Prophecy stood on the bridge of her old self once again. Her injuries were nowhere to be found. This wasn't relieving at all.
Before her stood the primary holodisplay on her bridge, a telltale date flashing in the upper right-hand corner:
0946 hours, February 13th, 2528. The Battle of XI Boötis A was about to kick off.
The bridge crew was dominated by tension. Captain Trinh sat ramrod straight in the command chair. Commander Murro eyed the display impatiently from his XO station. Lieutenant Paul Scharf checked and rechecked the weapons systems. Lieutenant Jozef Nestor kept his hands in the pockets of his service uniform and slumped in his seat at the comms station.
On the left of the display was the star itself. Further ahead was the colony Jaxartes, where the Covenant had dumped their ground troops.
The holodisplay lit up with 70 transponder signals, including her own. The UNSC fleet was divided into 3 main groups.
The central battlegroup was led by Admiral Cole's flagship Everest. The Valiant-class was flanked by two ex-CMA battlecruisers. Auriga and Stussel, and four other cruisers, only one of which (the O'higgins) was a Marathon-class. The other 3 were older cruisers: Herald and Kilkis, two Tenacious-class heavy cruisers, and the Roman Blue, a Halcyon. A mix of Able-class and Halberd-class destroyers and Paris-class heavy frigates formed his screening force.
The left flank was led by Prophecy's sister Amphion, joined by her sisters Home Run and Intrepid. There were also the Regina and Red Sky, a Tenacious and Halcyon-class cruiser respectively. The screen was a mix of Charons and Stalwarts.
Prophecy was part of the battlegroup on the right flank, which was led by Captain Leili Stywartsynn from the Sejong, and also included her sisters Starman and Marathon herself. They were joined by the Halcyon-class cruisers Emden and Toulouse. Their screen was divided into two groups led by the Able-class destroyers Erinyes and Antioquia respectively. It included the other four Halberd-class destroyers in the fleet, 6 Stalwarts led by Commander Plamenac on the Bang, and four Charons led by Commander Mairet on the Furse.
The last battlegroup consisted of the carriers. The Epoch-class ships Archon of Winter and Basrah were joined by three older Noryang-class ships: Eos Chasma, Manila Bay, and New Legaspi. They kept much closer to the rest of the fleet than they should've given their role, but painful experiences from past battles indicated that there was always the risk of needing carriers armed with MAC guns to provide direct fire support as losses piled up.
She remembered there being some undercurrent of concern among her crew about the composition of the fleet. Many ships like the Marathon, Starman, Home Run, Eos Chasma, and Stussel had no combat experience whatsoever. This was because Admiral Cole had included ships from the Sol defense fleet in his battleline, both due to proximity to Earth and because so many more battle-tested ships were under repair.
"The Covenant fleet is moving to intercept us," Lieutenant Voskanyan noted from the operations station.
8 hostile glyphs appeared on the tactical display and rapidly approached the UNSC fleet. Having dispensed with the illusion that their main goal was Jaxartes, the Covenant hunter-killer fleet gave every indication that it was looking for a fight.
"They're launching fighters," Voksanyan added.
Red dots emerged from the enemy carrier, the SDV-class corvettes, and the RPV-class destroyers. Notably, the three heavy ships that were the centerpiece of the enemy fleet-ORS heavy cruisers, battleships, whatever they were called-didn't join in launching fighters. Their true role was about to become painfully apparent.
The UNSC fleet's own fighter wings began flashing on screen around their respective ships shortly after. Many moved ahead of the fleet, but others hung back in reserve to dart in wherever the enemy's shields might break.
Prophecy felt her own 12 fighters spring out from her hangars with gusto. Lieutenant Craig Paraire led Wyvern Squadron charging forward to swat any Covenant Seraphs that got too close.
"All battlegroups, pick your targets," Admiral Cole ordered, and the 3 subgroups began to separate from each other. Everest went high, while the other two battlegroups went low.
