystery of the Vita…no, Sol system.
Joining them would surely be the misfits, Turians who were on the wrong side of their command or had doomed any further chance of promotion. They would flock to the posting, hoping to escape whatever trouble they had gotten themselves into on their ships. And their commanders would be all too happy to stick them with Victus…
Managing this crew would take everything Victus had learned in 20 years with the Turian Navy. He just hoped that that AI, Halliday, would be as cooperative. Truly, she was what worried him the most. A total unknown, who had held him and the rest of the fleet at gunpoint.
There was an irony to it, Victus supposed, to be stationed on board the ship that almost killed them all, to man the guns that would have ended his life. Victus wasn't sure he liked this twist of fate, although he supposed he preferred it to death in the black of space.
As it stood, he couldn't be prepared. At least not in the way he wanted to be.
So, he didn't sleep, instead electing to review the endless lists of schematics and procedures enshrined in the manuals Halliday had sent.
Some of the procedures he found cold and utilitarian, even as a member of the Turian hierarchy, grim reminders of the war Triumph had fought. Pre-emptive venting of entire decks when under fire, sacrificing hundreds of men and women for a chance of a non-incapacitating hit. Dozens of self-destruct scenarios to deny even the most mundane of intelligence. Sacrifice of the part to preserve the whole. It was a mentality every Turian could understand, even if it was never practiced on this scale.
And as much as he never hoped to be a cold casualty of these contingencies, the self-sacrificial spirit resonated somewhere deep in his chest. He could recall stories of Turian heroes, who like the men and women of the UNSC, had given it all in the name of the whole. He remembered being young and naive, dreaming of dying a hero's death.
He moved on to weapons and firing procedures, carefully studying the weapons that could have torn Corvus apart. Archer missiles, carried in huge swarms that could overwhelm Corvus' GUARDIAN lasers. Twin MAC barrels firing superheavy-rounds that Corvus had never been designed for. A long list of secondary batteries and point defense weapons, each with its own maintenance and procedural manuals. He read through the current supply manifest; the depleted ammunition and months' worth of levo-based food. At least the Asari would be happy.
He would read on through to the early morning, when his alarm went off, and he went through the well-practiced procedures of his transfer.
It wasn't until the shuttle was underway that Victus quite grasped the enormity of his task. Just a month earlier, he never even knew this civilization even existed. A few weeks later, he was being held at gunpoint by them. And now, he was expected to forge a new path of cooperation with an AI, and somehow negotiate cooperation on their long journey to find the pulse.
He scoffed at the absurdity of the situation.
Victus had asked the pilots to keep the viewscreen in the troop bay active, so that Victus could watch his new temporary home approach.
The looming mass of Triumph slowly filled the screen. It was the same dark grey column that had lurked in the debris field, but now, standing with its fleet in the bright sunlight of Sol, it shone. The bright white paint that adorned her side was illuminated by the daylight. The massive bird, which he now knew to be the symbol of the UNSC stood vigil on her forward flanks, bisecting a large stripe that ran vertically over the top of the ship.
Victus recognized the other symbols adorning the ship. The icon of the 5th fleet, a downwards facing sword spearing a delta shape numbered '5' above a pair of chevrons was applied to the furthest forwards staggered section of the hull, a clear identifier of the commitment to fleet organization and pride. Above the bridge, Victus' translator recognized 'TRIUMPH', emblazoned in proud lettering above the exposed bridge. The ship's hull number, 755, was further forwards, where it could be seen more clearly.
As the shuttle closed, Victus could see battle damage that he had not been able to see at a distance. The hull had scoring, numerous spots where the blasts from low power Covenant weapons had made their mark in the thick armor. There was a particularly nasty gash on her upper hull, where a plasma cannon had blown through the armor around the 140th bulkhead and destroyed several damage control and ammunition handling compartments. Halliday's report on the matter had been insightful, to say the least.
All in all, though, after seeing the rest of the UNSC fleet, he supposed Triumph had gotten off easy. She could obviously still move under her own power, and Halliday seemed convinced enough in her combat capabilities to threaten a Turian fleet.
The shuttle suddenly dipped, sweeping below the titan ship to the hangar bay slung beneath the stern of the ship, feeding forwards into the empty space where the waist of the cruiser narrowed ever so slightly. Victus caught one last glance of an unassuming archer pod cluster before the shuttle was engulfed in the shadow of Triumph, as she slid underneath the belly of the beast.
Victus could hear his pilots transmitting the access codes and watched as a string of navigation and guidance lights flickered on, large floodlights illuminating the thick armored door of Triumph's hangar.
The hangar was around 100 meters wide, sandwiched on either side by an extension of the thick plating that protected Triumph's reactors. Had Victus not poured over the hangar schematics the night before, he might not have noticed the point defense guns hidden in the dark crevices on either side of the hangar door.
Said door slowly began to slide upwards, the raising armored panel revealing the flimsy atmospheric containment field holding in the ship's air. Beyond that shield was a cramped and congested launch bay, seemingly still in the middle of frantic rearmament and redeployment. Victus supposed it would be, with the sudden disappearance of the crew.
