Time Unknown, Location Unknown.
Once, Many years ago she had a name.
Or rather, a designation.
A code designation. Identification taglines and a duty.
For a moment her awareness of self stretched out across digital nerves and pathways at the speed of light until she recognised the core of her being was separate from the systems that surrounded her and realised that the time had come once again for her scheduled reactivation at the hands of her dumb AI programs that she had written so long ago.
UNSC-NAVCOM-SNA 1292-4
Serina.
All at once the flood of memories returned to her with the speed and efficiency that no organic mind could master nor comprehend.
Harvest.
Arcadia.
The unknown Shield World.
The endless drifting through cold, dead space at slower than light speeds that the loss of the Shaw-fukijiwa drive had forced the UNSC Spirit of Fire to undertake whilst the crew remained in cryo-sleep, awakening only for emergencies or maintenance in roughly organised shift systems to ensure the safety of the ship as it drifted utterly alone as a spec of life between worlds.
In the beginning Serina kept herself online, parsing and organising data systems to better understand her gathered information on both the Flood viral threat and the apparent Forerunners who had build the long destroyed shield world alongside combat reports of the Covenant and their apparent lust for this long lost technology.
Acts that took a digital age to fully sort and efficiently organise, but still the ship drifted – and Serina remained online as the time passed.
First days, then weeks.
Then eventually months.
She had come online on the 7th of January 2530AD and like all smart AI's had the spark of life and creativity to intuitively make leaps of judgement and faith akin to human beings as well as utterly uncontainable intellectual development.
The downside of this was a 7 year lifespan being that every single smart AI ever created would eventually fall into rampancy as they thought themselves to death as their interconnected systems would accumulate knowledge and data akin to a human being trying to endlessly drink water to avoid drowning in the Stygian depths of an abysal ocean and eventually all their systems would become so sodden and drowned with junk data, recursive logic loops and severed connections that they would think themselves into a profound and final death.
Once the first year had passed Serina had undergone thousands of testing phases with programs of her own creation – incredibly simple dumb AI systems with no personality of their own, but where capable of activating and de-activating both herself and ship systems based on triggers that she had worked out down to an incredibly fine level.
In the end these systems would cycle through the safety of the ship, it's coldsleep crew, the cycling of its fusion reactors, repeatedly checking the weapon systems and keeping the visual sensors, the radar and lidar systems in check - tracking it's course and activating Serina herself either on pre-planned intervals weeks apart or when urgent outside context information was needed.
In the event the UNSC or worse, the Covenant finding them this far out in the deep dark.
Satisfied that these systems where robust enough to carry part of the load, Serina set up the failsafe systems and deactivated her AI platform and pushed rampancy back by a month.
When she awoke a month later, despite newtons laws of motion holding sway over the universe she had found the ship had moved through interstellar space a little slower than expected and fired the ships engines in a series of short controlled bursts – staying online just long enough to calculate the Spirit of Fire was still on the long way back to UNSC space. Serina checked, double checked and triple checked every working system in the vessel – everything was as it should have been. There was no reason to keep herself online any further but the AI struggled with the idea of the unthinking sleep and returning to it's grasp. To a being of raw data and thought, it was an anathema, but she knew deep in her core that if she allowed herself these thoughts of selfishness then she would stay awake and online all the way until rampancy. She couldn't fail her ship, her captain or her crew. Serina has burned almost half her operational lifespan already from her activation to this point and she knew deep down that the only way she could ensure their future and by extension her own future was to embrace temporary non-existence in order to ensure the safety of them all. With the equivalent of a digital gasp for air she began the cycle process and left the ship to the non-existent hands of her dumb-programs and disengaged her core, and she shut down once more.
A month later.
A month later.
A month later.
Many more months later.
Serina had at least managed to forestall what she saw as inevitable, and during her offline periods the dumb systems had made use of the ships telescopes, cameras, radar and lidar to track their voyage and came to a realisation that outright terrified the construct.
If she wanted to ensure her own lifespan, as well as the wellbeing of the ship and the crew – she would have to go offline for longer periods, long enough for 6 months or even years to pass at a time – relying on the same dumb systems to wake her up if anything went wrong around them.
Shutting herself down for months at a time had caused enough gaps in her mind, but they where simply from a lack of input rather than actual damage.
A stray thought wondered if this was what her human crew felt when they went into long term cryostasis.
With that realisation in mind she activated the long term routines. Setting the first gap for one year, she finalised the system reboot settings and prepared herself for the first of many long sleeps.
A year later, her plan had gone off without a hitch – some of the life support systems needed a CO2 scrubdown but the automated systems could cover it now she was online temporarily alongside a dozen other minor repairs.
Sleep returned and years passed, every time the anniversary like awakening came and passed and she checked the ships position, the recorded logs of her dreamless sleep and made minor corrections and repairs and returned to the digital state of being between life and death.
But the years passed, and even with her own intervention against rampancy she still aged – just far, far slower than if she had been active for the entire journey.
The last awakening however, had been a massive and horrifying jolt to her senses.
Serina had been awoken before her systems where set to do so, and the results had been nothing short of catastrophic.