As if they sensed the challenge, the Covenant ships also split into three groups. The carrier and one of the ORS cruisers advanced towards the Everst, one flagship against another. The other two took a destroyer and a corvette each with them and secured their respective flanks.
"MAC is hot and ready," Lieutenant Scharf announced.
"We'll be within firing range in 5 minutes," Voskanyan reminded the bridge crew.
The UNSC fighter screen started to intermingle with the 200 incoming Covenant strike craft. Despite being outnumbered, many enemy signals simply barreled through the furball, using their shields to take risks the human craft couldn't.
Alarms rang out on the bridge as over 2 dozen enemy fighters approached the battlegroup.
"Point-defense guns receiving targeting data and standing by," Scharf noted.
Prophecy could feel the little turrets swiveling to track the incoming targets. By this point she'd been refitted with 12 Helix guns and 6 Rampart turrets. They were the older M800 model, but experience had shown that the 20mm Helix guns weren't quite strong enough to deal with shielded Covenant fighters. That meant adding 50mm Rampart coilguns, even if older variants were the only ones available.
Ahead of her, the battlegroup's frigates began launching long-range Streak anti-fighter missiles at the suicidal Covenant attackers. Prophecy watched exhaust trails burst all along the hulls of the Stalwart-class frigates Aomori, Kawakaze, and John Basilone.
As the enemy Seraphs wavered under the barrage of missiles, back on the bridge the tactical display narrowed its view onto the Sejong's battlegroup and the trio of Covenant ships closing in on it. The battlegroup was all on its own now, barring any serious mishaps.
"Two enemy ships are launching plasma torpedoes," Voskanyan warned.
In space, the lateral lines on the ORS and the RPV destroyer shimmered eager purple and blood-red. Several trails of energy escaped from two ships, including over a dozen from the battleship. A total of 22 energy signatures-one for every ship in the battlegroup-appeared on the tactical display.
"Time to impact is 45 seconds, brace yourselves, friends," Captain Stywartsynn's voice cut through the chatter on the bridge with a note of remorse. Prophecy could tell she had known that not everyone who heard the warning would survive this volley.
"T-minus one minute until we're within firing range," Voskanyan said.
Less than a half-dozen Seraphs were approaching the battlegroup by then. Autocannon fire from the Bang and her sisters filled the space ahead of Prophecy. Blue lights flickered among the stars and died out just as quickly.
"15 seconds until those torpedoes hit," Voskanyan said, looking nervously at Nav Officer Lucie Paulston.
Captain Trinh remained unmoved by the lethal ordinance coming their way.
"Prepare to fire emergency Thrusters."
The blue flashes of dying Covenant Seraphs were replaced by 22 violet comets twisting through the void in dizzying patterns.
Distress signals flashed on the holodisplay as the first torpedo impacts were reported on the left side of the fleet. Instantly, the Charon-class frigates Illinois and Keokuk and the Stalwart-class Mission bay vanished from one of the secondary displays that projected the engagement as a whole.
The torpedoes began to split up as they neared their targets. Two honed in on Prophecy, causing the tactical display to emit a loud alarm.
More reports, this time from Cole's own group-the heavy frigates Rongchang and Frank C Lynch destroyed, their sister Chung-Hoon immobilized, the destroyer Arbir split in half, the cruiser Kilkis stripped of its main cannon but remaining stubbornly in formation.
Point-defense fire began firing once again. The Navy had learned that there were two distinct variants of Covenant "plasma torpedoes". The first type featured pure plasma molded into lethal killing instruments through the usage of intricate magnetic field manipulation. The second type consisted of solid projectiles and some form of "ignition" system that bound plasma to these projectiles before they were fired. The latter could be shot down, albeit at great difficulty.
