April 16th, 2557

Ruins of Guadalupe city, former UNSC colony Verge

Shelaris system

Private Ernest Barr had never seen so many alien prisoners in one place before. Back on Earth, they often chose to fight armed with nothing but drained plasma weapons wielded as clubs or pieces of debris. Anything to drag out resistance on the human homeworld, so that one more human might fall by their hands.

Not on Verge. Whether it was the retreat of their ragtag fleet or the subsequent speed with which the UNSC forces had dismantled their ramshackle command structure, countless aliens from across what used to be the Covenant now stood unsteadily in the ruined stadium before him.

There were the little ones, of course, hundreds constantly fidgeting with their brightly-coloured methane harnesses. With many methane refueling stations targeted in the initial wave of airstrikes, the bow-legged Grunts were no doubt concerned about whether their human captors would provide them any of the gas they needed to survive at all. But there were also plenty of the lanky Jackals, the heavy brutes, and a surprising number of the tall Elites. The last group made up almost a third of the prisoners he could see from the ruined storefront where his squad sat. Armed with a basic briefing on Elite cultural norms, Barr was amazed that so many of the honor-bound warriors had surrendered, and more than a little unnerved. In his estimation, they stood a good chance of overpowering their human captors if they developed a change of heart and attempted to lead a breakout. But they did no such thing, instead simply waiting patiently for whatever judgment awaited them.

Another truck full of prisoners squealed abruptly to a halt right in front of his squad, causing no small racket as the unrestrained prisoners within were tossed about by the movement. This time there were more Elites, all dressed in what looked like civilian clothes. The two dozen or two aliens tumbled gratefully onto the ground, one of them rising cautiously to his feet and approaching Barr's squad. The nearby guards kept their weapons trained on the tall Elite but made no move to block him. Surprisingly, the bewildered Elite began addressing the marines in perfect English.

"You cannot hold us here! I'm a simple engineer brought here to maintain the beacons, I'm not a soldier. Surely you must have some form of temporary embassy we can use to make the proper arrangements!"

"Anyone caught trespassing on UNSC territory is getting detained, big guy, buck up," Private Keller answered mockingly. The unarmored Elite's jaws spread in what Barr guessed was a gesture of defeat.

"Please understand, we didn't think you would come back here! We thought Vadam had put your homeworld under occupation."

"You thought wrong."

The other marines turned apprehensively towards the source of the biting reply. Sergeant Michael Haney stood up from behind a melted counter and stomped towards the pleading Elite. The others in his group all took a step back at the sight, watching the Marine guards around them with concern. It was a very entertaining scene, Barr decided.

Haney wasn't nearly as tall as the Elite, but he was the tallest of the squad and had a large burn scar extending from under his tactical glasses to his left cheek, as well as two scars running down his chin. No doubt the Elites recognized him as a formidable warrior in some universal language. When he spoke, they all flinched as if expecting an order for an example to be made of their upstart friend.

"Did you really think you could set up an interplanetary gas station right next to Reach and not face any consequences? When you threw a bone to every rogue fleet who came asking for a refuel?"

"We didn't know-"

"Ah, I think you just didn't want to know. That's a big difference." His voice took on a mockingly high-pitched tone. "Oh, don't mind us, we're just an innocent merchant republic looking to help our friends stranded in a strange part of space. It's so inhospitable out here. There's all these dead worlds and we don't know how they wound up like that."

The Elites averted their eyes in shame.

"I'll be fair to your boss, though, he definitely wasn't a true believer. He ran off right after we arrived in orbit, did you know that? I heard people whining that you guys had enough ships to come back and lay waste to Earth if we made you mad, and what happens? He runs off, and half of the fleet runs every which way right after! Personally, I thought he was just going to torch the planet out of spite. Sure, you guys turned it into a real fixer-upper, but it's nothing compared to Lusatia."

"Iota," Private Keller added.

"Syrový," "Huangguang," "Chi Rho," another 3 marines spoke in unison.

The Elite's mandibles tightened.

"You do not have ownership of loss in this war! My entire clan perished in one battle!"

"Where?" Asked Haney.

"I believe you call it Psi Serpentis-"

A few marines laughed at the admission, and the Elite hung his head in immediate regret of his protestation. Seemingly out of patience, several Marine and MP guards finally corralled the Elites back towards the ruined stadium.

Footsteps slowly rose over the tumult of the prisoners, striking the cracked sidewalk with rapid enthusiasm. A middle-aged man with messy shoulder-length brown hair dressed in a dark blue jacket and brown cargo pants approached the loose gathering of marines with unabashed amazement. A wave of annoyance went through the marines as their respective HUDs tagged the man as a war correspondent, all except for one of them.

Sergeant Haney stood up to meet the older man without hesitation, which only made the reporter approach more enthusiastically. The pair met in the middle of the now clear road between the storefront and the stadium.

"Hello Sergeant. I'm Josh Karcsú with Intersystems news. I'm collecting brief insights into the results of the UNSC's campaign here on Verge and I was wondering if you could sum up your experience after one month of fighting."

Barr and the others watched Sergeant Haney remain quiet for a few moments, looking as if he was pondering the question deeply, then give his reply.

