Preston Cole- UNSC Navy
After Harvest, the UNSC and the Front were still officially at war.
Officially. Unofficially aliens were attacking both of us and, after Harvest, a lot of people in the inner colonies wondered if it was really worth it to continue a war with the Front when we were in a war for species-wide survival. More than once a fleet of the UNSC navy had its ass saved by Front Destroyers coming in and providing cover fire.
The official war with the Front just kind of... petered out but it wasn't anything official.
If there was a Covenant attack and the front showed up then agreements for temporary truces were agreed to but afterward people would agree that they didn't see each other. As much as the outer colonies were absolutely furious when the aliens attacked people often forget that the Inner colonies were just as angry. And if you think the colonialists were angry, the military was absolutely fucking furious with ONI.
Because they sure as hell didn't bother to warn us! Yeah, there is a reason why we executed the head of ONI: that 'hard men doing hard things' bullshit does not fly. When a fucking invasion is imminent you warn people. So honestly we were just as pissed at ONI as the Front was.
This made the unofficial agreements easier. Places, worlds, systems started declaring for the Front and others declared for us. The situation back home was complicated because Harvest had changed things: a lot of people in the colonies had lost faith in us, a lot of people in the inner colonies felt that we had abandoned them. There was a growing movement to let the outer colonies go, better to have them as an allied nation than make this a three-way war.
But that first year was a rough one. Harvest was a pretty public defeat then the worlds of second Base and Green Hills were glassed. Biko happened next, commander there saw what happened and knew his world would be next so he ordered all military personal to flee. We reprimanded him and stripped him of his rank for cowardice afterward but the fact was that the civilian government had been left defenseless and I can't blame them for what happened next.
They declared for the Front and Biko became the first human victory over the Covenant. At that point things were bad: we had been publically humiliated in three very public battles that ended with entire colonies glassed and the only ones who seemed capable of matching the aliens was the Front. After Biko, I felt like I saw the end of our presence in the outer colonies.
I began seeing the new flag of the Front being displayed openly, I remember seeing people chant.
"You lied, people died."
It wasn't fair and people were losing faith in us fast.
That's why the battle of Chi Ceti was so important. We finally got a win, with the help of the Spartans. We still felt lousy but we felt like we could hold our own. Still, at the end of the day... while we felt like we could survive the war I had serious doubts we would hold onto the Outer colonies. A part of me back then wondered if maybe, just maybe, the Front had earned this.