2030: Advancement in artificial intelligence propels Humanity into the singularity age, with technologies like fusion energy being cracked virtually overnight with the help of specialized research AIs. Many other technologies were figured out, too, from directed energy weapons to powered exoskeletons, through the use of supercapacitors, high density energy storage created as a direct result of layering graphene. One single magazine could store megawatt hours' worth of energy, allowing for laser-based weapons that could fire thousands of rounds before a reload. A great deal of these technologies would not be manufactured until centuries later, as the tooling required to efficiently manufacture them was not yet there.
2050: Thanks to genetic engineering, the average lifespan of a human was increased to an upwards of tenfold, due to the ability of gene therapy to repair any such genetic damage that occurs with aging. Moreover, baseline human intelligence, physical strength, speed, and reaction time were all greatly increased over the average human, although these improvements remain relatively incremental.
2070: With the help of a specialized research AI, Physicist Albert Cole had just discovered a new dimension, slipspace, through a set of equations. Engineers soon scrambled to create working slip space drives, with humanities nearest system, Bernard's Star, being the first test location for a corporation known as American Space Dynamics, an aerospace company specializing in off-world colonization.
2100: American Space Dynamics' Hermes II probe had successfully broken the lightspeed barrier when it arrived to Bernard Star in slipspace in a matter of mere hours. Images have shown an Earth-like planet within the habitable zone of the star system, three gas giants for mining hydrogen. Due to overpopulation, the United Earth Authority contracted American Space Dynamics to construct large colony ships. While the material needs of Earth's population were largely met in the vast asteroid fields of the solar system, there was virtually no food. Earth was being gradually covered in cityscapes with skyscrapers sprawling ten kilometers into the sky.
2120: Planets colonized by the United Solar Authority fell into six categories: urban worlds, agri worlds, factory worlds, refinery worlds, research worlds, and lastly, pleasure worlds/ privately owned worlds. Research worlds were responsible for the development and testing of some of Humanity's most advanced technology. Urban worlds mainly focused on being real estate and office space for major corporations, with the intent that the population swells to cover the whole planet in cityscapes like Earth. Agri worlds were used for the production of Humanities food, where crops, genetically engineered to grow based on the planet's climate, would feed billions. Refinery worlds manufactured antimatter from collected hydrogen in space to be used to power a starship's anti-matter torch propulsion systems, and the hydrogen-anti-hydrogen reactors that power the settlements of planets.
2150: The Mars Armory E-11 laser rifle has just been introduced into the military, featuring an ultra-durable dura-steel alloy housing, a nano-crystal lense that has the capability of focusing 100 kilowatts of light energy over two kilometers or more lethally. A single shot was capable of tearing off a limb, as the flash vaporization of bodily fluids can turn it into plasma. The E-11 replaced the gauss rifle on account of one factor: logistics. A rechargeable one-kilogram power pack slid into its mag-well can allow up to six hundred rounds, with power packs being recharged while the weapon was holstered on the armor, by the suit's micro hydrogen-anti-hydrogen reactor core.
2300: One of the newest suits of powered armor was developed for both the army and the navy branches of the United Systems Authority's military. Known as the Daedalus suit, this armor was an engineering marvel of technology. By manipulating photons, it could shield itself from a low-powered anti-matter air-strike. A hydrogen-anti-hydrogen reactor allowing for practically years straight of combat time, and the ability for the armor to warp light around itself, granting the user a sort of active camouflage. Then there were the other abilities. A soldier in that armor could run at the speeds of an interstate car by directing energy into the leg servos. In addition, a soldier could lift armored vehicles over their heads as if they were toys by directing reactor power into the shoulder servos. Then there was the ability of the suit to allow for sustained flight, allowing a soldier to immediately gain the high ground over their opponent and pick them off from outside visual range. Finally, an AI could be stored inside of it, guiding the soldier and giving him intel on his enemies whereabouts through cyberwarfare. All in all, the Daedalus system was a nightmarishly powerful force-multiplier for any rebel to face.
2400: By shooting electrons at relativistic speeds, United Solar Authority have developed the ultimate anti-material rifle, one they say that no material could block. Efforts have been made to scale it up for space warfare, replacing the anti-matter projector in a number of experimental ships for its unique ability to completely and utterly ignore shielding as well as armor. These relativistic electron beams do not actually damage the structure of a target; instead, it destroyed the very amino acids that made up its crew. Any target struck with an electron beam would just fall to the ground, puking, as their very cells were pierced by lethal beta particle-based radiation. Developed in response to Insurrectionists getting their hands on obsolete Daedalus powered armor models, this was one of the deadliest weapons developed in human history, with some debating its use as a war crime.