"I suppose there's only one line that truly captures the essence of our time on Verge…" he paused again, before speaking with a slow reverence: "Some must go off: and yet, by these I see, So great a day as this is cheaply bought."

The war correspondent seemed frozen in amazement, oblivious to the loud sighs and groans that rose from his squad.

Barr watched as Josh declared Haney's summation to be "front-page worthy", which only made the marines under his command even more raucous.

Sergeant Ernest Barr awakened abruptly to the rough ministrations of the M9 truck's suspension bouncing beneath where he sat in the trailer. He stretched groggily against the seatbelt that kept him bound tightly in his seat, watching through holes melted into the walls of the trailer as stars flashed unnaturally into being and faded just as quickly in the twilight above him. Before he grew too distracted by the sight, he wondered about his latest dream. It was odd to recall such an amusing day in his life, particularly as the moment of truth in this trying time on Algolis finally grew near. Verge had been a stunning success, a swift recapture of a rare world taken by the Covenant without any glassing. That success, he supposed, was why he'd never dreamt about it before. Until now.

A slow jostling to the right reminded him of the most likely influence behind his strange dream. Next to him slept a woman wearing a gray Navy dress uniform, which would've been out of place if not unremarkable were it not for the patch emblazoned on her upper sleeves: A simplified illustration of an old Marathon-class heavy cruiser emblazoned on a field of stars ringed with the words "CA-835 UNSC Prophecy" on the top and the phrase "Nos iam vicisse" on the bottom.

The defiant, rational part of him held that there was no way the presence of one woman could affect his mind. But there was a different side of him, a side buried under rubble in Medford long ago, full of wonderment and curiosity. That part of him fully believed that this strange woman was exerting some kind of soothing effect on the marines around her, though without any direct control over it. He had felt it himself during the previous day's battle, while he was lying in his trench waiting for more spike grenades to explode overhead instead of directing a response. Not his finest moment, but he'd felt grimly confident that nobody would escape to witness it.

Then he heard the sound of a scuffle, saw the newcomer defying a Brute chieftain with an impossible strength, and began to feel his disillusionment fade away. Suddenly, he'd decided that they could win this battle, and that was before the Brutes had started retreating.

And then there was the matter of her unnatural appetite…

Barr dismissed the rude thought immediately, noting that the woman didn't seem very idyllic in her slumber. Her head lolled against the unyielding padding of the headrest, and a wordless mumble escaped from her lips. The marine quickly grew concerned. He had wondered if Prophecy even needed sleep, given that she had made herself known in such a superhuman manner and only seemed to grow more unnatural as the day had gone on. Now, as he felt more and more certain that she was what she promised she was, he had a few ominous guesses of what would come to her in her sleep.

The seats in the trailer were already packed tightly together, so he didn't need to lean any further in to try and hear what she was saying. Unfortunately, he also couldn't move out of reach without starting a ruckus. This left him all but trapped when Prophecy's arm slowly wrapped around his and grabbed his armored wrist.

"Uh-oh."

She moaned again, hand tightening slightly on him. Barr realized it was already too late to pull free. Prophecy had demonstrated strength that rivaled a Spartan-II during that brief fight with the Brute. As he wondered how much control she had over that strength in her sleep, it suddenly seemed more unnerving than impressive.

"Ma'am, you're holding a little too tightly right now," he protested, watching as she slowled craned her neck upwards in her sleep.

"I am not…" she mumbled, and Barr immediately realized she wasn't talking to him. She began to pull him towards her.

"I won't, I won't…" Prophecy went on, turning in her seat to face him. Her grip on his wrist grew less painful, but remained rock-solid. Without warning she leaned into him, moaning "I won't-!" before his upper arm pressed slightly against her bosom.

Two turquoise lights appeared before the Sergeant as Prophecy awoke with a silent scream on her lips. Just like the previous night, her eyes possessed a glow that was solely their own, one that reflected brightly off her round-rimmed eyeglasses. Barr was still fascinated by the fact she wore glasses. He wondered what kind of supernatural rules determined that Prophecy had something as anachronistic as glasses bestowed upon her human self. They seemed to have a connection with some reputation she'd acquired in her past life, which opened up many questions that he knew wouldn't be answered on this desolate planet.

More importantly, he was still quasi-groping a woman who could throw him and his seat out the truck if he made her mad. She seemed to realize the awkward position they were both in too, and loosened her grip on his arm.

"Oh, hello Sergeant." Her voice was filled with relief. "Please…excuse me." Prophecy averted her eyes and slumped against her seat in embarrassment.

"It's fine." Barr looked around, grateful that she hadn't woken with a scream. As he'd hoped, the rest of the truck remained asleep. Against his better judgment, he decided to try and confirm his suspicions.

"What were you dreaming about?"

Prophecy didn't look at him, instead watching the stars pass gradually by above. She ran both hands through her shoulder-length brown hair before replying.

"Memories. Memories about XI Boötis A."

Barr nodded and stared down at his feet in thought. The name meant nothing to him at first. He guessed it was some kind of celestial body rather than a planet (though some colonists had very peculiar ideas of what made a good name). After a minute of thought, something flickered in his memory, a stellar map of some kind he or his father had examined on waypoint. Then it was gone.

