Beginning of 'Act 2' here. I'll admit the meeting between the UNSC and the Covenant here is a bit contrived, but it's not implausible and it makes the plot work.
Thank you again to everyone who's read, followed, and reviewed.
Standard copyright disclaimer: I do not own Halo or any associated media, characters, or settings which are properties of 343 or Bungie. This is a work of fanfiction written purely for entertainment and not for monetary gain.
0600, 17 August 2550
Slipspace, Near Iota Horologii System
"Colter, how long would it have taken us without these new drives?" Captain Robert Sakai asked the AI in front of him.
"Ah, round about twenty days, more or less." The AI responded. Colter, the smart AI assigned to the UNSC Targhee, was dressed as an early 19th century mountain man, complete with a rifle and overgrown beard. An interesting choice for an AI cloned from the brain of a 26th century scientist, but fitting the Targhee's name.
"Remind me to pass my thanks onto the yard when we get back to Reach." Sakai mused as he sipped a cup of black tea and gazed at one of the viewscreens displaying the complete darkness outside. One of the changes done in the refit the Targhee and Pillar of Autumn was moving the bridge from its exposed location on the ventral part of the hull to near the interior of the ship. While this was better for the crew's survivability, Sakai couldn't help but think of the cameras and viewscreens as another point of failure (Captain Mikulin, the new commander of the Pillar of Autumn, had shared the same concerns with him).
"How goes the wakeup process? Everyone coming out of cryo alright?" Captain Sakai wanted everyone awake and ready before they dropped out of slipspace. There was no telling what they might run into when they dropped back into realspace; for all they knew it could be the entire Covenant fleet. (Though if it was, they wouldn't live long enough for it to matter who was unfrozen.)
"On schedule, first groups are awake and the rest will be up at least three hours before we drop out." Colter responded. "That includes the Spartans and that platoon of jackals."
Sakai smiled. "Thanks, Colter. Do what you need to to make sure the rest of the Targhee is good to go." The AI rendered a salute, and faded out. Sakai was pleased to hear that the thawing process was going well. Having the Spartans frozen outside of their armor was a slight risk; if they were needed immediately it would take a bit to get them back in their suits. Especially with the new complexities the "Mark V" added. As for the jackals, well, Sakai wasn't too torn up about cryo being unpleasant for them. But if he needed them to fight right away he'd rather have them at 100%.
He glanced at the clock. There were still almost five hours left until they dropped out of slipspace and arrived at the coordinates ONI provided. Time enough for him to get a decent breakfast and clear his mind before arrival. At the very least, there would be a flurry of activity after dropping back into realspace as the archaeological teams and ground forces deployed. The worst case scenario, well, that was obvious.
By 1045, Captain Sakai was back on the bridge. After breakfast, a short workout, and a shower, he was feeling much refreshed; any lingering unease from cryo was long gone. Setting back into the command chair, he typed in a few lines on his console, bring Colter's avatar back up. "What can I do for you, captain?"
"Call into the Autumn and confirm they're ready for transition." Sakai turned to Rear Admiral Titus, the ONI representative and nominal commander of this operation. Though he was smart enough to leave the ship-handling up to Sakai. "Sir, are your prowlers green?"
Titus scrolled through his datapad a few moments before responding. "Test for Echo, Heat Lightning, and Unimak all ready and holding close formation for transition as planned."
Sakai nodded. The three Sahara-class prowlers were among the stealthiest ships in the UNSC inventory, capable of avoiding detection by even the best Covenant sensors. With one caveat. Fissile material would emit a colossal flare of Cherenkov radiation on dropping out of slipspace, and each of the prowlers was carrying 48 Hornet mines, mounted on 8 dispensing racks. The Hornet was a powerful warhead, with 30 megatons of yield and a core encased in an exotic gold alloy to maximize X-ray production. But even one of them would cause make the prowler briefly visible to the Covenant.
Because of this, the prowlers were holding close formation with the Targhee and Pillar of Autumn, planning that the larger signatures of the Halcyon-class cruisers (and their own nuclear weapons) would mask the prowlers' signature well enough for them to go dark and disappear. After that, the plan was for them to set up a minefield around the Forerunner artifact if it turned out to be important. Alternatively, if Covenant warships were present, it would be up to Sakai to figure out how to use the warheads to keep his ships alive.
After Titus finished speaking, Colter reappeared. "Captain, my friend Yuri reports everything is ready to go on the Pillar of Autumn. All systems green and everyone is awake."