2512: A civilian trade vessel lost contact on the frontiers of United Solar Authority Space called the USC Cornucopia, inside the system of one of the Agri-worlds, Gaia.
Jackal pirates scoured what was left of the strange cargo freighter, its technology seemingly primitive yet more advanced than the covenant in many other ways. The creatures inside of the vessel proved to be a struggle, firing lethal green killing light beams from their pistols, like Iruru Armory's Type 25 but with an even greater effective range. Surprisingly as lethal as the plasma pistol, yet a bit boxier, with a focusing lense in place of what looked like a barrel.
Gax witnessed what those weapons have done first hand as his fellow pirates were taking them into their vessel as baubles to sell for a few Gekz a piece. His friend, Jin, laid dead on the hexagonally patterned steel floors, a smoking, bleeding hole blown into his chest roughly the size of a Jiralhanae's fist. Bits of charred bone were visible in the purple blood pool, what was left of Jin's spinal column and ribcage.
Another Kig Yar by the name Yiq Rath was even less lucky. He was left screeching as one of his legs had exploded when the beam of lethal light had struck. Shrapnel created from the rapid heating of bodily fluids mangled his other leg. Yiq Rath was left on the steel deck of the ship, slumped against a bulkhead, screaming in agony as his fellow kig-yar picked the bodies of these strange creatures while he laid there, completely ignored.
These creatures were large, too, standing at six and a half to seven feet seven inches tall, with the largest members of the species, the males having the muscle mass of a Sangheili warrior, at around one hundred and fifty kilograms. They had sharp thin noses, pale white to tanned skin, and fur and irises of varying colors. They would probably be equaled to Sangheili soldier if they were wearing Combat Harnesses, or whatever this species had that passed as a combat harness.
One of the doors slid open and one of those strange creatures came out, clad in a sort of armor. He carried a larger variant of one of those handguns, more like a rifle, large enough to be effectively wielded by a Sangheili or even a Jiralhanae.
One of Gax's fellow pirates was blown in half when a blindingly bright green beam of light struck him in the abdomen. He fell to the deck in two separate, blood-soaked ragged pieces, his legs and upper torso. The strong stench of burning meat emanated from the Kig Yar Pirate's smoldering body.
Enraged, Gax lit up the strange alien with his plasma pistol, between the gaps inside of its leg armor. He held the trigger down as hard as he could, charging a ball of bright green plasma growing as his weapon charged. Then released his finger.
The alien fell to the deck plate with a loud thud against a bulkhead, its legs reduced to charred ragged stumps. Its armor was melted all the way up to the torso, flesh charred cooked with the smell of thorn beast flesh, a delicacy Gax had tried all the way back in High Charity. This creature was cooked down to the bone all across its body. Despite these horrific injuries, the creature still raised his weapon to Gax and took aim.
Likewise, Gax raised his shield and a blinding flash shown through it, causing Gax to instinctually close his eyes in pain. When he opened them, his shield gauntlet had turned red, almost depleted down to nothing in a single shot. Gax felt a burning pain in his legs, followed by an acrid smell of burned clothing fibers.
The heat produced from the beam's impact on his shield was still enough to ignite his clothing, which led to Gax deactivating his shield gauntlet and rolling on the ground until the fire was out.
Once the fire was out, he took some time to look over the damage. Gax's legs were burned so badly that his skinned had turned from an inflamed red to a char in some areas. Much of the burned areas of his flesh were numb, still hot enough to burn his taloned fingers. It immediately blistered his scaled skin. He chirped in pain, the avian chirp of a Kig Yar.
Undeterred by the alarms blaring in their ears and the losses sustained in battle, the Kig Yar moved on with the prospect of the dead Kig Yar being a greater share for themselves, individually. Gax estimated that the treasures found within this alien boat would set him up for life when he went back to High Charity. And the various ministries might be waiting to give him a reward for his troubles inside of the strange alien vessel, Kig Yar finally rising in ranks of the Covenant Totem Pole.
As they went down the hallway, more of those sangheili-sized entities attacked. High energy beams of killing light lanced across the silvery, iridescent metal hallway. One of them was cut down. His only protection was the nanolaminate harness that was around five millimeters thick. It instantly melted through it as if it were the paper used to make one of the scrolls in the very early years of the Covenant, back when the Writ of Union was signed.