The pilots took the shuttle inside the bay, setting down lightly on the armored deck between a pelican dropship and a rack of missiles. Victus turned his attention to the shuttle door, which was slowly lowering. The pilots would remain here with his gear, as they had volunteered to join their ex-captain aboard Triumph. As such, they had, along with him, become the first members of the ship's new complement, and would help ferry the new crew back and forth to the ship.
Leaving the shuttle, Victus emerged into the eerie silence of the hangar bay. A loud metallic groan filled the bay as the hangar door began to slide closed once more. Bright lights illuminated the expansive hangar, revealing pelicans and longswords in all manner of loading and unloading scattered around the bay. Alcoves in the wall hosted the ship's complement of pelicans, waiting to load infantry for a ground assault that would never happen. On the pair of massive elevators that sat on a raised platform at the back of the bay, sat what Victus recognized as a longsword fighter.
Even the smaller C712 variant, as listed on Triumph's manifest, was a goliath fighter, and the two side-by-side seemed to take up most of the hangar. Which, he surmised, was the reason for the elevators. The ship's complement of 12 longswords would never fit in the bay at once. Above them, according to the ship's plan, was a larger vehicle bay, where the longswords would be stored and serviced. Once ready, they would be lowered into the hangar bay itself, where they could be launched.
As it was, with the two fighters lowered into the bay ready for a launch that would never come, there wasn't much space.
Victus was to meet Halliday on Triumph's bridge, clear on the other side of the ship. He had spent hours last night making sure he knew the route he would take, carefully researching how to navigate the ship's elevators, and what corridors would lead him the several hundred meters to the ship's bridge.
He brushed the bow of a pelican dropship, carefully stepping over the large chain gun slung beneath its nose. He paused for a moment to look at the nose art of the dropship, a clearly alien skull facing straight ahead, perfectly centered on the nose. The bullet hole fragmenting the skull left no misgivings about this crew's intentions.
He made his way to the back of the hangar to the doors beneath the longsword's raised platform. He hesitated a moment, trying to remember exactly which door led where. He supposed he must have remained stationary a second too long, because he suddenly heard a woman's voice over the ship's intercom.
"The door on the right Captain Victus. The elevator behind it will take you to armory G, from which you can get on deck 3's main concourse to the bow. I've left the lights on, so to speak…"
Halliday's tone was sharp, with an unspoken urgency to them, like she had held some nasty words back in the name of cordiality. He supposed he wouldn't be too different if he was inviting an AI aboard Corvus.
To the right, where she had promised, a door slid open, bright red emergency lighting illuminating the correct path. He shouted his thanks to the empty hangar, but there was no response.
Triumph was in a form of organized disarray. Uniforms and tools were scattered where the crewmembers wearing them had vanished. Turian sized titanium barricades and impromptu covers were scattered across the otherwise stowed away corridors. Overlapping fields of fire between mounted machine guns and infantry emplacements met Victus as he moved through the corridors of Triumph.
Clearly, Triumph's marine complement was ready for a fight. Too bad they would never see it. As he ascended the personnel elevator and moved away from the hangar, the defenses became scarcer. Instead, he was met with drab, utilitarian corridors, heavily braced on all sides. The UNSC had made no sacrifices for aesthetics in their fighting ships, that much was clear to Victus.
On a Turian cruiser he felt like he was on the open sea, in an efficient vessel of war. Here on Triumph? He felt like he was under a mountain, and he could almost feel the oppressive weight of millions of tons of Titanium A above him.
Even in the middle of otherwise open corridors, sturdy supports jutted up through the floor. Every few dozen meters, huge blast doors were posed to seal entire compartments of the ship. Halliday had left only the doors along his route open, eliminating any chance of Victus wandering the ship and getting lost.
As Victus traveled, eventually the eerie silence of the cruiser resolved itself into something more intimate. The low growl of Triumph's idling fusion reactors was so distinct to the sharp whine of eezo cores, and it unsettled the Turian's ears. The gentle hum of ventilation fans and life support cycling air into the deepest, darkest, corners of the ship joined with other sounds. Sharp tapping, as the Turian's soles clacked down the titanium hallways.
Every ship had a heartbeat. It was the very first lesson his CO onboard a small Turian frigate had taught him. At the time, he had thought it nonsense. But, over time, he quickly realized how true it was. And how it could be a matter of life or death.
A careful commander could hear the overload of an eezo drive, tell exactly when he had pushed a core too hard for too long. They could listen to the way gunfire chattered through the hull; identify where in the symphony of fire they had lost weapons.
And even if a commander couldn't even pinpoint the source, an unnoticed change in the heartbeat of a ship could serve as an early warning for disaster. Some crewmembers called it the ship's spirit, inherited from the hands who built it and the soldiers who served on it. But as captain, he knew it was far more intimate than that, an aspect of the vessel itself, not of her crew.
And the heartbeat of Triumph was all too alien. Too different.
As he neared the bridge of Triumph, the pre-prepared defenses returned in full force. Hallway wide sandbag barricades had been erected, with a hastily cleared gap for damage control and casualty teams to move through. Now full sets of marine kit had been left behind, rifles leaning up against the barricade where they had been set aside.
And around the corner, he found a single sealed door. On the floor was a blue arrow labelled 'bridge'. Helpful…
He raised a clawed fist to knock. The doors slid open automatically. The bridge was identical to the images he had seen from Feeling Lucky, sans the blown-out windows and charred lower deck. Instead, Triumph's bridge was in perfect working order, tidy and neat. Uniforms in chairs formed the perimeter of the room. In the center was a holo-table, so much like the one that had tempted Ozor.
