They held that moment of shared understanding for what felt like an hour.
Matei Caragiu, the Immortal Marine lost in space for almost fifty years on a warship that had once served a more uplifting purpose, a ship whose last voyage had seen her sacrifice her slipspace drive to protect humanity.
Prophecy, the heavy cruiser who had taken the remnants of his battalion under her wing during a tragic defeat at Harvest, who had kept the skies above him safe on several worlds until one unexplained night in 2530, standing before him as a determined young woman who hid something inexplicable just below her skin.
She remained unmoving, slowly absorbing his acceptance as her glasses shined in the afternoon sun. Matei didn't understand why such an unnaturally strong woman would need to wear glasses, but his subconscious left him with a strongly familiar feeling the longer he studied her round-rimmed eyewear. They seemed to compliment her unwaveringly focussed eyes well.
"Thank you," she finally said, voice filled with relief. "Thank you for remembering me. I won't let you down this time, Corporal."
"I wouldn't say you're the one who…" Matei paused and raised an eyebrow. "Hold on, I'm not a Corporal. I'm…"
The sound of a Sniper rifle banging away three times in rapid succession threw Matei off even more than Prophecy's mistake.
In the middle of a battle that's not quite over, his mind finished the statement. Instantly, he was back to business.
"Ma'am, I'm going to get you a medic while I check up on my squad."
"Oh, you don't need to call me anything official. Besides, I have my damage control teams getting back into the rhythm already.
"Damage…control…teams…" Matei felt his left eye twitch. "Right." Prophecy remained completely oblivious to his reaction.
"Just get some bandages over those wounds, it'll be very distracting otherwise." Having recovered his dignity somewhat, Matei about-faced and climbed out of the trench, tagging Captain Sone on his comm.
"Captain, listen, I don't know what just happened but I know it's far, far, above my pay grade and we need to start clearing up the unknown unknowns now in case the Brutes decide to come back for round two…"
An unfamiliar voice cut him off. "Ah, Caragiu, just the guy I was hoping would call in. I'm afraid you'll have to get over to the right hill before we can discuss your little deus ex machina. It's…not looking good over here."
—
Matei stepped past another of the familiar jump pack Brutes and towards the waving figure at the top of the hill. The trenches were still littered with both the aerial attack troops and many dead marines, the latter being carefully extricated by survivors for burial.
The situation replayed itself in his experienced mind despite having not seen a moment of it himself. While McAllen had burned away the Banished attack on the left hill and Matei's ethereal savior had saved the central hill, there had been no ace up anyone's sleeve on the right hill, apart from extra heavy weapons. There, the Banished had thrown the remnants of their jump troopers into the attack and successfully avoided the first two marine lines to land among the hilltop positions. The marines on the hill had almost been caught in an envelopment until the Banished forces there, much like across the battlefield, had let up on the attack to watch their Chieftain's ill-fated duel on the middle hill.
Matei was surprised to see that the mustachioed man waving him forward remained upright. Apart from some dents in his armor, First Lieutenant Antonio Maldini had weathered the attack completely unscathed. He looked older than most of the marines in the company except for Sergeant Barr, indicating he'd either gone into officer's school late or didn't have nepotism on his side.
The same couldn't be said of the Captain, apparently.
Hopping over one last dead Brute, Matei stood at attention. "Reporting, sir."
Maldini waved dismissively at him. "Oh, at ease, First Sergeant, this is a battlefield. Now, about the new chain of command…take a look."
The older man gestured to Matei's right, where a pair of medics several meters away stood over a body bag. "I warned him not to direct the battlefield from this hill when we had better vantage points behind us, but he was adamant that it was his responsibility to lead from the front. He died when the brutes landed right on top of us."
A long sigh escaped Matei's lips. Captain Sone, for all his inexperience, seemed to grasp the responsibilities of command quite well. Too well, as was now apparent.
Maldini turned his gaze away from the medics and their dismal work. "With Colonel Sternwitz dead, General Sone's going to have my head on a plate."
"I knew it," Matei whispered.
"What?"
"Nothing, sir. I suppose you'll want my help reorganizing the company?"
"Yes, First Sergeant."
–
As PFC Roza Pasquin yanked another of the silver spikes from her shoulder armor, she remained unable to remove her melancholy.