The frigates and destroyers ahead of Prophecy sidestepped wildly out of the way of incoming plasma, some not fast enough. The John Basilone was hit by a violet torpedo that burned through her cargo bay and out her dorsal armor just behind the bridge like cardboard. The light destroyer Pieman was also hit by two torpedoes in rapid succession, its pointed prow and bridge simply ceasing to exist in a splatter of superheated metal. Her sister Oconee suffered the same fate. Prophecy's sister Starman fell behind the formation as a torpedo struck near her aft section and disabled her starboard secondary engines.
But the worst fate was reserved for the Cruiser Emden. Targeted by 5 of the crimson plasma torpedoes fired by the RPV, the underpowered Halcyon was only able to shoot down one of them. 3 more cut across her flanks or melted her MAC gun, peeling away layers of titanium-A with ease. The last one melted through her ventral armor near the engines before disappearing inside her. A moment later it went off and ripped her fusion engines free of the rest of her hull. The scene was replicated on several displays on Prophecy's bridge. Lieutenant Voskanyan looked over the devastation and simply uttered "Emden is gone!"
Unprompted, Lieutenant Paulston activated the starboard emergency thrusters, causing everyone on the bridge to shout in alarm. The signals for both incoming torpedoes grew extremely close to her own, too close in one's case. Prophecy's old self shuddered, and she felt part of her left forearm begin to throb.
"Hull breach on Deck E, near sections 5 and 6. Portside armor was burnt away." Commander Murro intoned.
"Seal off those decks and prepare to fire." Captain Trinh ordered. Sure enough, Captain Stywartsynn calmly ordered the battlegroup to blast away.
The remaining 18 UNSC ships opened fire in unison, trajectory estimates for their rounds tagged on the tactical display.
The trio of enemy ships were already shifting formation. At the last second, the ORS actually swung in front of its escorts to absorb the MAC volley. Several rounds struck along its hull, a few missed, and one managed to hit the RPV destroyer's shields as it poked its prow just above the larger ship.
"No dice." Lieutenant Scharf hissed.
Captain Trinh spoke without missing a beat. "Divert power from the engines to recharge the coils."
Already the ORS had turned right towards the battlegroup, and Sejong specifically, while its escorts took up positions on the portside flank.
Prophecy and the rest of the cruisers began to slow down, both from purposeful deceleration and a sudden removal of energy from their fusion drives brought on by a shared effort to hasten their firing. Inertia carried the ships forwards while their faster-firing escorts concentrated on whittling down the shields of their covenant counterparts.
The 5 cruisers fired off another volley, all of them scoring hits on the enemy battleship's shields. Purple light blazed along its lateral lines in response.
6 Ruby lights spread out from the RPV first and twirled towards the escorts. Two of them split the destroyer Erinyes into 3 pieces, while the frigate Hayasame was gutted by and her sister Aomori narrowly avoided the same fate.
By now the cruisers had recharged their MAC guns at a hasty pace and fired again. 5 silver flares burst on the enemy battleship's bow, and this time the shields gave wave even as more plasma torpedoes arose around it.
"Excellent," Captain Trinh said, "Now let's fire some longbows right down his throat…"
Prophecy could see the space ahead of her at the same time she stood amidst the memory on her bridge, and she saw a massive violet light that dwarfed any plasma torpedo begin to coalesce on the bow of the ORS just as the energy readings registered around her.
Before her crew could respond, the battleship fired. The Sejong was already trying to swerve out of the way, but her sister only succeeded in absorbing a plasma torpedo near her stern. Now drifting with her primary engines and starboard secondaries offline, the cruiser was unable to avoid the covenant capital ship's plasma beam.
As Prophecy stood in awe of the destruction spreading across her sister's hull, she was suddenly knocked against the holotable, pain spreading on her left leg below her knee.
"Plasma torpedoes skimmed our portside armor and knocked out the secondaries," Voskanyan said. "Archer pods D3 through 5 are offline," he added.
"Starman says they lost their hangars," Nestor said, relaying the other cruiser's damage report. "MAC is still running smooth."