"I hope Captain Mikulin agrees." Sakai noted wryly. Yuri was the smart AI for the Pillar of Autumn, and despite there being about a hundred and fifty years between how he and Colter looked (Yuri was dressed as Soviet cosmonaut from the early days of spaceflight) the two AIs got on well. Sakai was happy the Targhee was assigned a normal looking AI with a humanoid avatar. The ones that looked like a collection of abstract symbols or strange geometric shapes gave him the creeps.
"Now hear this! Dropping out of slipspace on my mark!" Colter announced over the Targhee's public address system. "Five, four, three, two, one, now!" The Targhee shuddered, and a flash of light appeared on the viewscreens as the outside world returned.
The crew of the Targhee stared in awe at what loomed before them. After several seconds of silence, Captain Sakai radioed over to the Pillar of Autumn. "Ivan, are you seeing this too?"
"Yes, yes we are." Captain Mikulin responded. If both cruisers were seeing it, it must be real. "Colter, what the hell am I looking at?"
"I don't know, captain." The AI's avatar was static, a sign he was at the limit of his processing power. Material signature matches partially matches other Forerunner artifacts in my database, but I'm also picking up new signatures. And then, well, the size."
Sakai turned to Rear Admiral Titus. "Did you and ONI know about this?"
The ONI officer was about to respond when an alarm sounded and Colter cut in. "Five, no, seven Covenant contacts on the far side of the object!"
"Classification!"
"Five CCS battlecruisers, two small ships, cargo vessels. Designating CCS Charlie One through Seven." A series of tones sounded as the designations appeared on one of the viewscreens, highlighting the Covenant ships in position beyond the strange Forerunner structure.
"Any sign they see us?"
"No reaction yet but a blind man would have caught us coming out of slipspace. I reckon they'll be on us soon enough."
Sakai had to think quickly. Five CCS-class ships would easily outmatch the Targhee and Autumn, even with all their modifications. He'd have to find some way to avoid a fair fight. He turned to Colter. "Get Sierra-117 on the bridge, pronto. And the archaeologists; both the ONI team and that jackal."
Thel 'Vadamee was fuming. Another team of jiralhane had managed to get themselves incinerated as they bumbled about trying to uncover the secrets of the Sacred Ring. At least it was not any of his sangheili this time; too many of them had already fallen to the Ring's defense systems.
The discovery of one of the long-sought Sacred Rings should have been an auspicious moment. A day of celebration, a respite from the fight against the humans and the turmoil that seemed to bubble beneath the Covenant's surface. Instead it was only a source of pure frustration.
Even though they had revered the Sacred Rings for centuries, the Covenant new little of them. 'Vadamee was forced to send his teams into random Forerunner structures, searching for a control center for the ring or at the very least a cartographer of some sort. They had found nothing. At best, there were installations of unknown function that resisted investsigation by even the most best minds aboard the fleet. The teams that ran into the Ring's defences were less lucky. The Sacred Warriors of the Rings, 'Vadamee had heard of them being encountered in small numbers at other derelict Forerunner installations. But not in such large numbers as there were hear, nor had they acted with such coordination before.
It was obvious to 'Vadamee that something, or someone, was controlling the Warriors. So far all the Prophet of Temperance's attempts to communicate with it had been fruitless. It was fortunate that the defenders seemed content to protect individual structures or installations on the Ring and leave anyone alone who did not bother them. Doubtless the Ring had weapons on it that could wipe his fleet out with ease if they so chose.
Even so, more than a hundred of his sangheili had perished since they started investigating the Ring. (The Gods only knew how many unggoy and kig-yar had perished.) It did not help that the Prophet ordered him to send in units twice, or even three times, to places where their comrades had already been killed! The jiralhanae commander, Tartarus, had also lost many of the troops under his command to the Sacred Warriors of the Ring, though 'Vadamee had no idea of the actual number.
'Vadamee's brooding was cut short by a series of alarms. Turning, he saw the cause just as one of the junior officers called out.
"Fleetmaster, human ships! Two of them, on the far side of the Sacred Ring!"
"Show me." 'Vadamee walked over to the console, looking over the other sangheili's shoulder.
"Here they are fleetmaster. They dropped out of slipspace a few moments ago." 'Vadamee watched the clear signatures of two large human ships, and for a brief moment saw a massive radiation flare and fleeting sensor ghosts.
"Stay vigilant for more human ships. I suspect trickery." 'Vadamee turned to the Prophet of Temperance, who sat at the far end of the bridge. "At your command, Holy One, I will take my vessels to destroy the humans and prevent them from landing on the Sacred Ring."