She'd been well aware of how bemused the rest of the squad was at her untrammeled interest in the First Sergeant. But he was just such a fascinating person! He and the rest of the Spirit Of Fire survivors had grown up in a forgotten era when aliens were just the cliched twist ending of bad space operas and the Insurrectionists were the biggest threat to human space. She hadn't known what her end goal was in trying to acquaint herself with him, only that she wanted to talk to him and learn about that mysterious age from someone whose memory wasn't faded by time.
But now she doubted that idyllic encounter would ever play out. Roza had seen how smitten Matei had been after she had shown up and pleaded with him for some kind of acknowledgment. Roza tossed another spike down the hill in annoyance. There was no way she could compete for attention with-
"Excuse me, miss?"
Roza froze. There it was, that comically saccharine voice that sounded like it had been born yesterday.
She heard someone tittering just ahead of her in the trench, looking up to see Private Van Wall observing the brewing encounter with a clear understanding of what Roza was thinking. Ignoring the other marine, Roza snapped her gaze around and looked up.
Not high enough, she kicked herself, adjusting accordingly and trying not to look too envious. If the woman who'd identified herself as a literal Marathon-class cruiser noticed that she was being sized-up she didn't show it. She already looked quite bewildered as it was.
"What's the problem, ma'am?" Roza asked with her best faux-formal voice.
"Oh, just call me Prophecy please, I don't have a commission in the Navy or anything like that." The woman leaned forward-
Oh come on!
-and put her hands on her knees for support.
"Are you with the Corporal's squad? He said I should ask your Sergeant if I needed help, and the Sergeant told me to ask any of you."
Damn you, Barr. You sadistic underachiever. The whole situation was almost laughable. Roza had seen this woman punch a brute in the face. She shouldn't have needed any regular marines like them to hold her hand.
"What's your problem, then?" Roza let a hint of exasperation fill her voice, ignoring how the turquoise-eyed woman had gotten Caragiu's rank wrong.
Again, she seemed unaware of any annoyance Roza was emanating, simply adjusting her glasses and finally explaining herself.
"I'm hungry."
"You're hungry." Roza repeated, mostly to herself.
A shuffling behind her caught the marine's attention. She turned to see Van Wall half-crawling half-walking towards the two women.
"Here, try this," the man retrieved a large rectangular object from one of his pockets and thrust his outstretched arm uncomfortably close past Roza's face and towards Prophecy. Roza scooted away to regain her personal space and stood up as Prophecy took the offered gift from Van Wall and clumsily attempted to undo the wrapper. "Thank you, private," she said, now completely oblivious to Roza's presence.
Now that she was standing in close proximity to the other woman, Roza was baffled by how much shorter Prophecy was compared to her. Roza already stood higher than Matei at over 6 feet, but this woman seemed even shorter than the First Sergeant.
After getting the wrapper undone, Prophecy immediately set about devouring what was revealed to be a UNSC-issue chocolate energy bar. Her strange eyes seemed to brighten after the first few seconds and she quickly took another bite.
Van Wall was giving Roza a smug glance when he noticed that his offered meal was being devoured far more rapidly than he'd expected. The two marines watched as Prophecy scarfed down the entire bar in less than half a minute.
"That was delicious, thank you so much!" Van Wall nodded weakly in acknowledgement while Roza stared in shock. Energy bars were supposed to be broken off in chunks and eaten over the course of a day, not devoured in one sitting. She was unable to contain her disbelief.
"It tastes like cinder block with chocolate drizzling, how is that delicious?"
Prophecy's satisfied smile faded, but she never once looked at Roza.
"I hate to say it, but I'm still feeling pretty hungry. Do you have something a little more…complete? A proper meal, maybe?"
The two marines exchanged curious glances. "It couldn't hurt," Roza decided.
—
"...and that makes 79 dead," Maldini finished, updating his TacPad while Matei grimly surveyed the battlefield below.
"Another 38 wounded…for now," the Lieutenant added with a note of dismal finality. The First Sergeant nodded wordlessly and continued looking over the devastation. Though hundreds of Brutes littered the dirt, he didn't discount that many seemed to be facing the wrong way. For all their losses, the Banished had succeeded in clearing the first defensive lines on all three hills and putting HQ out of action. It had literally taken a miracle to stop the Banished from overrunning the Marines, and they'd still lost almost half their number.
"I'd like to get out of this valley before sundown," Maldini seemed to be thinking aloud, but Matei still dutifully turned back towards him.