Captain Trinh looked at the primary tactical display and scowled. "What about Captain Stywartsynn?"
Murro shook his head. "Sejong is gone," he explained. Prophecy herself could see the gutted remains of her sister drift through space. The sight left her sliding down to her knees. Losing a sister always stung, but to lose one of her immediate sisters, ones she knew from the same shipyard, hurt even more. With Sejong gone, all she had left was her older sister CA-834: UNSC Io.
"Sir, the enemy ships are changing course radically!" Voskanyan yelled. As the man said, the holodisplay showed the ORS swinging hard to starboard and up, seemingly satisfied with its work. Rather than follow along, though, the destroyer and corvette instead presented their broadsides towards the remaining UNSC ships and kept advancing.
"The bastard wants to ignore us so he can swing up and hit Everest from below," Captain Trinh declared.
Everest and her battlegroup were fully fixated on the enemy carrier and its accompanying ORS, a battle that was proving gruesome. Already the battlecruiser Stussel had been destroyed along with heavy destroyer Kiso and 3 more heavy frigates. If that ORS were allowed to extricate itself from what remained of Sejong's battlegroup, it could easily tip the scales and destroy Everest.
Captain Trinh looked over the bridge with a mixture of pensiveness and trepidation. He ordered Nestor to flag the other two cruisers.
"Whose in command now?" He asked.
Nestor grew uncomfortable before he replied. "They're saying you are. Captain Bohmert on Starman says we've seen twice as many battles as him."
"He's not wrong," the Captain said, not pausing to consider the responsibility on his shoulders before he started giving orders.
"We need to knock out that destroyer fast. Contact the carriers for air support."
Nestor relayed a message that was already being sent to the ship. "Sir, Captain Stywartsynn already requested help from the Archon Of Winter. They have two Longsword squadrons from Thunder Wing on their way here and they're joining the Manila Bay to give us fire support."
"Good. Tell the escorts that they need to focus on that Covenant destroyer, crack its shields so Thunder Wing can finish it off."
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"On it," Nestor replied.
"Now," Trinh started, weighing his next words carefully. Prophecy could feel the unease stirring within him. Whatever order he gave would inevitably put hundreds of sailors on course for their deaths, including those under his direct command.
But the indecision passed immediately. "Let's get his attention. Tell the other cruisers to sync up with us and engage that battleship."
The line between dream and reality started to blur. Prophecy staggered to her feet and glared up at the Covenant ship that had destroyed her sister. Her anger rose in time with the charging of her MAC capacitors.
3 twin MAC volleys split the vacuum, joined by a smaller gleam from the Toulouse. Shields flashed across the length of the enemy ship.
"FIGHT ME!"
The ORS continued up towards Everest's group for two agonizingly slow seconds-then swung hard to port back towards the UNSC ships on the right flank. Right towards Prophecy.
While the ORS answered the challenge, the RPV and SDV didn't sit by. Red lights flashed along the flanks of the covenant destroyer and another pair of plasma rocketed out from its hull.
"The destroyer's firing at us!" Voskanyan said.
"What's the battleship waiting for? It's not shooting yet." Paulston asked.
"I think we made him angry." Scharf replied.
MAC rounds disintegrated brightly against the RPV's shields. The destroyer lashed out with two energy beams at once, bisecting the Furse as it led the charge and immobilizing her sister Dyess. Another beam skewered the destroyer Croajingolong.
Three nuclear ordinance warnings flashed on the tactical display as the destroyer Yeo fired its entire payload of Shiva missiles at the Covenant heavy corvette that was also charging into the fray.
All the while, a half-dozen plasma torpedoes continued to approach Prophecy, accompanied by an emergency countdown on the holodisplay. 25 seconds…20 seconds…
The 3 Marathons fired again, but this time the Toulouse didn't join in.
15 seconds…
Toulouse rocketed into Prophecy's view on her right.