XI Boötis A…what the heck happened over there?

Dust filled the crowded breathing room, roused by the uneasy crowd within and coming to a halt in the dry air. Apparently, the redoubt's systems hadn't been maintained as diligently as they should've over the years, and air conditioning was one of the casualties. Most of the several dozen people were looking Matei's way, which filled him with no small amount of unease.

As Lieutenant Maldini had hoped, D Company (and their new guest) had arrived at the UNSC's main hideout on Algolis just as the last ochre tinge had faded from the sky. Inside they'd found survivors from several other units based out of Camp Ghost, the skeleton crew that kept watch over the redoubt, and civilians from the various squatters, scavengers, and survivalists who lived on the fringes of outpost worlds like Algolis. Unsurprisingly, the difficult nature of the current situation had led to an informal revocation of the many legal consequences associated with their activity.

Matei and Lieutenant Maldini now sat before the assembled officers, NCOs, and representatives of the nonmilitary survivors. Though a few people still gossiped amongst themselves excitedly, the room had for the most part fallen silent. Lieutenant Maldini finally brought the last whispers to a halt.

"Friends, your verdict, if you will?"

Most of the group continued to eye Matei despite the Lieutenant drawing their attention. He understood why. Being the one who seemed most responsible for what could be both their dilemma and their salvation, his brief testament had left much to be desired. Everyone was happy that D Company had pulled through against such overwhelming odds, but the nature of their rescuer puzzled many outsiders. Matei himself felt a twinge of sadness at the many faces who weren't in the room looking back at him. From what the marines could surmise, additional hunting parties from both alien cliques had been sent into the mountains, perhaps as a way to keep the humans from interfering in the grudge match that was apparently taking place back east. Several groups had taken losses or gone dark altogether. Worst of all, nobody had known where Joseph Rakken's group was. He had felt a renewed hope for the other marine after the battle in the valley, unfortunately it seemed that his last chance to find the son of his old squadmate had passed.

It was Lieutenant Santiago Arnavisca of A Company who spoke first.

"She can only be what she says she is," the marine crossed his arms and glared at possible skeptics around him. "Who else would know the names of everyone on her bridge 52 years ago like she did?" As part of their testimony, Lieutenant Maldini had presented helmet camera footage of his impromptu interview with Prophecy the night before. Unsurprisingly, most of the crowd nodded in agreement. A ship should know her crew, after all, and personnel records from decades past were hard to come by.

"Let's be honest here," Lieutenant Parker added, "If she was some kind of ONI cyborg, you'd think they would've programmed her with a proper calendar."

More nods, and another observation followed from Staff Sergeant Bidwell. "It sounds like she didn't recognize Brutes either."

"Me, I didn't encounter them until the Spirit of Fire went off and found that shield world in 2531," Matei explained. "But they might have been deployed from the start. Lots of places just dropped off the map without a word…"

One of the civilians, a shifty old man calling himself Holguin, spoke up next.

"You know what, I'll believe anything. Just tell us how we're going to get out of here."

"Certainly." Maldini replied and motioned for Matei to explain.

"Everyone here already knows the proposal that was given by my second in command during our interview. Fortunately, as we noticed on the way in here, we think a perfect opportunity is already here. Based on what we've seen using this base's observatory, the two alien factions fighting over Algolis have taken their dispute into space. We think the largest engagement since the Covenant War is currently playing out over our heads, that's how many ships both sides are committing right now. Of course, we can't fly right into the battle itself and hijack a ship. Fortunately, we've already found the perfect candidate lingering outside the battle." He tapped a button on the wall to his left, activating a large holodisplay between himself and the onlookers.

"This is an SDV Heavy Corvette. We spotted it sitting in orbit a good distance away from the brawl. It seems completely undamaged, which is another reason it's the best choice we have. The usual wartime complement consisted of 36 crew and 240 troops. That's going to be a tight fit for all of us, but we shouldn't be spending too much time there."

"How's the fighter screen?" Asked Bidwell.

"6 space Banshees and 6 Seraphs, but that's assuming all of them are intact." Matei answered.

"Wait, you guys have transports in here?" A young survivalist woman interjected.

"A whole underground hangar full of them. You didn't think we left our transports back at Camp Ghost, I hope," Maldini replied snidely. "Pelicans and Albatrosses. Darters too, and hopefully we won't have to use them."

"What's wrong with the Darter?" The woman asked.

"It transports cargo other than the human variety. Not very comfortable in evasive maneuvers, trust me." A few marines laughed uneasily at the description as Matei took over.

"We don't know how much longer this battle will last before, so the Lieutenant and I have decided our plan will have to start at the end. In that case: where do you guys think we should jump to?'

Matei sat back and let the marines discuss among themselves.

"What's the criteria for our destination?" Arvanisca asked first.

"Our preference is a place where we can help spread word of the attack, and maybe lend a hand if we're able to secure the ship intact. Earth and Reach won't need our help, so we're not keen on going there. We also know Battlegroup Night Watch left the systems a few weeks before Merg Vol attacked, but we don't know if it was Vol or these new Banished forces that caused them to leave. It might've been something else. Point is, the Navy may be consolidating their forces, and we should plan accordingly."