"What vehicles did we lose?" Matei glanced back over his shoulder at a nearby charred Warthog wreck.
"3 trucks were destroyed by the Revenants, 4 Warthogs lost in the fight, including our last Gauss 'hog…"
—
"Hmm, that was perfect, but I'm not full at all."
Roza froze in shock, staring down at Prophecy's sitting form with a growing sense of dread in her heart.
Van Wall recovered first. "But how?"
Prophecy shrugged. "I'm just not full. What else is there to say?"
Roza felt herself slide back without taking a step. "You ate an entire 24-hour MRE pack in one sitting…and you're still hungry?"
Indeed, the contents of the bag lay strewn about before the marines in a miniature replication of the battlefield below them, a wasteland of wrappers, utensils, and sauce tubes littering the dirt around a steel meal tray, the last few crumbs of what had once been enough food for a day quickly vanishing in the afternoon breeze. Prophecy sat with her legs crossed, attention split between surveying the aftermath of her meal and staring pleadingly up at the marines.
"I don't want to be a glutton, but, well, it seems like my supply reserves are almost completely empty, and I really don't have any other choice until we can reach a refueling station of some kind."
Before Roza could ask what the other woman meant by "refueling", Van Wall stepped in front of her.
"Look, we know she can hold Brutes like they're made of rubber," he whispered, "I think we'd better give her what she wants. Maybe she just needs more calories than we do."
The argument made sense to Roza. She noted how the bandages on Prophecy's hands remained completely bloodless despite her rapid and strenuous movements while eating. Though she hadn't been close enough to see what the other woman had tried to show Matei, it seemed reasonable to assume that she had some kind of rapid healing ability. In that case, the idea that she needed to eat more calories than the average human made sense. At least, those were the only two pieces of the wider puzzle that was the strange woman which Roza dared take hold of.
"Fine, we'll get her more food," Roza whispered back. "Question is, how much more?"
—
Matei watched another Shadow limp towards the right hill, anti-gravity fins glowing a slight violet in the twilight. With the sun now hidden behind the edge of the valley, the most poignant reminder of the battle aside from the recovered vehicles was the growing stench.
This particular transport looked almost untouched aside from its missing plasma turret. Another 4 of the red troop transports shuffled between countless more devastated examples back towards marine lines. These were all that could be recovered from the graveyard of Banished equipment after hours of searching.
"Another Chopper bike recovered," Lieutenant Maldini repeated the news he'd received over the radio. "That's two Choppers that lost their drivers."
"We should mark the sniper who did that down for a medal," Matei advised.
"Already done," Maldini gestured with his TacPad. On the whole, they now had more than enough vehicles to deliver the diminished Marine Company to the hideout. The effort to scrounge up more vehicles had caused a slight delay, and Matei could tell by the Lieutenant's snappy tone that he was ready to take the troops now foisted into his arms to safety. As he stepped forward deliberately to announce what Matei guessed was their next move, the two marines were both pinged over comms.
"What's the situation?" Maldini responded first.
"Sir, it's about our new guest," Sergeant Barr replied, "I spotted some marines from our squad procuring-" he put a slow emphasis on the last word, "-several MREs with the stated purpose of 'keeping the wounded in a good mood'. When I tried to put the screws to those kids, well…you two should come over to the central hill."
The Lieutenant's grim gaze fell over the First Sergeant. "I knew I was forgetting something important. What was it you said: 'Far above my paygrade'? Time to confirm that for myself."
—
"Out with it, PFC, we should've been driving out of this valley hours ago and I do not need any additional surprises getting in the way."
Matei watched Roza stare up at the Lieutenant from where she knelt outside the trench, face frozen in hopelessness. Not even during the initial attack by Merg Vol's fleet had she looked so utterly defeated.
"We didn't know…we didn't understand…our mortal minds couldn't comprehend." Every word was etched with the horror of the darkest, most eldritch revelation, a mind shorn of innocence at the sight.
"Stow the melodrama, leatherneck, you're not writing a book, now start explaining why you evaded the chain of command."
But Roza remained inconsolable, and her explanation remained overwrought with disbelief.
"She's insatiable…we gave her everything and she just kept asking for more, looking into my soul with those ravenous eyes…I couldn't resist, by the time we realized the sun was setting it was…too late!"
The three marines were just below the hilltop, out of sight of the trench itself. In the fading twilight, Matei could see several marine onlookers staring frozen in shock above him. A few more marines from his squad who'd been out scavenging for weapons also stood in two back down the hill, including Ramon, Mundsman, and Bossano.