10 seconds…
Both plasma torpedoes swerved towards the close target. One struck on the starboard flank of the Halcyon, the other hit her dorsal armor and peeled a long stretch of it away. But unlike her sister Emden, Toulouse had been constructed with a reinforced superstructure made of countless redundant hull bracings. The ship rolled to port and exposed the massive gash in her right side, maimed but operational.
Meanwhile, the Covenant destroyer lost its shields to a combined volley of the remaining escorts. In reply, it sliced the frigate Kawakaze in two with an energy beam. Unfortunately for the RPV, Longswords from Thunder Wing were already waiting for the opportunity to strike.
The fighters flung almost 100 anti-ship missiles, screened by several hundred archers from the escorts. Pulse flickered in the vacuum and shot down many, but the sheer volume of missiles ultimately won out.
Captain Trinh watched the ensuing destruction from a collage of external feeds relayed by other ships and Longswords, then gave his order.
"Good work, now sync your targeting solutions with us. We'll do this like Admiral Cole at Harvest: fire the cannons all at once and follow up with everything else. Scharf, arm our fusion rockets to fire at a 1 kilometer star-pattern spread and have the other cruisers do the same. See if Toulouse can still fire her Shivas too."
"That battleship is charging everything it's got." Voskanyan sighed.
Two violet orbs began accumulating at either side of the bulbous midsection of the ORS, the same shade as the beam cannon on its prow. A lighter shade of purple burned on its lateral lines.
Prophecy and her sisters were now moving almost sluggishly as their reactors shunted all the power they could away from their engines and towards their MAC capacitors.
"Is everyone in position?" Trinh asked, not mentioning the dozen plasma torpedoes flailing about in space towards the fleet. This was nothing new. No matter how many ships couldn't evade in time, they had to destroy that enemy capital ship.
"Yes sir, the carriers are synced up too" Voskanyan answered without hesitation.
"Do it."
The UNSC ships and the ORS cruiser fired within seconds of each other.
Two energy beams cut across the space on either side of Prophecy. One struck Marathon's ventral armor and went out through the top as she was trying to pull up, the other hit Starman in conjunction with 2 plasma torpedoes, carving the cruiser into pieces. Yeo, the last surviving Halberd in the battlegroup, was vaporized by three plasma torpedoes. Plasma bolts also scorched Antioquia and the frigates Hyman, Anyang, and Paraiba.
Prophecy herself fell to the floor when 2 plasma torpedoes struck her portside armor. Pain exploded all across her left side with every deck that was incinerated by the ravenous plasma. Hangar bays melted in on themselves, Archer missiles burst in their silos, and point-defense ammo stockpiles cooked off.
But just as quickly as the plasma torpedoes burned away her armor and tore through her innards, they dissipated into painful but much less lethals bursts of energy.
The 3 pairs of heavy MAC slugs fired by the Marathons, combined with shots from the Archon of Winter, Manila Bay, Antioquia, Yeo, Bang, Aomori, Paraíba, Anyang, and Hyman were enough to drop the Covenant ship's shields, though they didn't truly hit it. That was left for a single unguided fusion rocket from Marathon out of a spread of 15, the fast-moving rocket hitting the ORS on the bow. 400 meters of the ship disintegrated in a moment. Shivas from Toulouse and the archer missiles fired by the whole group finished off the crippled ship seconds later.
Prophecy fell onto her back at the sight, ignoring the very real scent of burned flesh and fabric that filled her nostrils, a reflection of the extensive damage that had befallen her that day. The battle wasn't quite over, but the right flank at least could rest for a moment.
She felt her vision drift unbidden outside her bridge and out to the vacuum. All around her, ships drifted through space, whether due to destroyed engines or sudden exhaustion gripping the crew.
After a few seconds, though, the ragged battlegroup began to change. Suddenly, she wasn't looking at damaged ships, she was looking at other human forms just like her. Antioquia, tending to her mangled arm. Anyang, floating limply through space with only a distress beacon to indicate that she was still alive. Aomori, looking back at what remained of Kawakaze and Basilone.