To his surprise, the Prophet waved him off. "We must exercise caution. Discharge of weaponry near the Sacred Ring risks scarring its holy surface. This cannot be permitted!" The Prophet paused, contemplating his next orders. "Send your soldiers to board and capture the human ships. Find out what they know of the Sacred Ring, how they found it, and ensure that it is kept intact!"
'Vadamee kneeled, managing to hide the shock and frustration on his face. "By your orders, Holy One, it shall be done." Sending boarding craft against two (or more) intact human ships? They would be torn to pieces! "I will contact Tartarus; I will need his fighter escort to supplement our own."
"I will tell him to spare what he can, but his jiralhanae are needed on the surface of the ring. I am confident you will carry out my orders." The Prophet of Temperance said, already back to poring over religious texts. Hopefully he would not interfere further. 'Vadamee feared that this one order might already lead to a catastrophe.
1115, 17 August 2550
Near Unknown Forerunner Installation, Iota Horologii System
"I'll be honest; none of my people have every seen one of those before. You've got an order of magnitude more experience in Covenant space that my teams, as much as it pains me to admit. Can you tell me what this thing is?" Rear Admiral Titus asked the kig-yar standing across from him. Seeing one of them on the bridge, and dressed in a UNSC uniform, was still a bit hard for his brain to process.
"I would have killed to find something like this." Shaon Tol replied, staring at the image of the gigantic ring on the viewscreen rather than the ONI Admiral. "It must- it must be one of their Sacred Rings. I didn't believe they were actually real."
"Tell me everything you know about them. Now."
"Their religion says that there's seven of them, that will 'propel all worthy believers into the great divine' or something like that. What it actually does? I have no idea. If I had to guess it's some sort of Forerunner religious site but I'm throwing darts in the dark." Shaon Tol paused for a monent, thinking. "Important thing is it's going to be heavily defended. Even derelict Forerunner sites I've seen have automated defences. Dangerous but not impossible to deal with. A big one like this – gods only know."
"Noted. Forerunner artifacts have identified humans as 'reclaimers', based on the intel you gave us. Would the automated defences fire on us?" Titus asked.
"Maybe not? I never had a human to drag along with me. Maybe I should have." Shaon Tol laughed, getting annoyed looks from the humans on the bridge. "If there is one of those 'oracles' down there running things it might at least talk to you."
"I don't mean to interrupt this enlightening conversation, but them Covenant ships look like they parked themselves partway between us and their part of the ring and started launching fighters." Colter added, as he highlighted the contacts approaching them on the viewscreen. The five CCS-class battlecruisers were indeed stationary, but more than a hundred and fifty small contacts were rapidly crossing the void in the middle of the ring.
"Colter, Yuri, listen up." A few seconds later, the avatar of the Pillar of Autumn's AI blinked into existence, and Titus continued. "Designated a 100 kilometer exclusion zone around the ring structure. No MAC rounds or nuclear ordnance within that space. I don't want to risk pissing off whatever's running this thing. Captain Sakai, I'll leave it up to you to decide on tactics. But we need boots on the ground; we cannot risk the Covenant having sole access to this artifact." He turned back to Shaon Tol. "This is a 'sacred' ring, you said? So the Covenant won't deploy orbital grade weaponry on it?"
"Gods no!" Shaon Tol said, gesturing emphatically. "Any shipmaster who did that would be condemned as a heretic if his second didn't behead him first!"
Titus smiled. "Good. We can use that to our advantage." Captain Sakai nodded in the background.
"Sirs, I have bad news and worse news." Colter interrupted again, a very worried expression on his face.
"Give me the bad news first." The smile had quickly vanished from Admiral Titus's face.
"Multiple boarding craft in that incoming enemy formation. I see at least twenty Phantoms and about two dozen specialized boarding craft, Leeches and Ticks if my eyes don't deceive me."
"One-one-seven, prepare to defend the ship from boarders. I'm putting our elements of the 105th, Johnson's Marines, and the jackals under your team's command." Captain Sakai turned to the Spartan, who had been standing silently on the bridge for the entire conversation.
"Affirmative. Consider it done." The Spartan quickly turned and jogged off the bridge, carrying his assault rifle.
"Helm, swap positions with the Autumn and put us on the side of the formation near those intruders. We've got Red Team, Mikulin and the Autumn don't." Not that the Pillar of Autumn was undefended, with most of a battalion of ODSTs (the 105th) on board in addition to her own Marines, but the Targhee had three Spartan-IIs.
"Alright, Colter, what's the worse news?" Sakai was already formulating a plan in his head for how to deal with the Covenant, but he needed to hear this first.