Undaunted, Lieutenant Maldini gestured for Matei to accompany him in scaling the hill. "First Sergeant, I hope you can restore some dignity and discipline to your squad while we head out," he began, eyes turned away from the trench as he reached the top. "Haven't they been through enough fights not to be rattled by some-" He turned back towards the trench and froze. Matei and the others crept up beside him in confusion.
The carnage was even more dense than in the valley. Spare meal tins and MRE boxes lay in large piles across the trench, rising over the top in some places. The dirt floor was almost completely covered by wrappers and packets.
"What the hell?" Maldini whispered.
"Oh my Triad..." Ramon gasped, accidentally kicking a metal tray back into the trench as he stood on the rim.
A dark shape rose from between piles of meal trays at the sound. Starlight glinted off two round lenses.
"Oh, hello Corporal," An enthusiastic voice rang out from the trench, "did you guys bring more food for me?"
—
The folding chair felt exceptionally uncomfortable, jamming into Matei's back no matter how straight he tried to sit. Feeling defeated, the First Sergeant slumped down until his head was propped up by the backrest and he could see just above the folding table that had been placed in the dirt.
He was currently slouching inside a modest four-sided command tent, with Lieutenant Maldini sitting ramrod straight to his right and Sergeant Barr leaning forward with his elbows propped on the table in mock anticipation on his left. On the other side of the table…
"I'm sure nobody here wants to spend any more time in this valley than I do, so with that in mind, I hope we can reach a basic understanding of our current…" Maldini trailed off as quickly as he began. Sitting in the uneven glow of two half-powered floodlights, the object of his concern shifted in her chair and pulled something out of her uniform. It took a few moments for all three marines to realize that it was a ration bar.
"Ma'am, what are you doing?" Maldini quickly recovered and asked.
"Just having a snack," Prophecy replied innocently."
"No! No more eating. You've had more than enough for one day. Please. Let's just focus on clearing up any…misunderstandings."
Prophecy complied, pouting slightly and replacing the bar in one of her pockets.
Looking satisfied for just a moment, Maldini picked up where he'd left off.
"Now, let's start at the beginning. Namely, how you came to accompany our force during the battle."
"Sir, I don't think we need to review a highly visible incident I've already filed a preliminary AAR for-" Matei started, but the Lieutenant cut him off.
"I'm afraid I had more immediate concerns at the time of the 'incident' that prevented me from observing it. As for your report, it seems highly probable that you were suffering from some form of disorientation at the time, not taking into account your little panic attack over the radio. And when it comes to other witnesses, one of them insisted that our 'savior' came sliding out of the sky on a rainbow, so you'll forgive my skepticism." Matei winced at the reminder of his outburst, but remained slouched in his chair and kept silent. Not revealing any satisfaction at the First Sergeant's compliance, Maldini addressed Prophecy once again.
"There's not a crumb of evidence that you ever accompanied us prior to today's events, and at a glance I can tell your uniform is far too clean for you to have spent any time outside, much less shadowing us from somewhere out of sight. So let's start with who you really are. I'm…interested in your name. You've insisted on referring to yourself as 'Prophecy' It's not some Section 3 code name, right?"
"No sir."
"You do realize that the Prophecy you're referring to was…" Maldini stopped himself, as if struck by an idea. "...was a Marathon-class Cruiser, of course?"
A guilty look grew on Prophecy's face. "I don't understand it either, sir," her features brightened again. "But that's me!"
The Lieutenant nodded slowly. "Alright…Prophecy…if you really are what you say you are, try telling me the last thing you remember."
Matei sat up immediately in his chair. "Really, man?!"
—
The static filling her brain suddenly faded, just like it had when she'd been fixated on eating. Unfortunately, this time the focus was entirely within her mind, and she didn't like what she saw. The sudden commotion ahead of her grew more distant, fading into a blur that darkened and reshaped itself both inside and around her.
Scenes of cold, lightless decks, lacking even emergency lighting. Gaping wounds surrounded by rings of molten metal exposed dispassionate stars and the ashen surface of a world below. Movement, far out of sight yet right next to her, of the only living thing prowling the dark corridors. Something inhuman.
—
"Caragiu, what's your problem?"
Matei leaned out of his chair and glared at his superior, his response just louder than a whisper.