And lying to Prophecy's left with a hole in her chest was her eldest sister Marathon.
She lay on the bridge in exhaustion, untouched by a single stop from her crew despite intruding upon the memory. The line between past and present blurred once again. Questions filled her mind-was this what it would take to defeat the Covenant? How many of her sisters would have to die at that rate?
Would she make it out of the system?
The damage she'd taken was extensive. One of the plasma torpedoes had nearly burned all the way through her hull and out the other end. The other had peeled away so much of the armor on her port side. Her MAC was severed, her engines wouldn't respond, and she was venting atmosphere everywhere. She didn't know if she had enough people left to stabilize her.
"Get up."
The new voice was uncompromising, despite holding a soft veneer to it.
A new presence had appeared over Prophecy in the time she'd spent worrying about her fate. It was so out of place that she remembered she was simply dreaming.
"Get up, that's an order."
Prophecy opened her eyes to see a gloved hand extended towards her, the woman who'd offered her help still shrouded in a blur. She took the outsider's hand and was pulled gently to her feet, the strange woman wrapping a steadying hand around her waist and holding her close against her soft, motherly body. Instantly, much of the pain in her left side began to dissipate.
The other woman was barely half a head taller than Prophecy but much stockier, easily supporting her unsteady form. Two piercing silver eyes like the snowy peak of a mountain on a cloudless day bored intensely into her own with a cold stare, and her matching hair fell onto her ornate Navy uniform in a long braid.
Slowly, Prophecy realized that this woman was familiar to her. More than familiar, actually.
"Everest…?" she rasped.
The scene around Prophecy shifted to reveal the space around her. CBC-9, UNSC Everest, hung over her old self, distributing dropships full of damage control crews to the surviving half of the fleet's right flank. The Super-Heavy Cruiser looked disheveled herself, covered in scars from where plasma bolts had scorched her bulk.
Prophecy felt her legs weaken from the revelation. Everest's harsh gaze softened for a moment.
"You don't get to give up after saving my life, understand? I won't allow it." She looked down at Prophecy with an almost desperate expression. "Don't die on me…please."
"Everest," Prophecy started before she knew what she was thinking. "I'm not going to die here."
Was it a memory? She wasn't sure. Either way, Everest's human form responded by pulling Prophecy into a gentle hug.
"Thank you," she whispered before getting choked up. "Thank you."
Prophecy could feel her overloaded sensors begin to receive data from the flagship, saw the grayed-out IFF tags for 30 UNSC ships and the damage warnings for 30 more, and understood.
—
"Everest?"
Prophecy's eyes shot open and she tried to sit up. Her body shuddered in protest, forcing her down. Wordless admonishment filled her mind from her crew, but she paid them no mind.
"She was real! Didn't you see her?"
Several details became apparent to her while she tried to rise again. She was sitting in a hospital bed, various monitors coming to life with alarms. Several bandages were wrapped tightly around her breasts, waist, and hips, a few more were on her face, and her right leg was in a cast.
The memories came rushing back: going back into space, the rotten enemy ships, the shark-toothed woman with the MAC guns on her arms. None of them were intense enough to overcome her dream.
"I saw her, I saw all of them, I saw-"
A familiar shape leaned into view from her right.
"I saw…you."
Aomori looked down at Prophecy in obvious distress. She wore a gray Navy work uniform with blue highlights and her right arm lay in a sling. Without a helmet, her bright blue hair and blunt bangs were now to come down almost to her collar bone in a frazzled mess that used to be straight.
"Senpai, please calm down, you'll hurt yourself."
Before Prophecy could reply, Matei Caragiu also leaned over on her left, looking similarly concerned. With his new service uniform and clean shave, he almost looked like a different person from the disheveled marine she had seen on Algolis.
