March 7th, 2553.
UNSC Prowler "Red Horse", in orbit over Harvest.
Tension had not yet become the real authority on the bridge, Commander Tobias Focault noted, and he intended to keep it that way. The bridge crew remained diligent at their stations, not one gaze drifting his way in anticipation of some unexpected order, nor at any nearby position that might've held more revelations about the situation below. Regardless of the present intricacies, they'd shadowed far larger hostile fleets than the one currently displayed on the bridge's main holotable. So it was that the crew, Foucault included, held a certain dark acquaintance with these circumstances, one they hoped to avoid refreshing now that the war was over. Yet here they were once more, waiting for an outcome many no doubt expected to consist of blinding plasma beams, with not a damn thing to do about it. Foucault didn't let the frustration last long, though. While he studied the crew, he too was being watched.
The offending ships lay well out of sight from the bridge's viewports, distance and darkness serving them effectively. Despite being situated well into the planetary "North", Epsilon Indi didn't so much as take a peek on the debacle playing out below. They'd come out of slipspace close, too close, validating Foucault's greatest concerns the moment their slipspace signatures had been detected.
The Covenant had possessed a crushing war machine, but their raw power masked a tangled bureaucracy of competing governing bodies and organizations. ONI's assumption-and gamble, to no small extent-when planning this operation had thus been that the true potential of the Harvest relic was never fully exploited by the Covenant following the yet-unresolved situation involving the Spirit Of Fire's hasty departure from Harvest. Indeed, as the UNSC's own grasp on remaining Forerunner facilities expanded, the paucity of raw, undiluted Forerunner tech from some recent salvaging under Covenant control became a rare instance of optimism among Naval Intelligence. It was assumed that the Harvest site, like other instances, would be left free of glassing as a matter of policy, and that would be that for Covenant involvement.
As Foucault was now observing, however, the plan wasn't bereft of risk. The Covenant collapse had swept much away, but information, secrets, those could survive an Empire's fall, remain intact, caught and held close in anticipation of the right opportunity…or the right offer.
Now the Commander again regarded the information presented to him on the holotable, filtered through the Red Horse's own enhanced sensor suite and the network of stealth probes that lay scattered in orbit over Alpha base. Contrary to the outward impression of skulking in the dark, these Covenant ships had really been caught in the spotlight the moment they'd arrived.
There were seven in all, scattered about in no particular formation. Thanks to data generously provided by one Shipmaster Vadum, each one of them could be matched with existing ships in the vast Covenant Naval registry, and that was where the first oddity arose. Each ship transmitted data on their local battle network at odds with Covenant archival records. The largest ship, a heavy corvette bearing the name "Infallible" on record, now went by the "Talon's Courtship". The oddly-labeled "light cruiser" that was half the size of an average UNSC frigate lingering in the flagships' wake had shed the name "Sacred Chorus" and become the "Fuel Rod Bride". Two storm cutters (the "Star Raider" and "Chur'R Mut's Revenge") prowled among the remaining ships, a trio of unremarkable barges of varying sizes and general ungainly shapes. Taking advantage of their close proximity to the relic, the ships had almost immediately deployed a lone dropship planetside, maintaining a powerful jamming field all the while as they crept into position. A few hours later, the flagship had unleashed first a wave of phantoms, then a blistering plasma mortar bombardment upon Alpha Base. Of the exact results, nobody could be sure. Their probes were intended for orbital surveillance, not surface, and simply couldn't ascertain details so miniscule on a planetary scale. All Foucault knew was that mere minutes ago, the Corvette's guns had fallen silent.
That didn't mean the interlopers would have everything their way, though. Sergeant Fugazi's marines still held the Forerunner waystation, and there was a chance some of the soldiers at Alpha Base had successfully extricated themselves from the bombardment and rendezvoused at the structure. Even so, Fugazi's team consisted of only 42 marines, and no matter how many soldiers joined them, they would not have numbers on their side against this fleet.
Even as he weighed the odds, Foucault couldn't shake the incessant feeling of being scrutinized. He turned ever so slowly towards the holopad on his left, not allowing a hint of unease to pass through his face. A familiar blue-tinted hologram of a woman dressed in archaic armor glared almost callously back at him.
"Your orders, Commander?" The smart AI prodded, in a tone that denoted her as the most agitated individual on the bridge.
"We have all the time in the world, Rebecca," Foucault calmly replied, "Maintaining our current position suits me just fine."
It was not the most obtuse of jabs Foucault had employed, but Rebecca's gaze still turned razor-sharp. Time had been no ally of Foucault this past half-year, true. The key difference was that whereas for him "aging years in just a few months" was just a saying, in Rebecca's case it was ominously accurate. One didn't ascribe human weaknesses to Smart AI-the unfortunate human tendency to come away from particularly trying events permanently harmed on a mental level, for example. Even so, the Commander had noted a certain unrefined briskness settling over Rebecca in the months since that unfortunate incident in the debris field of Alpha Halo…
"Commander, our orders in the event of this very situation are clear. The Red Horse should be distancing itself from these ships with utmost haste so we can enter slipspace at the earliest possible time. With Alpha base neutralized, we cannot be certain the enemy won't turn their attention towards securing the space adobe the relic."