"Sir, I don't know what happened to her on our mission over Harvest, but I'm pretty sure it dragged out over the course of a few weeks. Do you really want to open by asking her about something so unpleasant?"
"I don't know, First Sergeant, if she is what you believe her to be, then that's the kind of thing she'll know about, right?"
"It's been less than half a day since she came back. We should give her some more time before she opens up about it."
"This isn't a therapy session, Caragiu. Whatever that woman is, your squad gave her enough food to feed at least 100 marines before someone finally caught on, and she ate all of it! At that rate we'll be out of food in a week!"
"Take it easy, Lieutenant, we're only a day or two from the redoubt." Sergeant Barr calmly interjected.
"And Marines don't put off preparing today because we'll get what we need tomorrow, Sergeant," Maldini growled over his shoulder. "First Sergeant, let's make this clear: you only think you know what's going on because she says she's something familiar to you, but the truth is we're all equally in the dark. Still, I'm not going to deny you the chance to gain some insight. So go ahead, ask the next question."
"Thank you, sir." Matei sighed, sitting back up in his chair. "Hey, Prophecy."
—
bgm
/watch?v=lADarjXGYdg
Unwelcome memories faded at the sound of the familiar voice. She was back in the tent again, sitting before the trio of marines all dressed in an unfamiliar model of body armor. Her gaze snapped towards the rightmost marine, the man she remembered from before. It was odd to consider, but she was thankful that he'd lost that picture. All it had taken was a bit of concentration, and she'd found it, a small connection to her past that had allowed her vague memories to coalesce. Marines hadn't given her life like her sailors, but they were just as much a part of her crew as the rest.
He was watching her now, a hint of concern in his green eyes. She felt so perplexed every time she stared into those eyes. The man was as young as she remembered, yet that gaze of his always seemed too seasoned. Too old. She was wondering how much time had passed when he spoke again.
"Tell us what you remember before you arrived here."
She nodded wordlessly and tried to recall what had preceded her sudden reappearance in her new form, but it was no use. The first thing she could recall clearly was a bright flash of light, but that had merely been the sun. Oddly enough, her eyes hadn't hurt the way she would've expected from staring up at it. Still, she managed to recall some vague sensations rather than sights.
"I'm not sure. It was pitch black, then I heard you calling for help and something started glowing, or was it the other way around? All I know is I started to just…become, become this new self, and suddenly I was sitting in the dirt, and I saw that alien come into view-" her voice grew faster and faster before she realized she was getting ahead of herself and stopped.
The marine in the middle nodded and spoke next. "I'm told you shot the enemy with a pistol and drove him off temporarily."
She nodded affirmatively at the memory.
"I do find it odd, though, given none of the dead marines on that hill lost their sidearms, and while we never recovered the weapon, you don't seem to have it on your person either."
All she could do in response was shrug. "I...uh, recovered it, after the battle ended. It's…accounted for." She herself was a little puzzled by what had happened, but she understood that if she could pull the weapon out from her armory and into her hand on a whim, it must've been able to return just as easily after she'd recovered it and put it in her holster.
"Good," the Lieutenant said without a hint of satisfaction in his voice. Then he grew puzzled.
"You said you engaged an 'alien', not a Brute. Do you have any knowledge of that species?"
"Oh, I think I got to know him pretty well," she rubbed her bandages absentmindedly, "I wasn't going to let him lay a finger on the…wait."
—
"What's the matter?" Matei asked.
"I just thought you were Corporal, right? It's in my records. But he keeps calling you First Sergeant-" Prophecy pointed towards Lieutenant Maldini. "-so when did THAT happen? You're too young to be a First Sergeant!"
Matei heard Barr leaning forward to join Maldini in glaring at him.
"What?"
"It's starting to click," Barr noted in a slightly mischievous tone.
"I didn't agree to be frozen in cryo for-!" he stopped when the Lieutenant held up one hand.
"Go on, tell her."
Matei nodded, thinking he understood what Maldini had intimated.
"I was given a field promotion, then a posthumous promotion, and instead of losing the latter, the Corps bumped me up another few steps 'in recognition of extended service." It was by no means an explanation, just a summary of his progress up the chain of command without any context.
Unsurprisingly, Prophecy looked utterly perplexed at the explanation. Then her gaze wandered across all three marines, looking up and down their equipment. She glanced pleadingly back towards him.
"Matei…what year is it? How long have I been gone?"