"Relax. You're back on Capella. Whatever you saw up there is long gone."
Prophecy could already tell that she was safe by the fact that she was lying in a bed, so the news didn't truly relieve her. More importantly, she still had to tell anyone who could listen about her dream. Both Aomori and her former wayward marine had been in the system, although the latter was down on Jaxartes rather than in space. They seemed like the perfect pair to start with.
"It's not about what I saw here-" Prophecy winced when her chest started aching. She could tell that the hole there was only covered by her bandages.
Brushing off the concerned looks of her audience, she tried to continue. "In my dream, I was reliving a battle from the war. You've seen it too, right Aomori?"
Matei smiled weakly. "She's been sitting at your side for 3 days straight waiting for you to wake up. No breaks."
Prophecy gasped. "Three whole days? I was out for that long?"
"You were a mess when the Dubose pulled you in. Couldn't find a heartbeat, couldn't tell if you were breathing, and no veins to do IV. If it weren't for her-" he pointed towards Aomori, "-the medics would've been clueless. Can't exactly perform surgery on titanium. In case you're feeling like something's missing, well, the Navy's got your gear locked up nice and tight while they figure out how to patch it up. Maybe patch you up, too. Apparently you're making some progress, but a lot of it is only around where you got hit. That hole's not closing itself up."
Prophecy realized that she couldn't feel her rigging lying at the ready like it usually was. Something did tug at the edge of her mind, at least. She wondered if she could follow that sensation to where it was stored. That would have to come later, though. First, another thought occurred to her.
"What happened to Admiral Lončarić?" There were any number of ways the Admiral could've paid the ultimate price for joining in the battle and ejecting into space, from drifting too close to the wake of a ship to a stray piece of sharp debris hitting his visor. Still, Aomori didn't seem overtly saddened by the mention of him.
"He's back to doing his real job for once," Matei laughed. "Fighting the battle of the paperwork. Apparently we've already got reinforcements heading our way from Earth too. He's even secured a transfer for that Rear Admiral so we can head there on her ship."
The idea that help was already on the way fascinated her. She wondered what technology the UNSC had that could send messages across dozens of light years in less than 3 days before remembering her main concern.
"Aomori, Matei, you need to listen to me. I wasn't just dreaming, I was there. I was watching us fight near XI Boötis A. Remember, Jaxartes? We lost 30 ships fighting the Covenant…"
Matei leaned forward and turned grim. "Prophecy, are you sure you want to talk about this-?"
"Just listen." She grew more urgent with each word. "After the battle ended, I could see everyone who was still standing, do you understand? Everyone. They were all like me. Like her!" She pointed towards Aomori, who watched her in disbelief.
"Aomori, you were there too, I saw you, I saw your sister Bang. My big sister Marathon was there, and Antioquia, and Everest!"
"Everest? You mean Cole's flagship?" Matei asked.
"Yes! Don't you understand? There are more ships like me out there. More like us!" She corrected, grabbing Aomori's left hand before she could react.
"You have to tell someone so we can help them. There could be more ships like those things out there and we need to be ready."
Matei grabbed a glass from a nearby table and took a sip while he digested this warning.
"How are we supposed to 'help' anyhow?"
"Think about how I found you, please. You were part of my crew and in danger and I just…had to be there. It's something, isn't it?"
"Prophecy, you're talking about a battle that happened 50 years ago. Then you've got 24 more years of war for anyone who was there to live through, and another 25 years of other nonsense flaring up. There's not a lot of people from those days still kicking. And me, well, I'm a pretty special case, y'know, given I'm just the only one left myself-"
He trailed off, nervously taking another sip.
"The only one from my marines left on Spirit of Fire?"
"Yeeeeaah…"
Prophecy felt like she should've asked what had happened after Cole's fleet finally arrived at Harvest in 2531, and where Spirit of Fire had run off too after their final fateful encounter. The problem was that she felt too drained after finally explaining her harrowing dream to the two.