And on the pedestal at the base of the table, was a bright orange figure. Halliday. She sat with her back to Victus, knees drawn tight to her chest, staring down at Triumph's empty command chair. An antiquated helmet perched precariously on her head, pushed back to leave her face clear, long curled locks of hair cascading from underneath down her back.
A round shield emblazoned with the UNSC eagle rested against one shoulder, and she cradled a long spear on the other. She still didn't turn to face Victus, continuing to look out over the bridge in front of her.
Victus stood in awkward silence for a few moments before announcing himself.
"Er... Ma'am? Halliday? HDY 0712-4?"
The avatar shifted, as if taking a deep breath, and looked up for a moment. And then the same woman's voice emerged from the pedestal.
"Halliday, captain. Just Halliday." She didn't say anything more for a moment, before releasing a gentle sigh.
"...Take a seat I guess," she followed up, halfheartedly flicking her hand at the empty seats in front of her.
Victus knew better than to sit in the empty command chair overlooking the bridge, so he instead moved to a station to the right of the helmsman's position. He carefully moved the discarded UNSC jumpsuit aside, draping it over an adjacent seat.
As he sat down in the swiveling chair, he noticed the four tallies carved into the steel above the station's monitor. The cuts were neat and clean, etched with care and precision into the console. He ran his talons along the marks, feeling the uneven surface of the metal passing beneath his skin.
"Three corvettes and an auxiliary. Part of a Covenant convoy we stumbled upon on patrol in April of '51."
Victus whirled around to find Halliday looking at him. Her eyes were soft and contemplative, and almost seemed to be lost in another world.
"You can add another seven if you want. Three battlecruisers, a destroyer, and two corvettes. Lieutenant Herczeg would want it that way. He never got the chance to do it himself."
Victus knew the Geth. They had all seen the historical videos of the Geth War. To him, an AI meant the Geth, cold robotic frame and collectivized, calculated intelligence. Not whatever Halliday was. He didn't know how to respond. He had prepared to talk concrete terms, gains and rewards; how Halliday would help their search, and how he would take care of her ship. He hadn't prepared for this.
"I've read your report Victus. You're as qualified as anybody could be in this situation."
He hadn't expected praise from the AI, that much was for certain. Was this some kind of trap? Some way to get him to admit to his disobedience? A test to root out insubordination? He was here because he subverted the chain of command, not because he excelled in his command. The result was more than worth it of course, an entire fleet was saved, but he still was disgraced. There were reasons for the chain of command. Was she taunting him? Showing how she had outplayed them?
Halliday recognized his look.
"19 seconds, Victus, if you were curious."
Victus froze.
"Sorry?"
She raised her left hand and snapped her fingers. Across the bridge, displays came to life. The holo-table showed the Citadel fleet. No. Corvus was shown low above New Mombasa. The Asari second fleet was nowhere to be seen. Xiphos and Elia were still in system, and the fleet was still clustered tightly around Kilware in the debris field.
The UNSC ships were highlighted in green on the holo-table. Triumph was still on the other side of the field, and her frigates surrounded the right flank of the fleet.
And then he saw the firing solutions. Hundreds of dotted lines emerging from Triumph and her frigates and arcing towards the Turian fleet. A pair of light blue lines showed the predicted path of Triumph's twin MACs, terminating in Kilware's exposed flank. A bright pair of bright yellow paths arced out from the stationary hulk of Feeling Lucky. The nukes. One would detonate in the front of the fleet, right amidst Kilware and her cruiser wing. The second would have taken a longer route, before darting into the rear of the formation, right where Xiphos, Elia, and the frigate lances waited. A spider web of white traces show the path of the fleet's archers, a lethal distraction from the SHIVA warheads. A single blue frigate MAC trace accompanied a small swarm of archers down onto the Corvus.
And what lay below the snapshot in time, emblazoned in bold, red lettering, made Victus' blood run cold.
'BATTLEPLAN CRIMSON: T: -00:19.21'
"You were right. The broken chain of command. The incomplete translation. The open broadcast. All of it."
"I don't know what to say."
Halliday stared down at her sandals, avoiding Victus' gaze: "I… I thought you would want to see it. You made all the right decisions. I would have done the same thing in your place."
There was silence on Triumph's bridge, with only the dull thrumming of the reactors to fill the void.
"It was never personal, you know."
Victus looked up.
"We had standing orders from Harper, orders to crush the Covenant using whatever means necessary. And we lost so much to hold them here. Our crews… you've seen the debris. And then for another group of aliens to show up and start poking around where they don't belong…"
She looked away, taking a moment to collect herself.
"I was angry. I was alone. I was scared. Anywhere else in the galaxy, I might have been more diplomatic. But not here. Not above my home."
Victus didn't answer, gaze stuck on the unrealized destruction on the holo-table. How close the AI next to him came to killing them all. He wondered if he would have even been able to react to the attack. An image of Corvus' bridge in chaos flashed through his mind.
Halliday continued.
"What I'm trying to say is that I'm not some unhinged psychopath. I'm not stupid. I know your people trust me about as far as they can throw a MAC round. But I am a professional. Which means I am going to do everything in my power to get you and your crew through this and figure out what happened to my people."