"We don't know if Alpha base has been destroyed." Foucault retorted, preferring to lay his cards on the table.
"With all due respect, unfounded speculation is a precarious excuse to bet the security of the Red Horse on."
"Speculation it may be, but I'm certainly not betting my ship on nothing. Have you not analyzed the alternative naming scheme of these ships? I'd hazard a guess that a base full of intact UNSC gear might hold value to their new owners, if less than the data inside that map."
The old rules no longer applied, the fact that they were able to reach Epsilon Indi in the first place was proof enough of that. The familiar outlines of Covenant ships no longer held a unified, uncompromising enemy. They would be crewed by tired, confused, and desperate individuals who would make mistakes, and mistakes opened opportunities.
"Their motivations are of no bearing on our orders. Alpha base is out of the picture, destroyed or not. The relic is isolated and may be under siege as we speak. We can do nothing but report back to Earth and trust Boreovic to follow orders on his end."
Foucault pondered Rebecca's reminder for a moment. Unbeknownst to neither the haggard Army personnel recruited for this operation nor the Red Horse's own Marines, ONI had surreptitiously crafted a contingency plan to ensure that if they couldn't access the relic's secrets, nobody could. As part of this plan, Lieutenant Commander Boreovic's team had arrived on Harvest carrying with them an old Fenris low-yield nuclear warhead. In the event of an ex-covenant attack, he would be expected to arm the warhead at his discretion. ONI's plan made vague allowances for "alternative entrances" and "short-term surveys of the vicinity", ultimately window dressing hiding the harsh reality that they weren't expected to survive. A bleak outlook? Yes, but nothing unexpected for ONI.
After what felt like minutes of thought, Foucault delivered a confident reply.
"Rebecca, there's not a single flood spore anywhere on the surface of Harvest. With that in mind, I'm not going to deny the people down there the only thing I can give them: time."
After the Red Horse had destroyed the Mona Lisa with a Shiva missile, they'd wasted no time in retrieving McCraw from his cramped escape pod and took to slipspace well ahead of the curious Covenant ship that had caught wind of their presence. After that, Foucault had cut their mission short citing "battlefield attrition" and plotted a course back to Earth.
To find it invaded by not one, but two hostile alien forces.
In the time since they'd left the Soell system, Earth, already under Covenant attack for 5 days by the time of "the incident", had also been subjected to a limited Flood outbreak when a single infected Covenant ship crash landed in the town of Voi. "Limited" in the sense that the Elite fleet which had been pursuing it went on to "only" glass an area between the old national borders of Kenya, Tanzania, and Burundi as a preventative measure. The news had come as a shock to the crew, and a nightmare to one ONI Major John Smith, who no longer looked so confident from inside his solitary confinement on the brig of the Red Horse. The last Foucault had heard, he was languishing somewhere deep within the Midnight Facility.
Both the Flood and the UNSC's unexpected Elite co-belligerents were long gone by the time the Red Horse arrived, the latter joined by Spartan-117 on a mission far beyond the reaches of the Milky Way. For the Red Horse, it was a time of much-needed R&R, made all the more satisfying by the knowledge that the war would soon be over once and for all. Until the order to prepare for another operation had arrived just two weeks later, that is.
The Commander regarded Rebecca once again, who no longer had an immediate reply. He thought he saw her avatar fizzle, then wrote it off as a glitch in the holotable, one of many minor gremlins pestering the Red Horse that hadn't been cleaned out before they were tapped by Section 3 for one more mission. The last one, in Rebecca's case. No amount of maintenance would extend the AI's 7-year lifespan. Foucault thought back to the time he'd held Rebecca's distant activation date against her as a threat during the mission to the Mona Lisa, when he'd not had a fraction of the truth about what was occurring onboard that ship. His prodding had paid off, but it hardly felt like a win. Better to learn the truth from Rebecca, he supposed, then via Major Smith following his ungracious escape on the Pelican that had brought 17 marines to their unpleasant fates. 18, he corrected, weighing the number in his mind. Private James McCraw had gotten off easy for a man whose baptism by fire was delivered by the Flood. Just the standard survivor's guilt after making a break for one of the two escape pods left. Foucault could sympathize, and would've had him transferred off the ship had there not been a lack of available replacements. He thought about McCraw's current straits, trapped inside the relic and no doubt wondering where the marine's ONI "friends" had run off to, and was unable to avoid seeing the scarred face of McCraw's former squad leader Sergeant Lopez as well, giving him her usual scowl. Again he thought back to Rebecca, verging on 7 years in operation and only paired with him now due to a crippling smart AI shortage. Though he still felt slighted at her withholding of information regarding the Mona Lisa, he also doubted that he wouldn't miss her just slightly when this mission was over. Turning back to the main viewports, he repeated the assurance he'd given to Rebecca during their last mission.
"We do not willingly abandon our own."
The important question is, do the soldiers down there believe that?