The carbine was sliced in two pieces, glowing white hot at the edges. The hole in that pirate's chest was still spurting out purple blood, though it was emitting steam and smoke. Another beam lanced forth and cut the other Kig Yar pilot down in a gruesome display of blood, gore, burned flesh, and the smell of roasted meat.
This fighter was different, however. It had a field of blue shimmering energy, strangely conforming to the user's armor not unlike the combat harnesses worn by both Sangheili and Jiralhanae foot soldiers.
"Attack this foul creature," ordered Gax
Just as he was giving out the order, a bright green beam shot passed Gax, blinding him in one eye as his skin and sinew boiled away from his skull. He looked down next to him to find that his comerade was on the floor, his head gone. In its place was a charred, ragged stump that still somehow bled the purple blood of a Kig Yar, though it boiled, adhering the deck plate Gax stood on.
Enraged at the loss of one of his eyes and the burns he suffered on his face, he let this hulking creature have it, pressing the sensor-based trigger of his plasma pistol spasmodically, until it overheated, venting out steam and heat created from its N2 cooling mechanism.
When his gun could no longer fire, he grabbed an energy cutless, the red blade glowing a menacing light almost making the beast. Gax charged headlong into the beast, only for him to be lifted into the air with one of its appendages. Five metallic fingers closed in on Gax's throat, the creature staring him in the eye with an almost sick pleasure through its clear visor.
Desperatly, Gax hacked and gashed at the creature's arm, but the energy shielding stopped every strike perfectly, almost as if powered directly by the suit's power source. Annoyed, it grabbed Gax's sword arm, holding it in place, then with a jerking motion snapped his arm in a gruesome burst of purple.
Pain immediately shot into Gax's brain when his arm was broken almost explosively. His face was splashed with blood and pieces of flesh, sinew and skin. He turned his undamaged eye to see that his arm was hanging by a thread of skin and sinew. The creature had torn his arm off.
Gax let out an ear piercing shriek as the burning, clenching pain of his severed arm set in. Then once the beast had grabbed his rifle from a magnetic holding system on his back, he cut down his friends with an automatic burst of whatever that weapon shot out: photons, particles, whatever. Gax could hardly comprehend such weaponry and he would think the Prophets and the Huragok would be stumped for at least a few months.
All that alien did was laugh arrogantly in response to Gax's suffering. Then the creature arched downward, slamming Gax's head into the deck plating with enough force to make his head ache, his ears ring, and what remaining vision he had blurred. The last thing he saw was the armored, silvery metallic heel of the beast come slamming down against his head.
Arthur Mangione felt a twinge of delight crushing the skull of that bird-like creature as if it was an overripe watermelon. They ruined his chances at ascension in the organization he worked in. He would come home a disappointment to the Don, his father, and owner of the USC Cornucopia. They were delivering a shipment of frozen cheese grown from cows on planet Gaia all the way to Arcadia. The profits from this venture were estimated to be at around twenty-five million credits, split between father and son.
Arthur was not like other humans, he still had the enhanced baseline strength, but he had many cybernetic enhancements paid for with daddy's money. With over two hundred years of experience fighting in the criminal underworld, he made short work of those creatures where his henchman struggled. Hardlight shields were invulnerable to anything short of ultra-relativistic electrons, or a blast from a heavy, shoulder-fired laser rifle, but it would still take an additional shot from that anti-tank weapon to down a human soldier. Durasteel plating, a mixture of iron and depleted uranium crushed into a dense state, gave United Solar Authority soldiers the effective rolled homogenous armor of an ancient M1 Abrams tank. Suits were linked up with mechanized walkers in excess of two hundred tons when armored support was needed.
Due to rapid advances in AI, Human weaponry had not only advanced thousands of years in a short time, but the Human lifespans, intelligence levels, strength, speed, and agility were all increased massively. Cybernetic and genetic enhancement were common place amongst civilians, with many careers actually requiring enhancements for cognitive or physical abilities to even be employed. Humans alive in the twentieth century were still alive and kicking centuries thanks to DNA repair targeted to every cell in the body. Humans could live indefinitely if they could afford constant gene therapy every decade or so.
Arthur was stuck on the ship. The cargo crew repelled most of the boarders; however, their weapon systems were able to damage the ship's splipspace engine and anti-matter slower than light propulsion drives. Communication systems were fried, too. For all intense of purposes, the Cornucopia was stranded in deep space, inside of Gaia's system, on the edges. With the vastness of the solar system alone, never mind interstellar space, he was stuck there.
The radio crackled in his suit's helmet.