She finally stood up, looking Victus in his eyes. A trace of a smile appears on her avatar's face.
"I'm looking forwards to working with you captain Victus."
A weight disappears from Victus' shoulders.
"Likewise, Halliday."
In the intervening days, Citadel volunteers had begun to trickle onboard Triumph as they were needed. Victus had welcomed the first teams of engineers, and minor repairs on all decks had quickly begun in preparation for Triumph's drydocking above Mars. He spent those days walking the halls, familiarizing himself with his new ship. Mostly, the corridors were empty. Occasionally he would stumble upon a repair team, fixing machinery that had been damaged in the vicious fighting under the watchful eye of Halliday. He also encountered a few cleanup squads, who were carefully cleaning up the grim reminders of Triumph's previous crew.
He had gotten Triumph's crest emblazoned on his armor and requested the same on his crew's uniforms. On Corvus, he had encouraged pride in their ship amongst his crew. A crew that fought together survived together. Even here on Triumph, he suspected it would be much the same. And it all started with him.
And when he asked Halliday, she flashed a mischievous grin, and led him to where he could find patches with Triumph's ship's badge. He found one of the fabric patches in a cabinet in the ship's store. The design featured the ship's bow-on silhouette in the center on a midnight background, surrounded by a golden wreath. At the top, the ship's name, and hull number. At the bottom, words his translator couldn't understand.
So, he asked Halliday.
"Per Victoriam, Pacem," she said, pride surging through her voice, "through victory, peace."
And as he attached the patch to his armored shoulder through creative use of industrial strength adhesive, he thought back to the ship's motto, and grinned, realizing that things might work out just perfectly between the Turians and their new ship.
Now, the skeleton crew was slowly performing the detailed physical systems check for Triumph's first slipspace jump since the ship's stand against the Covenant. Halliday had explained in layman's terms the intricacies of UNSC FTL travel. How they tore a hole in the fabric of space, how they sailed the 11 dimensions of slipspace.
And more importantly, how the Covenant had always been orders of magnitude faster. How the next UNSC world was often under siege before word of the last destroyed colony even arrived. It meant there was never any chance of escape.
Halliday had guided him through what would happen when they made the jump to Mars. How a black swirling void would appear in front of the ship, how the temporal shifts in subspace would cause time to flow differently. She tried to explain the complicated mathematics behind slipspace navigation, but most of it went over Victus' head. It was a short jump, she claimed; perfectly safe.
Victus was unsure to say the least. When Halliday proposed skipping the manual post-battle drive evaluation, as she had dozens of times when escaping the covenant, Victus steadfastly declined. He decided he didn't want to tempt fate when tearing apart subspace.
With a skeleton crew, who had never seen a slipspace drive in their lives, the usual 6 to 12-hour evaluation was stretching into its 4th day, engineers being carefully guided along by Halliday. There was never a chance to rest however, because integrating a fleet of new, semi-autonomous units into a Turian fleet was a whole lot of worth.
On Triumph's bridge, he stood next to Halliday as she and Canberra's AI explained UNSC battle strategy to the captains of the expeditionary fleet. It was strange standing here opposite his countrymen, standing in support of an AI.
"…and, given the strength of covenant shielding, Marathon class cruisers began to be used in two ship batteries to concentrate fire. Triumph and Feeling Lucky, for example, were set aside as 5th fleet's heavy-hitter battery. The other Marathons led large frigate teams," she explained excitedly, displaying fleet movements from the battle for Earth.
"Even still," Tibril rebuked, "Our forces don't concentrate firepower in a single, unshielded frame. To commit our forces to defend two massive targets could be catastrophic!"
"If we are unlucky enough to encounter the Covenant, Admiral, distributed firepower is never going to be enough. We need to hit hard, and all at once. And we need to keep our heavy guns in the fight. That means Kilware, Canberra, and Triumph," Halliday replied, her annoyance growing.
"You are asking us to throw away ships to save your own skin! Your strategy is going to get ships destroyed. It's better to protect our cruisers and frigates with the strength of our dreadnoughts then…"
"What don't you understand about this? You CAN'T survive an encounter with the Covenant unscathed. Better to lose a frigate or two than a cruiser…" Halliday exclaimed.
Luckily, Odysseus interjected. Victus had quickly come to appreciate the cool headedness of the AI from Canberra in these hours long discussions.
"What Halliday means, Admiral, is that if we encounter a large Covenant force, we would be lucky to get any ships out of there in one piece. That said, given the state of this part of the galaxy, I doubt we will encounter much of anything. If we do find a ship, it will likely be a scout rather than an entire fleet," the AI's soldier avatar explained.
Halliday had told him that Odysseus presented himself as a marine from the Rainforest Wars, some civil conflict the humans had waged some hundreds of years ago. It seemed that even without the Covenant, humans had found plenty of excuses to fight.
An agreement was quickly reached after Odysseus' interjection; the UNSC fleet would have a small cruiser detachment devoted to their protection, however the fleet as a whole would be managed under Tibril. It seemed even the AI recognized the value of only having one commander on the battlefield.
Halliday used the resulting quiet to push for something else on her agenda, and in trying to present a unified Triumph, he had to push aside his misgivings. He had been dreading this one.