The other two marines once again glanced impatiently in his direction.
"Prophecy, it's been 47 years. I spent almost all of that time stuck in Spirit's cryo bay until the Elites found the ship."
He winced as Prophecy slid forward in shock. "Forty…seven…" she repeated. "Wait, what do you mean 'Elites' found Spirit? You mean the Covenant? What about the war? Did we win?"
A slow chuckle filled the room. "Oh man, oh man," Barr started, "I swear, once we get back to civilization, things are going to be so goddamned entertaining! I haven't had this much fun since the Verge campaign."
Ignoring the Sergeant's uncharacteristic mirth, Matei stood up and approached Prophecy's slumped form. Before he could try to console her, the Sergeant stopped laughing and asked a question of his own.
"Hey, if you're really some kind of revived warship…where are your guns? Where's your engine? Why didn't you just rain Archer missiles all over the valley?"
"I wanted to…" she mumbled, "I wanted to destroy that freak with my MAC, but the only thing that came to me was the pistol…" she sighed. "I don't understand it either, there's a way that everything fits together there's rules I need to follow, but-"
The dam broke.
"I can't think straight because there's all this stuff, all these feelings, there's thousands of little memories in my head from all my crew, but they're not just memories, they're alive, they're part of me, but I can't make sense of it when I'm remembering everything at once and I don't want to forget it again but I just don't need to remember it all right…now…"
Prophecy sat back up and adjusted her glasses, staring straight ahead without a trace of her sudden hysteria.
—
bgm
/watch?v=klHNonhAIfA
The memories floated clearly through her mind, a silent offering from her crew.
"You still want proof," she eyed the Lieutenant, who watched her with blatant curiosity. "It's not much, but I can tell you about my first mission.
It was February of 2526. 3rd Fleet sent me to check in on Bliss after we'd lost contact with the colony. I'd been assigned a new Captain in preparation for the war."
"Who was your original Captain?" Barr interrupted.
"Roberto Delfosse, he was a veteran of a few engagements against the Insurrectionists, I'm not sure which ones."
"Oh, I remember seeing that guy on the news." Matei nodded.
"Yeah, I saw some old propaganda movie about him," Barr added. "There was a whole 'Insurrection Movie Marathon' on Waypoint. March 2nd, 2549. 55th Anniversary of the Callisto incident."
Matei suddenly burst out laughing. "Shit, now I just remembered Dad telling me how the media really started leaning on him after Cole got kicked out of the Navy. He'd be pretty old by the time the war started."
"Yes, he was 70 when he took command. I remember everyone knowing it was purely ceremonial, just politics. Once the navy found out about the Covenant, that changed right away. Couldn't have an old man like him commanding a new ship like me. I'm glad he agreed to retire without a fight. He was too…chivalrous for a serious war. Fighting the Covenant would've hurt him on a deep level.
Anyway, the Navy gave Captain Kiet Trinh command and sent a whole new bridge crew with him. The Captain had orders to scout the system for signs of any alien presence, but we found something different instead…"
—
"It looks like a marble." Lieutenant Paul Scharf muttered in disbelief.
"So that's what happened to Green Hills and Second Base," Commander Vincas Murro leaned on his command console and studied the scene before them.
Filling the entire holodisplay was what used to be the UNSC Colony of Bliss, but now appeared strikingly similar to the Weapons Officer's comparison of a marble: massive stripes of shimmering material, almost glassy in composition, highlighted the gray surface of the world, often glittering beneath massive clouds of ash. The metallic stripes were arrayed in a series of interconnected patterns, the meaning of which remained a mystery.
"Should we try to hail the Weeping Willows?" Asked comm officer Jozef Nestor.
"There's not even the ghost of a point." Captain Trinh sighed. Bliss was defended by two of Prophecy's sisters: the Weeping Willows and the Matador, with the recently-transferred Stalwart-class frigate Purpose providing support. He already knew that whatever had inflicted such a nightmarish fate upon Bliss wouldn't have worried about a mere 3 ships.
"Sir, I'm detecting an automated distress call outside the planet's orbit," Nestor announced, "It's an ONI frequency."
"ONI is calling for help? Let's plot a course towards that signal and see if they have any answers."
—
"The ship was called the Accra, it was some ONI stealth ship. We cracked the black box and found out what happened." She hesitated. "They fired everything at those 3 ships…there wasn't even ash left. You know what happened next."