"How about Chi Ceti?" One marine Sergeant asked.

Maldini smiled knowingly, which confused Matei. "Chi Ceti wouldn't be too different from Algolis, except the Navy would take more care to evacuate the troops down there."

"Guangxi?" Holguin suggested.

"The Navy's not going to hold Guangxi if things are as bad as I suspect they are. They'd evacuate the people trying to de-glass the place. If they had the chance."

"We could try Moresnet," Bidwell added.

"No, Moresnet is a cult planet, they're not worth defending either," Parked opined.

Arnavisca spoke once again. "There's Alpha Aurigae. It's just 50 light years away from here."

A snap of recognition hit Matei. "Wait, Capella made it through the war?"

"The Covenant never touched the system after the first time, yes," Maldini explained, "Now it's become a hub for resettlement efforts throughout the sector. If there's any system we wouldn't abandon without a fight outside SolCore, it would be Alpha Aurigae."

Holguin gave two thumbs up. "I'll drink to that. Capella here we come!"

"After we've drawn up the rest of our plan," Parker rolled his eyes. "For example, we're going to need at least a platoon to open the attack on that Corvette And secure the hangar bay. Who should lead the space assault?"

Matei suddenly felt every set of eyes in the room turn towards him.

"What? Why me?"

"It's your ship who's gonna help us break into that Corvette, so you should be out there coordinating with her?" The survivalist woman timidly suggested.

"How is she my ship, I was part of HER crew!"

"So that makes you her servant?"

"What, no! Besides, I didn't have any experience in Zero-G combat. Well…" the memory came to him before he could stop himself, and the crowd leaned forward in anticipation. Knowing that it was too late, he decided to explain.

"After Prophecy left Harvest, I was pulled off the ship with a whole bunch of marines from the 3rd fleet. We all lined up on the Everest to meet some Captain…Spam? Hamm? Probably a code name. Anyway, she was an ODST and she said we were all going to be evaluated for some kind of space assault unit. We all spent a few months doing Zero-G exercises."

"Did you pass?" The woman asked.

"They told me I was doing quite well, but the training got interrupted when Prophecy was sent off to Galodew in April. By the time we left, the evals were wrapped up."

Bidwell nodded in recognition. "So you DO know how Zero-G combat works!"

"It's not like riding a bike, Sergeant. But those ODST trainers played for keeps, and it's technically only been…3 years? It should come back to me. If there's nobody else you guys can trust, nobody with more experience who outranks me…I'll do it."

"Hey Sarge."

Matei ignored the bored voice behind him at first, making last-minute adjustments to his gray EVA suit inside the Pelican's troop bay. The operation was due to commence in less than a half-hour and he had no need for distractions.

"Sarge, your girlfriend's acting weird, everyone's getting second thoughts right now," The man continued.

"She is not my girlfriend!" Matei turned to see Private Sranic, one of the marines from another company assigned to his space assault squad, watching him with an amused gleam in his eyes.

"Are you sure? I saw how starstruck she was when she talked about you, seems like a nice opportunity-"

"Don't make me order you to shut up, Private. Let me guess, they want me to talk to her."

Sranic just nodded in agreement. The younger man hadn't endeared himself to Matei at all, but he was one of the few people in the base with zero-g combat experience despite his low rank, so he simply had to be included in the attack.

"Alright, just let me get patched in…" he put on his EVA helmet, a model quite similar to the standard ODST helmet, and found a waypoint already waiting for him on his HUD. He stepped carefully past Sranic and out of the pelican, trying to reacquaint himself with the bulky EVA armor. The underground hangar was mostly silent around him, the vast majority of the base's inhabitants having crammed themselves into various transports in preparation for the launch. A few people remained visible in the hangar, mostly pilots doting over the weapon pods of their Pelicans or anxious marines walking around in circles. Finally, there was a semicircle of marines and pilots surrounding the bay doors of the Pelican marked on his hud.

The crowd parted wordlessly to let Matei ascend into the troop bay, where Prophecy sat hunched over on one of the left-hand seats. She perked up at the sound of him stepping into the bay and watched him with a nervous smile.

"Hey…how are you doing?"

Prophecy leaned forward with her chin in her hands. "I'm fine."

"Then what's causing all the fuss? I thought you said you'd be ready by now?"

Nobody in the meeting could reach any conclusions about Prophecy's real capabilities due to a lack of evidence, settling for the tentative consensus that a Marathon-class Heavy Cruiser should be able to subdue an SDV Corvette given the latter's limited anti-ship weaponry. Now that the time to put their lives in her hands was growing near, Matei guessed that people were wondering why she couldn't bring her original weaponry to bear now rather than later.

Prophecy nudged her glasses up and down in anticipation. "I am ready, it's just that there's some…concern…from the crew."

Again with the crew talk, Matei noted.

"Concern? Are they telling you something's wrong?"

"They don't speak to me, it's more like feelings that come and go. I just know I need to be out of the atmosphere before I can get anything out."