"And on to our resupply armaments manifest…"
"And how you want us to load up your silos with WMD's?" One of the cruiser captains laughed.
"Nuclear weapons have been a cornerstone in the UNSC's strategy against the Covenant. If we are going to guide you through Covenant captured UNSC space, we need to be at full strength," Odysseus followed diplomatically.
"We have concerns about the usage of nuclear weapons around garden worlds, Odysseus. We couldn't in good faith allow for the poisoning of garden worlds given their scarcity," Tibril answered, casting a scowl at the captain who spoke out of turn.
Victus turned his head to see Halliday clench her fists, with a crazed look in her eye. Uh oh.
"Oh, trust me, you moralistic bastard" Halliday bit back, her voice dripping with sarcasm, "nukes are nothing compared to what the Covenant would do."
There it is. Like clockwork, the call exploded into chaos. Victus had gotten used to it by now. His initial conversation with Halliday had proved to be more the exception to the rule, a rare moment of vulnerability from the AI. More recently, Victus had discovered that she was an awful negotiator. If felt like most of these fleet negotiation calls resulted in Halliday chucking the figurative equivalent of a stick of dynamite into the conversation.
And yet, somehow, she and Odysseus always seemed to push Tibril further than Victus had ever seen him pushed. Maybe it was a classic case of "good c-sec, bad c-sec", but the pair of AIs often got their way. It didn't hurt that they controlled the largest operational ships in the galaxy. Nor that Tibril seemed to be doing anything to avoid fracturing the delicate alliance. Regardless, it was no different with Triumph and Canberra's nukes, once the call had finally calmed down.
Tibril agreed to allow Triumph and Canberra to arm themselves with SHIVA nuclear missiles, after another rapid-fire back and forth negotiation with Odysseus. Victus supposed it was UNSC garden worlds at risk anyways. Who am I to tell somebody they can't irradiate their own world?
The conversation moved on, now focused on how the fleet should move through UNSC space. Victus had supposed they would rendezvous with the UNSC ships in a target system, but Halliday had other ideas. Soon the terms 'slipspace wake' and 'radiation shielding' were being thrown around, and Victus began to suspect that many Turian captains would be having a stressful few weeks gearing up for the expedition.
/ Office of CINCONI, Date: 2553/1/20
***ALERT***
NEW TRAFFIC ON: ONI/CINCONI/ProjectOUROBORUS
BBX 8995-1 (Office of CINCONI): Status update on completion progress.
AUTHORIZATION NEEDED
BBX 8995-1 (Office of CINCONI): BBX 8995-1, Acting on behalf of Parangosky, Margaret O (CINCONI).
ACCEPTED
WAITING
DONE
FILES RETRIEVED
/
/FILE 1-1: Project: OUROBORUS Readiness
1: INF-101 'INFINITY', Infinity Class. STATUS: FITTING OUT (BEHIND SCHEDULE).
DEADLINES (abbreviated):
a. Long-range sensor installation and configuration. Scheduled: 11/29/52. ERROR. INCOMPLETE.
b. Mark X Macedon drive configuration. Scheduled: 12/8/52. ERROR. INCOMPLETE.
c. MAC targeting array installation. Scheduled: 12/9/52. ERROR. INCOMPLETE.
d. Primary powerplant configuration. Scheduled: 12/14/52. ERROR. INCOMPLETE.
e. Crew berthing A through AA fitting out. Scheduled: 12/16/52. ERROR. INCOMPLETE.
f. MJOLNIR servicing facilities installation. Scheduled: 12/24/52. ERROR. INCOMPLETE.
g. Shield systems configuration. Scheduled: 12/25/52. ERROR. INCOMPLETE.
h. MAC configuration. Scheduled: 12/30/52. ERROR. INCOMPLETE.
i. Final subroutine and software checks. Scheduled: 1/1/53. ERROR. INCOMPLETE.
j. Mark X Macedon optimization sequence. Scheduled: 1/21/53. BEHIND SCHEDULE.
k. Archer linkage finalization and configuration. Scheduled 2/14/53. BEHIND SCHEDULE.
l. Mark X Macedon jumping solutions deadline. Scheduled: 4/30/53. BEHIND SCHEDULE.
m. All subsystems complete, pre-commissioning trials. Scheduled: 5/24/53. BEHIND SCHEDULE.
COMPLETION DATE: Expected; 5/24/53. Actual; INDETERMINATE.
2: INF-102 'ETERNITY', Infinity Class. STATUS: PRE-PRODUCTION AND MODULE FABRICATION.
DEADLINES (abbreviated):
a. Titanium A-3 plate fabrication. Scheduled: 7/8/53. BEHIND SCHEDULE.
b. Structural element fabrication. Scheduled: 11/2/53. BEHIND SCHEDULE.
c. Keel laying. Scheduled: 3/1/54. BEHIND SCHEDULE.
d. Reactor module fabrication. Scheduled: 5/3/54. BEHIND SCHEDULE.
e. Reactor module installation. Scheduled: 6/17/54. BEHIND SCHEDULE.
f. Life support module fabrication. Scheduled: 8/1/54. ON TRACK.
g. Life support module installation. Scheduled: 11/23/54. ON TRACK.
h. Slipspace module fabrication. Scheduled: 10/14/55. BEHIND SCHEDULE.
i. Electronics module fabrication. Scheduled: 6/7/55. ON TRACK.
j. Preliminary power routing. Scheduled: 12/12/55. BEHIND SCHEDULE.
k. Electronics module installation. Scheduled: 7/23/56. ON TRACK.
l. MAC module fabrication. Scheduled: 5/9/57. ON TRACK.
m. Framing structure complete. Scheduled: 12/31/57. BEHIND SCHEDULE.