"What else did you do with the black box?" Barr asked.
"We handed it off to another Prowler. They said they'd use the footage to 'knock some sense' into some people."
"Took their sweet time going public with it," Matei noted. "Everyone was raising hell about Harvest, and I only saw reports about Bliss from…April 2526? I was in boot camp by then and nobody ever mentioned it."
"Well, ONI must have done something with that footage, even if it happened behind the scenes," Barr decided.
"The crew thought they were going back to Epsilon Eridani, but instead we were diverted to a deep space rendezvous point in the Vevina sector to join 3rd Fleet's reserves while Battlegroup X-ray headed to Harvest. By the time I got there, Cole's forces were already back from the mission…what was left of them…"
—
The bridge crew stood in shocked attention at the slowly growing sight before them. At first, it didn't look too bad. The Prophecy had come up behind the floating drydock, unable to see the extent of the damage inflicted to the ship in question while its stern remained in the way. Now that they were passing the drydock to starboard, though, the true nature of the damage became apparent.
The entire forward 3rd of the ship was gone, replaced by a flat surface of cauterized metal. The ship was a cripple, a total loss. And it was the exact same class as the Prophecy.
As an afterthought, a grayed-out name appeared on the tactical display with the words CA-862 Lowrentz emblazoned where the prow had once been.
"How…?" Navigation officer Lucie Paulston gasped.
"I've got the rest of Battlegroup X-ray on screen." Lieutenant Cyril Voskanyan said, and the main holodisplay adjusted accordingly. As Captain Trinh read off the names before him, he knew something had gone horribly wrong. Where were Prophecy's sister ships, Excellence and Waterloo? Where were the new destroyers Campo Grande, Lance Held High, Austerlitz, and Tharsis, and why was Chaco designated as squadron leader? Several other ships were absent as well. Troy and Constantinople, two of the five Halcyon-class ships Cole had been forced to include while the Navy mobilized and diverted ships elsewhere, the Hillsborough-class Destroyer Leader Virginia Capes, and two ships of the same class as Cole's old ship Gorgon: the Midway and Sacramento. Even the Charon-class frigate Malestrom hadn't been nimble enough to escape, it seemed.
Then Scharf pointed out something else. "Not seeing any signs of damage."
Several of the bridge crew turned back towards the direction of the Lowrentz. The implications were clear: if whatever enemy had fought Battlegroup X-ray wanted something dead, it wasn't getting out of the fight alive.
—
"We already knew what they could do when they had us outnumbered, but when we saw the gaps in Admiral Cole's battleline…everyone was on edge. And then they told us he had encountered one ship-"
"One ship!?" Matei blurted out. "The news said he destroyed FIFTY!"
"One ship against 40." Prophecy repeated. "12 of them never came back. Lowrentz was scrapped. And then I learned that Kydonia was destroyed over Alpha Corvi II. Less than a half a year and the war had already taken 6 of my sisters." Her eyes grew distant.
"I know we didn't hit hard like the Valiants, or were as big as the Vanguards, but…we were so iconic after just a year. The symbol of the UNSC Navy, the culmination of every advancement that came before. You remember, don't you, Matei? Nobody thought we could just…melt away like that."
"Yeah."
She felt a new sense of resolve filling her chest. "One day." she decided.
"Elaborate." Maldini said.
"Give me one more day and I'll be ready, the whole crew and I swear it."
"But how can you help us? The plan is to lay low and wait for the Navy to send help. We're not going to…send you all by yourself against one of those fleets or anything."
"That's…very reassuring." she winced.
"Well, you know what we gotta think about, right?" Barr asked.
"What."
"Don't throw her at a whole fleet. Just use whatever she's packing to knock some small ship around so we can board it, and then snap-" he snapped his left hand "-we activate that speedy covie slipspace drive to kiss this irradiated rock goodbye. Go raise the alarm somewhere."
Maldini shrugged. "A boarding action? Even assuming she's as strong as her…origin implies, how are we going to split off one of those ships to board it without any outside interference?"
"Let's leave that for when we get to safety, sir." Matei decided, standing up and heading for the exit.
"My thoughts exactly."
"Wait, I have to ask," Barr stood up and gestured for attention. "Miss, why the glasses?"
Prophecy averted her eyes in embarrassment.
"Because people thought I was a bad shot."
A/N: Just a random guy-Abyssals are coming, don't worry.