"Fine, I can understand that." He really couldn't, working only from the imagined conclusion that as a former spaceship, Prophecy would feel more at home in space, but he didn't want to press her too hard.

"There's something else…the crew feels like we should wait until we're close to that ship before I start my attack?"

"Okay…why? And how close?"

"I'm guessing point-blank range, in case I show up on scans as a full-sized cruiser with all my weapons out. They'd definitely raise the alarm if they picked that up coming right at them from a distance."

"What do you mean 'in case'? Do you not know?"

Prophecy stood up and leaned towards him. "Of course I don't know! None of this makes sense to me either!" A few murmurs of discontent filled the crowd. Seeming to realize her mistake, Prophecy looked out over the other marines and addressed them.

"I don't understand why I'm here," she started slowly, "But I know this all started because something let me know that he was in danger-" she pointed towards Matei, growing more confident with each word "-and now I have this second chance, the chance to live a new life in human form, because I wanted to protect him. So please, just trust me to protect all of you, too! I know I can do it. I know it's why I'm here, it has to be!"

Matei watched the marines, all people he'd recognized from Camp Ghost, absorb Prophecy's plea. For many weeks, he'd believed that their time was up just like his. He had accepted that fate wouldn't let him escape Algolis after so many lucky breaks. But now, as he turned back towards Prophecy, he no longer felt so attached to death. It was a miracle that she had come back, a pure impossibility that a starship could take on a life of its own and return in a time of need for one who'd once been part of its crew. But there she was, alive and ready to demonstrate her true power.

This was bigger than him, he realized. Something about reality itself must've changed, some metaphysical switch flipped, to allow the being standing before him to exist. If it could happen to him, a single isolated marine separated by decades in cryo, could it happen again? He remembered Prophecy's vague description of her return: darkness, then a call for help, then light, and suddenly she had a physical form. What else was waiting in that darkness for the right signal?

He had to make it out of the system, more for her sake than for his own. Prophecy was determined, but she also seemed unworldly, inexperienced, and unsure even of her own abilities. That left one course of action. As she had kept him safe in her hull and over his head on so many worlds in the 2520's, so would he have an obligation to help her understand her new self and the new age she'd awoken to.

She looked back at him for several seconds and Matei realized she was waiting for a reply.

"I trust you."

She smiled at his answer.

"If he says so, I guess I do too," Private Ramon uneasily added.

"Me too, let's get going already!" Another marine yelled.

The rest of the crowd slowly dispersed after assenting to various degrees, leaving only Matei, the Pelican crew, and Prophecy trembling in anticipation next to him.

"I guess you should get back to your dropship," she finally said.

"There's no rush," he replied, staring into her aquamarine eyes as she twitched in shock. He felt like he could get lost in those strangely-colored orbs. They had stood out immediately as a sign that there was something special about her.

"Can I just say…thank you for helping get my squad off Harvest back in 2526."

Prophecy nodded hesitantly at the reminder.

"I remember that, somewhat. Everyone on the Pelican: Greig, Kozma, Dahl, you, Tseydner, Lealand."

"Did Tseydner, uh…?"

"He held on. I gave him to Hopeful with a few other badly wounded marines."

Matei suddenly remembered something important.

"Wait, Lealand was already on Hopeful by then, he wasn't on that Pelican in 2526. We didn't see each other again until the next-"

He paused, but it was already too late. Prophesy eyed him suspiciously, looking somewhat ashamed.

"Matei…about Harvest…"

"Later," he almost snapped. "After we get out of here. Don't let whatever happened then get in the way of what you need to do now. Just show us what you can do and we'll take care of the rest."

"I will. I promise you, I'll do it."

"And I believe in you."

Prophecy nodded slowly at the reply, settling back into her seat while the Pilots climbed into the troop bay. With nothing else urgent to say, Matei hopped out of the Pelican and prepared to rejoin his squad.

Shipmaster Kantar Utaral stared down at the darkened site of his latest and greatest failure. Maintaining orbit in self-imposed exile far from the full-scale engagement he had helped cause, the Shipmaster continued to ruminate on the extent of his failure.

Had it been a trap all along? A Banished trick meant to draw ships from Merg Vol's fleet down within range of their trap? No doubt, their offensive had been a genuine and costly effort to break Parg Vol's lines, and it seemed to have been underperforming until that mysterious interruption in their comms at one point in the line. That had caused concern, but not the right kind of concern. The jamming field should've been recognized as a way to hide whatever anti-ship weapon had been brought into position under cover of the Banished breakthrough. Yet nobody could've anticipated such a weapon being deployed, neither Merg Vol Nor Utaral himself.

As the situation grew more severe, Vol's fleet had taken the bait and deployed the most obvious and immediate remedy to a breakthrough outlined by old Covenant doctrine: a bombardment squadron composed of Ceudar Corvettes and very light starships would blind the enemy offensive with the holy light of their plasma.

The honor of bringing such divine pain to the heretical Banished had fallen to Utaral in his first true command since the end of the war. From the bridge of the Faith by my shield, he had coordinated the first decisive blows upon the Banished attackers. What he had not done was respond promptly when something had struck back.