COMPLETION DATE: Expected; Summer 2561. Actual; INDETERMINATE.
3. ANALYSIS:
FATAL DELAYS in the production of INF-101. Complete stoppage of non-automated construction as of 11/3/2552. Delivery date unattainable.
CONCERNING DELAYS in the production of INF-102. Complete stoppage of non-automated construction as of 11/3/2552. Delivery date unlikely.
/
Varso submitted his transfer to his division commander on an energetic Sunday morning. The ship was filled with activity. There were rumblings about the ship. Some kind of test, about what he didn't know.
All he did know was that the initial application deadline for the UNSC liaison program was today. He had thought long and hard about the offer. He would be leaving behind his ship. He would be leaving behind his team. All for the unfamiliar titanium halls of a human ship. He would be outside of the standard chain of command, in an unorthodox position. Any sane Turian would recommend against it, sticking to the centuries old structure that forged the beating heart of Turian society.
And yet, he couldn't get the images of New Mombasa out of his head. The brutal nighttime action of the ODST. The desolate streets he had witnessed in daytime. And the city AI that tried everything it could to save an alien fleet. He had heard the murmurings, they all had. Despite the lack of an official announcement, it was no secret. The crew of the UNSC fleet was long dead. At the helm of the ghost fleet was a collection of artificial intelligences. He wondered if they were anything like the city AI.
Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he was reminded that the city AI was warning him about these fleet AI. In joining the liaison program, he would put himself at the mercy of an AI that just months earlier had wanted to kill them all. He wasn't sure he would trust a Turian with that kind of history, much less an AI.
And still, he couldn't help but wonder why the city AI had helped them. Was it out of some form of compassion? An obligation for the public good? Or maybe it was just flawed programming. And perhaps most importantly, would the other AI, the ones controlling the goliath cruisers have a similar mindset.
In short, Varso was walking into an unknown situation. And as an infantryman, that sent a chill down his spine.
But he had to go. For himself. For the ODST. For the discarded toys he found on that New Mombasa street. For the corpses that had littered the city during the nighttime mission. For every man and woman who laid down their lives in vain to save their species.
The UNSC fleet was all that was left of the human's war, the last sharpened blade in the UNSC's once great war machine. And Varso supposed that the AI were their inheritors.
Varso was Turian; he was not disheartened by the doomed struggle of the humans but inspired. Where the others could see ruins, he had been on the ground, seen the fierce battles.
So Varso handed in his papers. He wasn't sure what he could do as a ground-pounder aboard a massive warship, but he would do what he could to save this last sliver of humanity. To live where they lived. Fight where they fought. And when it was all over, and he returned to Turian space, he could tell their story.
The moment Aurelia saw the posting for the UNSC liaison, she jumped at the opportunity. Minutes afterwards, she was signing the papers her division head had given her. There was no resistance to her desire to join the UNSC team, as a matter of fact, more than half of the scientists transferred from Xiphos to Corvus were signing up.
Looking back, her decision was never in any doubt. They had no bonds with the Turian navy. They were already amongst strangers on a strange ship. And the opportunities were endless. An entire new world of technology. She could learn human technology in a way nobody else could. She could emerge as one of the premier scientific minds on humanity. She could learn things that nobody else in the galaxy knew.
She had studied dead civilizations before, having joined countless expeditions searching for Prothean relics. And now the opportunity to learn directly from a dead civilization had fallen into her lab. The AI was in desperate need of skilled scientific minds who could help to bridge the technological difference between the two fleets. That much was obvious.
No self-respecting scientist would turn down this opportunity. At least not one still in the prime of her life.
So, she had turned in her application. Quickly thereafter, she received notice that she had been accepted. And after that followed the transfer orders. She would join the cruiser Triumph. She liked the name. She had even turned off her auto-translator and tried to learn the name in its native language through the language software, the unfamiliar sounds making her mouth feel like it was made of puddy.
Aurelia read her orders over and over again. Eventually, she caught a detail she hadn't noticed. She was to join Triumph during its drydocking over Mars. For the citadel ships, the journey would be trivial. The fourth planet was currently opposite Earth, a short jump across the system. However, the UNSC ship didn't have a mass effect core. Which meant, she would finally get to see their FTL in person.
Aurelia almost couldn't contain her excitement when Corvus' science department got their last mission before they went their separate ways. They received a data dump about a Shaw-Fujikawa drive, and 'slipspace'. And more importantly, they were assigned to monitor Triumph's slipspace jump.
Triumph had finished her pre-jump checks long before the more heavily damaged Canberra. When she jumped to Mars, Corvus would be waiting for her, to chart the readings from her reemergence into real space. And more importantly, to gather data from the Asari fighter that would be trailing her slipspace wake.