"It would seem, Arthur, that the aliens had buggered off, mate. The captain of that vessel, or whatever they referred to as Captain, had deemed the venture no-longer worth leads me to assume these creatures were pirates, hoping to grab whatever was on this ship as a sort of treasure. Sadly for them, our weapons were more than a match for theirs. Are you all right? I have seen their weaponry on Camera, plasma-based by the looks of it, caused horrible injuries to our cargo crews," said Captain McTafferty.
"The crew's are replaceable. They knew the risks and were paid for it. I will see to it that the credits we have paid for them go to their families. Anything else?" inquired Mangione cooly.
"Slipspace ruptures are easily detectable inside of a starsystem. Amatuer astronomers on planet Gaia should be able to pin-point are exact location and get us a ride out of here, though it will take hours for the light to reach them from this distance," reasoned McTafferty.
"When we are rescued, we shall inform the United Solar Authority Navy that there could be a hostile species right on our galactic doorstep. This is a frontier world, with not much in the way of orbital defense, as it is deemed of low economic value by the government. Should they be seeking conquest, or god forbid, genocide, they will be in for a rather rude awakening," replied Arthur confidently.
And Mangione was right. Any hostile species would be in for a very rude awakening indeed if they were intent on taking Gaia from the United Solar Authority's government. While it only produced dairy products for Earth, and only around nine-percent at that, it would still represent something negative if it were taken away: weakness.
The Cornucopia was no military vessel, and even then, took a few burst blasts from its particle lances to defeat its shields, and another to cripple its engines. Military vessels had far, far greater shielding and armor, with weapons capable of irradiating entire continents with a single blast. Arthur could only imagine what an organize military response would do to their navy.
Inside of the Council Chambers of High Charity, one of the only survivors of the raid on an alien ship while serving aboard the Ascendent Plunder was bringing his findings before the Prophets. His name was Jec. His claims, while extraordinary, were backed with extraordinary evidence, docking camera footage of the attack on the vessel of this currently unknown species, one that had the potential to fight toe-to-toe with the covenant itself. He recalled that their ship took several hits just to disable. Not kill. Disable.
The council chamber was constructed almost like any government building, with the lower level politicians sat on opposing sides where they voted on the proposed decision of the Prophets. Instead of stone, each seat, arranged in opposing positions through the walkway, was constructed out of a superstrong nanolaminate alloy, dark yet still iridescent. The floors were an ornate nanolaminate alloy floor plating, silver in color, sporting triagonal patterns.
The Hierarchs of Restraint, Tolerance, and Obligation were in that room. Jec proffered one of the weapons to the Hierarchs, square in design, with a trigger not ergonomically fit for any of the covenant races. It was made of an alloy that left the engineers in the ministries stumped at its construction. He walked along the walkway that resembled overlapping treads.
"According to the Ministry of Discovery, this weapon is a primitive directed energy weapon, designed to fire a beam of photons in the wavelengths of piercing gamma rays at a target. Used against my crew, this weapon was devastating. Smoking holes about the size of dinner plates blown into their chest. Fluids flash vaporized turning sections of their bodies, their very flesh, into bombs. My fellow privateers that escaped suffered internal blast trauma. In addition, they were given radiation doses twice the lethal dose of a Kig Yar, holy ones. They are slowly dying of the poison these weapons release," cried Jec.
"Interesting. It would seem a new species have discovered, and ultimately, made use of our lord's creations, though the technology is admittedly quite underdeveloped compared to our understanding of directed energy weaponry," assessed the Prophet of Restraint, his two long fingers stroking his hairs under his non-existent chin.
A/N In this story, the Covenant will be the protagonist force against a hostile species with advanced technology. Humanity is nowhere near the level of the covenant on a technological level. However, they are a century or two more advanced than the Post-War UNSC, I would estimate. Directed energy weapons are standardized, with their primitive version of hardlight they use as a form of energy shielding. Their energy weapons are more radiation/particle based as apposed to the Covenant's Plasma/particle/projectile based weaponry
Humanity, in this AU, are closer to their Ancient Human counterparts than the UNSC, physically and mentally. They are like the Human Augments in Star Trek, enhanced even further with cybernetics and gene therapy so that they do not age. This is a humanity that never went into a technological dark age and reached the technological singularity with the help of AIs. For the ground army, it would be space marine-level fodder supported by mechanized walkers in the range of hundreds of tons to a thousand tons. I am still working out what their aircraft will do, though it would just be a flying weapons platform with mounted relativistic electron-based particle cannons in addition to anti-matter shaped charge warheads.