He should've scorched the entire stretch of ground where the first shot had most likely originated. He should've done something, anything. But he had not. When that mysterious anti-ship weapon had brought down the first Zanar, he had become frozen with terror, for there wasn't the slightest hint of where such a weapon lay. That should've been impossible, but when one crippled ship became two, he knew it could only be all too real. So it was that his first chance to prove himself as a capable squadron leader had dispersed much like the ships under his command, fleeing the wrath of that strange and powerful weapon.

Now he stood on the bridge of the Faith by my shield, the ship Merg Vol had bestowed upon him as a token of his gratitude, and contemplated the results of his mistake. He had ordered the battlenet silenced, for he needed only to look out the transparent alloy surrounding the bridge to know that a major battle was afoot. Off to his right beyond Algolis, the stars danced in new shades of ruby and violet. So far, he hadn't been ordered to rejoin the engagement wrought of his panic, and for that he was grateful. Far more time would need to be spent considering whether the weight of his ineptitude would stay his feet before he felt ready to risk his ship and its crew in battle. Merg Vol could handle the Banished fleet, or he would've called Utaral to aid him, but the losses incurred this day would set back their sacred mission to restore the Covenant and keep the heretics unsettled. The Great Journey, he reminded himself, wasn't for the weak of heart.

"Shipmaster, we are detecting a faint cluster of signals rising from the planet."

Utaral was startled by the Sangheili crewman's warning, but recovered quickly. He wouldn't show indecisiveness again.

"What are these signals, then? What of their course?"

"They appear to be headed right for us. From what we can see of the energy readings, they are human craft."

That wasn't too surprising for Utaral. Vol's forces hadn't yet scoured the humans from their hideouts before the Banished had intruded upon their campaign, and the current engagement certainly offered the best opportunity to enact whatever they were planning.

"Quickly, identify them."

"Scans indicate they are moving too slowly to be fighters or attack bombers. Combined with visual reports, we think they're transports."

"What is this, some form of rendezvous with one of their stealth ships? Or are they planning to board my ship?"

"Their trajectory would indicate the latter, my Shipmaster."

Utaral paused to consider the possibility. A boarding attempt would be a plan most Sangheili in nature, too brazen for humans. Particularly given that they couldn't have access to any of their infamous "Demons" on an outpost planet like this.

"Shall we alert the fleet?"

"No! I will not beg for help in fear of a few human troop transports. Launch our remaining fighters and warm up the pulse lasers. We will deal with them ourselves."

Utaral heard the bridge come to life around him, a dozen experienced Sangheili and several Unggoy all preparing for the imminent confrontation. The Shipmaster didn't expect this fight to be a difficult one, but he would do his best to regain what little honor could be found in repelling the human assault single handedly. Only then would he seek his fate in the decisive battle raging beyond.

Matei checked his wrist-mounted tacpad one more time and held it up to the other marines in the troop bay.

"Remember, we have all the data we need to operate that ship in these, so don't panic if someone like me dies."

"What about prisoners?" Private Bossano asked.

"These aren't the type of would-be covies to surrender." That was Private Hassa, another outsider on his team.

"But if they do, give them a fair shake. Just in case the ship's had some modifications done that we don't know about," Matei added. "We might also need them to help deal with any holdouts."

The team had been hastily assembled from marines both inside and outside of his old squad. Barr, Ramon, Tackett, Mundsmann, Bossano, and Roye were there, joined by Sranic, Hassa, Herreira, Lanfu, Desmazes, and Narvaez. All of them were carrying a mix of UNSC and Banished weapons, with Matei himself choosing an M90 shotgun and a red plasma rifle. He and Sergeant Bidwell's team were in the first wave, which would be tasked with breaching the corvette and securing the main hangar bay. Behind them, the rest of the transports carried everyone else from the base, most of which were packed together at twice their standard capacity.

The troop bay's speakers rattled to life, heralding the voice of their pilot.

"Ten minutes until go-time, kids, and by the way, the target is coming around to port for a broadside. He's got 3 Banshees in the air."

"No Seraphs?"

"Negative First Sarge, they don't seem to think we're worth the trouble," the man on the other side of the cockpit hatch replied nonchalantly.

"Good for us."

"Hey, if your friend really wants to lend a hand, now would be a good time," the young co-pilot started.

"Not yet. Do you pilots think two dozen of you can't deal with 3 space Banshees?"

"We can, but it'll be messy. Speaking of…"

The line went dead for a few moments, then the pilot returned.

"Well, the lead Banshee is gone. Bad news, Oscar-16 just burned through all their anvil missiles."

Without warning, the Pelican twisted and rolled upwards, throwing Matei and the other marines against their restraints. Through the jostling, her could hear several metallic rattles in the dropship's hull.

"...and so are we. Looks like the third stooge is breaking off." The pilot spoke again.

"Lieutenant, you could warn us before you start maneuvering so wildly like that."

"Kid, I can show you what real 'wild' maneuvering feels like if you really want it. Besides, your plan says we have to ditch these birds anyway after we take the ship, so I'm going to put mine through her paces one last time and stop worrying about saving ammo for once."

"The corvette is firing!" the co-pilot yelled through the PA.