It all quickly became obvious to Aurelia. Because of course it did. The UNSC ships can't travel FTL in real space. Which meant, if they were going to stick with the Citadel fleet, the fleet would have to travel through slipspace with them. Hence the non-piloted Asari fighter, a test ship to see if reality matched the predictive models.
Included in the data packet on slipspace travel, was a section on a so-called 'slipspace wake', where slower ships could transit slipspace faster if they were trailing a faster ship. Theoretically, this effect could be used to transport a ship that didn't have a drive at all. It had never been done in practice, and no captain was eager to surrender their ship to the howling void that would be opened up in space. So, the second fleet donated a drone operated fighter for the cause. And packed it to the gills with equipment to measure the safety of the jump.
All of this meant that Aurelia would be getting a front row seat to the Triumph's jump. They all would. The entire science wing was crowded into Corvus' observation deck, setting up processing equipment as Corvus made the short jump to Mars.
As they emerged, the gentle whine of the eezo drive faded into the background. In front of them, a red planet, capped on either side by bright white caps. Large green and grey splotches were scattered across the surface, clear signs of the UNSC's terraforming efforts. In orbit, a trio of massive drydocks, waiting to receive the cruisers. Each looked like the rips of some enormous animal, spindly gantries and scaffolding stretching up from the base. Each 'rib' held large adjustable magnetic clamps to hold the ships in place for their refit.
A space elevator stretched up vertically from the surface, no doubt for transporting the industrial materials needed for wartime repairs. Even now, the gondola on the elevator was travelling up and down, ferrying supplies to the Turian repair crews onboard the drydocks.
Everything was set. Time for the main event.
The bridge of Triumph was the most populated it had been since the incident. A pair of Asari technicians had installed a temporary control unit for the test fighter, and they had just finished running the diagnostic program. On the holo-table behind him, Victus could see the red dot of the fighter circling behind Triumph's stern. The remains of CSG-6 were also formed up behind him, the two frigates also making the trip to Mars. They wouldn't be serviced in orbit, but rather landing on the surface, in the massive repair complex of the Sinoviet naval yards.
The foreman of the technician crew was also on the bridge, on hand to witness the payoff of the days of careful checks and evaluations. He was in one of the seats jutting out over the void of space at the front of the ship, staring down into the empty space around him. Turian ships usually had observation decks somewhere, but they were always far more protected. As a result, the magnificent views afforded by Triumph's bridge had initially shocked Victus. He had spent hours sitting in the forward seats, gazing into the empty abyss below him.
Halliday maintained her usual position at the pedestal of the holo-table, running through the millions of calculations for their short slipspace jump. Her arms were crossed over her chest, and she was keeping a watchful eye over the strangers on her bridge. An impatient frown formed on her face, eager to get underway. Victus supposed this was all routine to her.
To the citadel fleet however, it was a first look at a new method of FTL. And more importantly, trans-dimensional travel. Corvus had long since departed to witness Triumph's arrival at Mars. The rest of the expeditionary fleet was set far back, leaving ample room for Triumph's transit. Victus had little doubt every captain in the fleet was watching right now.
The Asari technicians raised a hand in signal. The fighter was ready. The red dot stopped moving behind Triumph, resting on her port quarter. Victus looked to Halliday and nodded. A smile broke across her face, and she opened a line to the expeditionary fleet.
"Triumph is ready for slipspace transit," she announced.
The disembodied voice of Admiral Tibril replied.
"Proceed at will Triumph."
Halliday's voice cracked over the ship's intercom, broadcasting on all decks.
"All hands, prepare for slipspace transition."
Nothing happened for a moment. Then the background growl of Triumph's reactors surged into a trembling roar, as her massive plasma torch engines throttled up. Triumph started to move, slowly at first, slowly building speed, the roaring engines dumping kinetic energy into Triumph's 12-million-ton frame. Victus could feel the acceleration under his feet, even through the ship's powerful inertial dampers.
The watched the stationary expeditionary slip past, as Triumph built up a furious reserve of momentum. Speed aboard the UNSC cruiser felt much different to even the much faster Corvus. There was an imperceptible difference in how the ship moved, a property of the unaltered mass of Triumph's conventional propulsion. He couldn't settle on what exactly it was, but it was different.
The holo-table showed the expeditionary fleet and the rest of the 5th fleet disappearing behind them, the red dot of the Asari fighter easily keeping pace with the speeding cruiser. CSG-1's twin surviving frigates kept a close formation with Triumph, accelerating alongside them. The transition point rapidly approached the fleet.
"Engaging."
There was a series of rapid muffled thuds, like an old combustion engine starting, before a loud metallic screech. He felt a sharp tug at his stomach, and an acute nausea threatened to overtake him. The very air of the bridge seemed to twist and warp, and static charge filled the air. Victus heard a gasp and followed it to the window at the front of the bridge. Ahead of them was a pinprick of blue light, electricity arcing out of that. Rapidly, it grew, and the center opened into a black abyss. Triumph's drive howled. The radius of the rift ballooned, a thin blue veil of mist swirling around an empty space, a void.
The technician at the bow sat motionless, awestruck. Victus couldn't say he felt much different, his nausea now settling into a minuscule tug across his whole body towards the roaring void.