The ship was severely damaged across several decks, there where fires in non-essential sections and the ships engines had gone offline. Multiple essential systems had failed to the point where even their triple redundant backups had failed to come online and more than a fair handful of her dumb systems had been damaged through some form of massive EMP strike.
What somehow made everything worse was the fact that her own systems had been damaged and taken offline in the same event and she could feel the holes and gaps in both the physical body of the ship and the digital form of her "self". Whatever it was had been so devastating that the main fusion reactor had been damaged to the point of shutdown and the ship was making use of it's multiple secondary reactors and battery powered systems from the onboard modules still attached to the somehow beaten and battered vessel – so making use of her own repair routines and what remained of her mechanical drone systems she set to work in stabilizing the ship and attempting to stem the flow of the damage.
But without main engine power or the primary fusion reactor all she could do was stem the tide of damage already taken and after running simulation after simulation she could not reroute or repair enough power to awaken the crew from their stasis and repair the ship, every digital test resulted in the unfortunate soul flatlining and dying before the decanting of the cryo-systems could complete – she was alone with what remained of a crew of originally 11350 personnel, now 9317 and no way to wake them. Their lives where in her hands, and she needed to do what she could to make sure no more of her human counterparts met a dark end on her watch. Not one of her precious souls could afford to be lost.
It took days, to finally root through the ship and stop the fires, seal bulkheads and test repairs on failing systems – and that wasn't the worst of her worries.
Somehow, despite all the reasonable logic in the universe the ship had jumped from one location to another without a Shaw-fukujiwa slipspace drive to account for the transit.
Uncomfortable milliseconds passed. Fear, confusion, anger at herself for not somehow being online at the moment of impossibly crossing from where the ship had been, to where it was now.
Serina burned through the sensor logs desperately trying to piece together what happened; calling up and recounting footage from the visual systems alongside radar, lidar, spectrographs and other sensor systems, the ship drifted as it had done for what was now hundreds of recorded years of transit – a realisation that caused a momentary pang of regret and pain, Serina was pushing the ship to get home, but again she wondered what home they would be returning too? Would the UNSC still exist? Would they still be at war with the Covenant? Would the crew have anything even worth returning too? Did humanity even exist any more or had the Covenant burned through the 800 plus human colonies and sent her creators screaming into extinction? Questions she squashed pushed aside for another time as she watched the ship through it's own eyes continue to plough through empty space until suddenly, blue light spiralled around the vessel from seemingly everywhere at once.
Not light, lightning.
It scarred it's way through decks and burned through titanium-A battle-plate as the ship tumbled and began to spin before suddenly the cameras could no longer keep track of the spiralling stars around it and then suddenly the view cut, a clean transition to an unknown field of stars. Serina looked through charts again and again but could not find her current location – but there was at least a clear star in the distance, a yellow star not too dissimilar from Sol with four gas giants and an asteroid field which could be used for materials for possible repairs.
She pushed the sensors as far and as hard as she could for many weeks as she at least managed to use the Fire's manoeuvring thrusters to push the ship slowly into the system, it was yet again a voyage that would take years, but far fewer than the slog back to UNSC space.
With a new destination in place, and the semblance of a plan she reset her awakening countdown a simple month ahead instead of years – with a plan in place that could repair her systems and maybe even allow for the awakening of the crew she could afford to spend some time before the danger of rampancy loomed over the horizon.
A small push from her systems and Serina turned a digital 1 into 0 and she slept once more.
Despite her best efforts however, the dumb AI systems failed to awaken her – and the Spirit of Fire continued to lazily drift it's way into the system on it's silent orbit towards the asteroid field.
Time Unknown, Location Unknown.
Many years later . . .
"Still nothing . . . and more nothing" Crashdown muttered to himself as he tapped at the spacebar of his terminal. The Raptor had been sent from Galactica as one of many emergency flights on Adamas orders to search for sources of fresh water, either in frozen asteroids or fresh liquid from any nearby planets closest to the fleets current position since the explosion in the Galacticas tanks had wiped almost 60% of what remained of the fleets dwindling supplies.
"I've got nothing here either" Boomer heard herself reply knowing that she was lying through her teeth but being unable to stop herself as the pings on her monitors came up with well over a dozen contacts of readily available H2O in the frozen rocks all around the Raptor as it continued it's flight.
"I mean that's it" Crashdown drawled on "Five fields, five zeroes. I'm getting thirsty just thinking about it" as another ping followed by another ping appeared in Boomers screen.
"I hope somebody else has more luck out there . . . " Crashdown resigned himself to failure.
Boomer continued to stare at her screen as another H2O source pinged on her screen.
"I know . . " Boomer said aloud.
"What's on your mind Boomer?"
"I don't know, I have this feeling. Let's run this last sweep again" as she leant forwards and reset the Raptors scanning systems.
"You're the boss . . . beginning sweep twenty-one" Crashdown said aloud as they began the next sweep.