"Don't worry, it's just trying to scare us with those slow plasma cannons."

The pilot scoffed. "They're 'slow' until they hit, Matt. Now, are we going to start hitting back already, or what?"

"Oh fine." Ignoring the nickname, Matei tweaked the comms in his helmet. "Hey, Oscar-16, let's get the ball rolling."

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Ensign Benoit "Aisle" Diaz watched in terror as the huge sapphire orbs of plasma approached the cockpit. Even while they passed harmlessly overhead, he doubted he was going to make it much further away from Algolis. His Father had nearly perished there back in 2549, and not even to the Covenant. When the defiant nuclear warhead armed at the weapons facility had gone off, his own Pelican was just out of range of the accompanying EMP. They'd limped to safety aboard a lone frigate waiting in orbit and taken the long journey back to Reach.

Now here he was, fleeing from the same planet in a Pelican with no ship waiting to take him in. Except if one counted the heavy corvette lashing out at him in the distance.

"Hey, Oscar-16, let's get the ball rolling." The slightly-distorted transmission brought him back to reality. Unlike the other transports, his Pelican only carried one occupant, a strange woman who'd accompanied the last group of marines to arrive at the base. He hadn't paid much attention to all the details, settling for calming his nerves with a few drinks after learning that he would take the lead in the evacuation. She had some special codename connected to some ship that was before his time, and even his father's time. He settled for the explanation that she was some kind of Spartan successor and ran with it as best he could. Aisle wasn't sure about the relationship between the woman and the guy currently contacting him, but judging by his tone it seemed to be familial.

"W-with pleasure First Sergeant." He turned on the camera linked to Oscar-16's troop bay and suddenly froze at the sight, forgetting even the incoming plasma blasts and the banshee lurking out of range.

"Uh, ma'am…where's your EVA suit?"

Petty officer Monson, his co-pilot, gasped behind him. The woman was standing inches away from the door, hand hovering by the emergency override button that would send her falling into space, without any form of protection whatsoever. He'd thought she would get suited up mid-flight at least, and apparently he was catastrophically wrong.

Heat warnings blared, hinting that the latest volley of plasma was getting close. Aisle nudged the Pelican down as an afterthought and continued to monitor the bay camera.

Someone asked an incredulous question over comms, but he barely heard it over the woman's calm reply.

She knew they were right to be afraid. From the outside, it looked like she was going to go cavorting into the vacuum of space without a care for her well-being.

But she knew better, even if she couldn't find the words to explain it. She had tried her best back at the base, when she understood the marines' concern. They were charging towards a Covenant ship with nothing but up-gunned troop transports, and the only one who could even the odds was her: a nervous woman who wore glasses. She knew they wouldn't believe her at first, that they desired some show of force to demonstrate where their trust was going, and that it wasn't being misplaced.

She couldn't do it. Just like when she'd first appeared, her true power had lay out of reach. Something deep inside her, something familiar, had assured her she would be ready just a day after she'd returned in her new state. Now, standing with only a thin layer of steel between herself and zero-g, she knew it was time. Once she was out there where she'd been constructed to be so long ago, she knew she would be ready to manifest in full.

Taking one last look at the cameras mounted in the troop bay, she heard one of the pilots ask "are you crazy? Put on a helmet!"

She smiled.

"I don't need one. This is exactly where I'm supposed to be."

She waved goodbye and tapped the emergency override.

Several officers on the bridge shouted in alarm simultaneously.

"Explain yourselves, fools," Shipmaster Utaral ordered.

"Shipmaster, it cannot be, but our scanners have detected an additional human vessel accompanying the dropships!" A red-armored crewman yelled far too loudly.

"What do you mean 'vessel'? Explain!"

"It matches a design in our databanks, a warship twice our size!"

"Yet I do not see such a ship arrayed against us." Indeed, Utaral could only make out the same cluster of specks that had initially been picked up, currently dodging his plasma cannons with ease.

"The movement is highly erratic for such a warship, Shipmaster. It more resembles a fighter. It may be some form of decoy signal."

"What trick are the humans playing now?"

"Uh-oh…" The pilot spoke uneasily, finally sounding serious for once. That was enough to concern Matei.

"What happened?"

"Something just lit up ahead of me. I think Oscar-16 got hit."

The troop bay burst into chaos.

"What?"

"I dunno Matt, I could just make them out and then there was a big flash, I can't say if it was a plasma cannon or a pulse laser. Maybe a plasma torpedo swung in while I wasn't looking."

"Those corvettes don't have plasma torpedoes."

"Well maybe, kiddo, they welded a few on in the past 20 years…wait. No, Oscar-16 is still on my scanner. Aisle just isn't responding."

That quieted the bay down slightly.

"You could've checked that first," Matei groaned.

"I've got plasma to dodge and a Banshee looking for an opportunity to dive in while I'm dodging, so excuse me."

"Then what caused the flash," Bossano shouted over the lingering commotion.

"Our ticket onto that ship, you moron," Barr laughed wryly. Sure enough, a new voice broke into the comm.

"It worked? It worked! I'm flying!"

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"I'm flying!"