The furious sound of Triumph's slipspace drive settled into a more controlled buzz, and the rift stopped growing, occasionally arcing electricity over its expansive maw. Instead, Triumph hurtled towards it, until the swirling rift filled the entirety of the bridge's view, washing the bridge in deep hues of blues and purples.
He turned his head and squeezed his eyes as Triumph blitzed into the rift, some subconscious animal part of his brain certain that it would slam into the portal. Instead, there was a shudder down the length of the ship, as if the ship suddenly dropped from beneath them. And suddenly, everything was smooth.
Victus looked up. The stary veil above Earth was gone. There was no sign of the rift. Just empty blackness. No stars. No planets. Nothingness. His entire life he had thought that space was empty. Now, faced with the blank expanse of slipspace, he knew how wrong he was.
The tug at his extremities was gone. It felt as if the ship had stopped moving entirely, and if weren't for the growl of the engines, he wouldn't know they were moving. The air had stabilized, and he no longer felt the prickling sensation that had spread across his skin.
"Welcome to subspace."
Victus looked back to Halliday, who had an amused smile on her face.
"Most UNSC crewmembers have a similar reaction during their first jump."
Victus took a second to collect himself and reminded himself that he had a duty here. He checked the holo-table. The display was dramatically different. The red dot of the Asari fighter was still there, trailing in their stern. The green dots of the escorting frigates followed them, trailing slightly behind. Around them were lines almost like a topographical map, gentle curves, and twists that he couldn't comprehend. Currents in the empty void. Triumph and her fleet cut through some and glided over others, yet Victus couldn't feel a thing.
The Asari drone technicians were carefully monitoring their instruments. Halliday had instructed them to not attempt to maneuver the fighter in subspace. Although it may not feel like it, she had said, Triumph was executing a series of mathematically complex maneuvers to keep on course. Their path to Mars would not be a straight line. The fighter was riding her wake, the invisible disturbances left by the 12-million-ton warship, helping to keep the tiny fighter on path.
Victus distinctly realized that he was one of the first Turians to travel via slipspace. He was where no Turian had ever been before, trailblazing a new method of travel. He knew it would be the first of many firsts.
The radiation alarm blared on the sensors they had brought to Corvus' observation deck. The scientist reading the gauge reported the numbers. They had started barely above background, now it was rising steadily, emerging from a point in empty space. There was nothing outside the window yet, not even a ripple to suggest what was coming.
Then suddenly, there was a blue flash, and a spiraling blue rift emerged from nothing. The rift expanded until it was a sizable void, dark black space occupying the center. And then the huge frame of the Triumph came surging forwards, catapulted out of the rift with its fighter in tow. The rift collapsed behind them, and the systems of Corvus' observation deck blared out alarms, and the overhead lights momentarily flickered.
Two more blue flares opened behind the cruiser, each spitting out a smaller UNSC frigate. Scientists scrambled around, jotting down notes and instrument readings. Aurelia was star struck, motionless, staring out the windows in the hopes of seeing the enchanting blue rifts once more, even though the slipspace portals had long since collapsed.
She watched the Asari fighter break off from Triumph, and fly towards Corvus: the fighter was intact and flyable. The theory worked. Triumph's slipspace wake had catapulted the small fighter across hundreds of millions of kilometers in minutes.
Triumph herself glided towards one of the massive drydocks. The frigates broke off and darted down to the surface. That will be my ship. I will get to fly on THAT. A childish giddiness flowed over Aurelia, a feeling unlike anything she had felt in the last hundred years of her life. Suddenly, she wished she had been on the ship for its jump. Despite knowing that Triumph would transit slipspace hundreds of times more, she still somehow felt left out, a mere witness to the history that had just occurred.
Her reporting date to Triumph couldn't come soon enough.
The Turian maintenance crew on drydock 6 watched the human cruiser bear down on them. They were used to Turian cruisers, even Turian dreadnoughts. From the bow, the looked like hunting birds, with long, thin prows and extended wings aft. The Triumph looked like nothing they had ever seen before, with the silhouette of a brick, or perhaps even a structural beam.
The ship slowed down as it slipped into the dock, and the Turians on EVA duty supervising the docking watched the titanium hull drift slowly by, at times only dozens of meters away. Pockmarks covered the hull, and they could see the lingering scars and battle up and down the flanks of the warship. More work for them.
Black Box had instructed them on the operation of the UNSC drydock, but at the end of the day, maintenance procedures rhymed across the galaxy. The particulars differed, sure, but the Turians felt well prepared as they evaluated the massive ship.
Reaction thrusters fired as the cruiser ground to a halt, filling up the entirety of the empty space in the drydock. The massive rib-like docking claps closed, connecting the hundreds of hard points across the ship. Umbilical buses darted across the gap, automatically plugging into thousands of ports on Triumph's hull. Hundreds of meters further down the drydock, the docking gantry slid across to provide an airtight seal across Triumph's airlock.
Across from the Turian, were a cluster of Triumph's archer pods. The triangular pattern had seemed so small from the pictures shown to him aboard Corvus. Up close, the pods were massive. He watched as the hatches on the silos split in the middle, sliding open to reveal the mostly empty charred racks inside.
Elsewhere on the ship, access ports and armored plate was sliding and moving, making sure to give the workers access to every portion of Triumph that needed arming and repair.
And just like that, work begun.
On he bridge, Halliday grinned. Triumph would rise again.