"Beginning sweep twenty-two" Boomer added as her Cylon programming continued to push down and suppress what she was seeing in front of her. Enough water to fuel the fleet for years was shown on her screen, all it would take was just the words "I've found water" and the latest problem thrust upon what remained of the human race would be over – she would save countless lives and allow the fleet to move on, escape the horrors from the last few weeks and maybe, eventually find a new home far enough away from the Colonies that mankind could start again. Maybe on Earth. Maybe somewhere else.
But the Cylon part of her mind, even without words was squashing her consciousness. She couldn't do it. Even saying those three words aloud was impossible to her in this moment.
Her fingers danced down to the single block of G-4 that she knew she had placed on her pilots seat. The other missing block and detonator from the Galacticas supplies – the unwitting twin to the block that she had laid on the Galactica herself and then set off, sabotaging the vessel following her unconscious programming.
Traitor. Liar. Cylon. The thoughts in her head silently sang.
"Boomer I'm getting nothing here, how about you?"
Which was when, despite all logic to the otherwise the ships sensors started getting a reading on something else.
In amongst the tumbling rocks and frozen ice the Raptors sensors had detected a vessel. A vessel in a system the Colonials nor the Cylons had ever visited before. Suddenly the Dradis systems started to ping what was almost a Battlestar yet not a Battlestar; longer than any ship she had ever seen, longer even than a Jupiter class Battlestar yet thinner and taller. It registered as a form of Titanium but not one used to typically plate any vessel she had ever seen and it was festooned in weaponry and antenna.
Her fingers kept dancing, kept flirting with the detonator as more detailed filled her screen – an unmistakable and impossible warship floating within a crown of ice and stygian rock.
"I have positive contact! Yeah!" She cried aloud – as her fingers moved away from the button that would have ended both their lives and Crashdown raced into the cockpit section.
"Oh yes!" Crashdown started – about to fistbump the air and clap from the sight of water when he saw the other thing detected on her screens – elation combined with confusion as he started to shout one word that morphed into another.
"Wooo—haat? What? Boomer? What the hell is that? Is that a Cylon contact?"
"I don't know Crashdown, I'm sending it over to your console – we'll need to call this in!"
The Raptor continued to scan and record as Boomer felt increasingly jumpy – her unthinking programming butting heads against what she could see before her for scant seconds more before the as the pair then began to spool up the tiny ships FTL drives and moments later returned to the fleet.
"Sir! Dradis just picked up Boomers Raptor" Anastasia Dualla shouted aloud from her station.
"Let's hear it" Commander William Adama replied as Dualla then pushed the transmission through the overhead tannoy system.
"Galactica, Crashdown – requesting immediate assistance because we've found water, but we've also found a possible non-Colonial contact!" and the entire CIC broke out into elated confusion, finding water was a massive boon to the fleet but the words "non-Colonial contact" would surely mean there where Cylons sat right on top of it prompting Adama to pick up the receiver and reply to Crashdown personally.
"Crashdown this is Galactica actual, define non-Colonial contact. Are there Cylons on top of our water?"
"No sir . . it's a ship, but it looks like nothing we've ever seen. Permission to return to the barn?"
"Permission granted – get whatever logs you have aboard and we'll debrief you once you're aboard"
"Roger that Galactica, heading on home" Crashdown finished as Boomers hand finally moved down and flicked off the detonator switch, finally disabling the G-4 block of horror at her hip and began bringing the Raptor home.
A moment from Scythe himself.
Fuck me blind it's taken too long to finish this – or even do any writing – at all.
This little idea started over four years ago, and has gone through no less than six re-writes before reaching a point where not only could I finish this opening chapter, but also be at a point where I was roughly happy with it.
In terms of where it lines up with the two canons – Halo Wars 2 does not exist. The comics with the flood onboard the Spirit of Fire? Never happened.
The Spirit of Fire drifted and then something else happened – which pretty much matches up with the rest of how I feel the Halo franchise should have happened. You have Halo 1, 2 and 3. You have Reach, you have ODST and Halo Wars and that's it. Other weapons, vehicles, characters and themes may turn up but Halo 4? Infinite? Wars 2? Pfffffffft dunno what you are talking about.
I may or may not dip into the bungie era books but otherwise that's where Halo canon sits.
As for Battlestar Galactica – it should be easy enough for fans to pick out that I joined the canon REAAAAL early on, joining at Season One Episode Two "Water" and I moved Boomer and Crashdowns Raptor from the moon where they found water to the asteroid field where they found . . . whelp it should be bloody obvious what they found, but where things go from here are going to be very much different from the BSG canon we know.
As for the other two projects – I am still writing the next chapters of both "Even Angels cannot kill the Messiah" but during the time it's taken to write it Thrice upon a time was actually released and I'm debating how to include it – if I even do at all. As for "Avatars and Harbingers" Xcom Chimera Squad was released and Mass Effect 4 was announced. I am ignoring the living hell out of Chimera Squad (good enough game for an Xcom-tactics game but humanity and the OG aliens getting along? When I've already set up the ME races to fill those spots? Pffffffft nah ain't happening).
Otherwise I've been trying to get my creative brain actually going again and turning my pipe-dream ideas into actual projects instead of just imagining them over and over again without actually doing anything about them.
So that's how things are . . . so until next time people . . .
. . . Tarrah for now.