Instead it was Aomori who spoke up first. "Sir, what happened to Sprit after she was recovered?"
"What do you know about Spirit of Fire, anyway?"
"I was sent to the Actor system with part of Admiral Cole's fleet to check in on Arcadia. We were searching for Spirit's log buoys. If that Kuso Sencho Hood hadn't provoked the Covenant we might've been able to look for them in peace…"
"Hood?" Matei looked almost amused at the mention of the name, but didn't explain why.
"Alright, here's what happened. I don't have any up-to-date information, obviously, but from what I heard the Navy wants to turn Spirit of Fire into some kind of Orbital museum."
"A museum ship…" Prophecy whispered. She'd heard about the concept from a few members of her crew. Many old Naval ships had once been preserved on Earth, only to be dismantled as maintenance became too expensive over the decades.
"They're not going to tell the public every little thing, I mean." He looked back at her remorsefully. "I'll leave that for later."
Prophecy nodded solemnly.
"I'd like to visit her when we reach Earth." She said.
"Me too."
—
The twin moons of Algolis shone brightly through the crimson smoke that choked the skies, filling the air with the smell of excess plasma burning in the atmosphere. Other scents were strong too: the tang of roasted nanolaminate, the heavy odor of ash from thousands of incinerated beings, and the pungent scent of those who were not so fully obliterated.
Targlian, the new Chieftain of the Brothers or Unending Ire, inhaled the all-encompassing aroma with great enthusiasm.
"Smells like Chi Rho," the old warrior declared, having removed his Stalker helmet to better taste the scent.
Ilmatus marched wordlessly at his side. The comms officer was the only member of Arthoc's retinue to survive the mess at the pass, and had fallen in behind Targalian's push for command without a second thought. Most of those warriors who fancied themselves the next in line had also died, and the rest gave up without a fight.
The old Jiralhanae could sense his subordinate's confusion.
"Chi Rho, a human colony turned into a fortress world," he explained. "Many of our ships fell to the surface while they came in low to burn the humans out of their holes. Why, I recall one battle where we launched 5 frontal attacks to distract and exhaust them while a Silent Shadow team was sent in to kill their commander."
"Did it work?"
"I asked the same question by the 8th attack," Targalian laughed. Out of the many battles Targalian had fought in during the war, Chi Rho remained unparalleled in its ferocity until the Jiralhanae had set foot on Earth. Not even the human bulwark world called Reach had held out as long.
Now, just like Chi Rho, the surface of Algolis had vanished beneath the shattered hulls of Covenant ships. Zanars were shattered into unrecognizable piles of wreckage, Kets rested unevenly upon fallen mountains, and the wings of a Sinaris jutted into the air like obelisks. This time it was Merg Vol's fleet that decorated the planet, though a few Banished vessels had fallen here or there. More, he knew, had fallen further out of sight. But still not as much as their fanatical enemy. The battle had proven more chaotic than any could've imagined, but it was finally over. Algolis was now controlled by the Banished.
"Chieftain, we're getting a transmission on all channels bearing Escharum's encryption."
The comms officer patched it through without needing to be told, knowing that when the War Chief spoke, all warriors had to listen.
"Brothers, we have at last proven our might against another challenger. Merg Vol and his followers were many in number, but they fought for a legacy of lies. We fight for a legacy of our own. The Legacy of the Banished.
Now we reclaim that legacy on the world where Atriox and his brothers were sent to die by the San'Shyuum. Already, Atriox has sent his congratulations. A new fleet is on its way to rejoin us, one ship for each that was lost fighting Merg Vol, one soldier for every brother who died on this world…and many more.
Rest well, Brothers. Soon we shall take aim at the true owners of this part of space. The UNSC will learn to fear the name Atriox, and the Banished."
A/N: And with that the story is done! But wait, there's more! I will be taking a break for a good period of time and then get to work on part 2. Until then, have fun.