She could hear the words ringing out triumphantly over her comms even while her mouth moved silently in outer space. Although her bare skin was exposed to the vacuum, the immense heat of her fusion reactor rendered the icy chill completely nonexistent.

With just a thought, she felt her fusion drives accelerate ever so slightly, nudging her body out of a fall and into a loop back upwards. Then she let herself spin head over heels, more by accident than on purpose.

The stars above Algolis shimmered all around her in a bright blanket of light, each one shining clearly in the moment she was able to see them before her sharp loop took them out of sight. Memory banks that had been stripped of navigational data took in the unfamiliar sight with unversed awe. Soon she was staring down at Algolis, picking out mountain ranges and canyons with ease despite the lack of sunlight. A small stretch of ground was littered with faint red light, a detail that would've been indistinguishable to human eyes but was only somewhat troublesome for her scanners to detect.

She absentmindedly noticed a pelican rolling past her and quickly spun around again with a slight burst of thrust, then accelerated through the group until she reached the lead dropship, feeling her amazement grow with each second she moved under her own power. Decelerating in advance, she turned around and let inertia carry her in front of the Pelican marked "Oscar-16".

"Hello!" She waved at the Pelican, half-noticing the blocky pieces of armor strapped to her wrist and gloved hand.

A familiar voice wailed over the radio in reply. "Aaaauuuggh! What the hell is that?!"

"You idiot, it's her! She's…not…dead?" She could just make out the co-pilot gesturing hysterically down at the cowering pilot through the canopy. Ignoring their confusion, she went on.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you for letting me come aboard and trusting in me! Thank you for taking me up here. Space is so beautiful now that I can see it with my own eyes!"

The pilot settled weakly into his seat.

"If our part of the mission is done, then I'm getting out of here. Please, uh, kick their asses." Oscar-16 dove sharply out of the loose formation and swung towards the tail end of the line.

With that done, she drifted slowly towards the next pelican, which bore the call-sign "Golf-92" on her new HUD.

"Hey, turn on your hull cameras! Matei, Ernest, look, look, it's me!"

The pilot of this dropship slumped forward in his seat and tapped a button weakly. "That's…new."

She fell in alongside the Pelican, hearing several voices calling out in shock before Matei finally managed to get a word in.

"Prophecy, is that you?"

Prophecy nearly burst with excitement. "Yes, it's me! I can do everything I used to, all on my own! It's wonderful! I just had to focus for a moment and suddenly everything was back…sort of."

Obviously, she wasn't a full-sized Marathon-class cruiser, and now she finally took the time to examine her new hull. First, there were her arms, which were covered in gray UNSC marine armor with several archer missile clusters and pieces of titanium-A layered on top. The same loadout covered her body until he reached her legs, which also mounted a pair of secondary fusion drives and two twin spitfire gun turrets each. She could already tell that she wore a large thruster pack that included her two primary fusion drives, but she also became aware that it mounted four armatures featuring miniaturized titanium-A plates festooned with M66 sentry turrets and point-defense guns. Lastly, a scaled-down MAC battery extended over her right shoulder, and she wore a marine helmet with a large set of ballistic goggles over her glasses.

"Oops." Realizing she had fallen behind Golf-92, Prophecy accelerated forward, saluting them one last time before she reached the head of the formation. Beyond that, the distinctive shape of a Covenant heavy corvette grew larger by the second, unleashing volleys of plasma their way. An initial wave of fear at the size of it fell away at the memory that it was a ground support ship. She had eliminated more than one of them before.

"Remember, we want to bust down the shields, but not damage the ship itself." She recognized the speaker as Lieutenant Maldini, who now sounded almost reverent towards her.

"Understood, sir."

Another familiar sensation filled her head, a feeling like cold water flowing through her brain. A familiar voice soon followed.

"Hmmm, this is surprisingly spacious."

Prophecy recognized the archaic voice immediately.

"FitzGibbon? You're here too? What took you so long to show up?"

"Aside from the evident limitation that I seem to be connected to your hull…you did not ask."

"You silly goose, I'm just getting used to this new body! I didn't think I would come back with an AI too! Actually, why didn't they tell me you were here?"

The AI was unmoved. "To avoid 'spoiling the surprise', Madam."

Prophecy scoffed. "It'd be easier if I knew everything I had access to sooner, you know."

"Ma'am, is something wrong?"

"Oh, Lieutenant, there's no problem, I just found out that I've got an…AI…in my head."

"How?"

"His name is FitzGibbon, he was paired with me after XI Boötis A in 2528, that's all you need to know." She turned her attention back to the AI. "Now that you're here, mind helping me line up this shot?"

"With pleasure." A red marker appeared just above the rounded prow of the corvette, accompanied by a smaller icon indicating that a lone Banshee was moving to intercept her. Boosting the thrusters on her right leg slightly, Prophecy shifted until a series of green crosshairs appeared before her.

"Your firing solution, Madam." A hint of enthusiasm was evident in FitzGibbon's fastidious voice.

Another volley of plasma burned towards her, and she waited until the bolts passed by with a miniscule increase in heat registering on her sensors before she gave the order.

This time, I won't miss.

"Fire!"