"Something on that ring is in our systems. Blew right through my firewalls. I did what I could to stop it but it just walled me up." Sakai hadn't thought he could see an AI look distraught, but Colter was doing it now.
"Fuck." Titus was the first to speak. "Is it Covenant?" If the Covenant compromised their systems, navigational data...
"No sir! No way it could be one of them. It acted completely different, and there's no way they could ever pull off anything like this. Besides, I backtraced its signal to the ring down there. It came in, ignored anything I threw at it until it told me to stop resisting. Scanned the historical archives, of all things! Then left. That cur wasn't even polite enough to leave his name, though I did manage to get the name of that thing down there."
"Well, what is it?" Titus asked.
"Installation 04. Hell if I know what that means, aside from there being at least three more of these things." The AI replied.
Titus turned back to Shaon Tol, who was staring wide-eyed at Colter even after he went silent. "Does that sound like one of those 'oracles' to you?"
"Yes. But I've never seen one that powerful. Admiral, trust me that it would be a very bad idea to make that thing angry."
"Noted. Colter, make damn sure none of our rounds go through that exclusion zone." Titus sighed. "Well, if it isn't Covenant maybe it's not unsalvageable. Though it sounds like we couldn't stop it if we wanted to. See if you can find the origin of the transmissions, mark it as objective once we get troops groundside. In the meantime, we need to keep those Covies off us."
"On it, sir." Captain Sakai was ready. This something he could deal with, what he had trained for. He observed the incoming small craft, and the seven larger contacts on the far side of the object. "Colter, are those boarding craft going to reach us before we get in close to the ring in shadow from those CCS?"
"Yes, barely." Vectors appeared on the screen, showing the projected paths of the human task force and the incoming Covenant vessels.
"Go to full power and sharpen our angle to the ring. I want us going behind it just before they get to us. Plot Archer solutions to intercept before we go into shadow, send them over to the Autumn too."
"Got it, captain. Thin them out then kill the rest where their buddies can't help them?"
"Close." Sakai opened a line to the Pillar of Autumn. "Ivan, how many Shivas do you have on board?"
"FLEETCOM was generous, I have eight on board." Captain Mikulin replied. Sakai furrowed his brow for a moment. The Targhee only had seven. No matter.
"Ready two of them." Sakai pointed at his weapons officer, sitting nearby. "Get ours ready too."
"Will do." Mikulin responded. "What's your plan?"
"Archers will fire in two salvos. First will distract them, Shivas will go in right behind them. Second wave of Archers mop up any survivors missing shields. Colter work with Yuri on trajectories."
"Longswords?"
"Launch but hold them back. They'll be torn to pieces against that many Covenant fighters." The Targhee and Pillar of Autumn were loaded up with enough equipment to set up a decent base on the ground, but that equipment (and the Pelicans to carry it) took up a lot of hangar space. Each cruiser was down to four Longsword fighters, and considering there were close to a hundred Covenant fighters sending them straight into the fight would be suicide. Once the missiles thinned them out Sakai would send them in.
The human vessels continued toward the ring, accelerating as fas as their fusion drives can push them. As they did, the Covenant small craft closed in, approaching the humans' weapon range. While the Covenant was fanatical they weren't always stupid; surely the commander of the incoming ships knew of the storm of fire that would face them.
"Captain, Heat Lightning transmitted a landing site for our ground troops. High-altitude plateau, steep drops on three sides, easily defensible. Yuri and I ran a trajectory that puts us over it, with your permission." Colter zoomed in on a part of the ring, about a third of the way around from the Covenant battlecruisers. The trajectory passed behind the ring for a distance before going into a tight helix around it; hiding the Targhee and Autumn behind the mysterious structure as long as possible before skimming through the upper atmosphere over the landing site.
"Going to be a short window for landing; I can't hover the Targhee and Autumn over that site with those CCS there. Better tell the 105th to get ready to get in their pods after repelling boarders." Sakai noted that the trajectory sent them off behind a large moon of the nearby gas giant after passing by the ring. "Admiral Titus, sir, with your permission I'll run Colter's trajectory. I've got some ideas for after; I'll need support from your prowlers."
"Permission granted, captain. Let me know what you need." Titus nodded at Sakai.
A random thought popped into Sakai's head. "Colter, what's the atmosphere look like on that thing?"
"Nitrogen-oxygen, standard pressure. Not seeing any toxins down to the ppm level. Should be nice."
"A bit of good news. Thanks." That would make the soldier's jobs much easier; operating in hostile atmospheres for any amount of time was difficult, and doing it for more than a few hours was utterly horrible. (Except for the Spartans, who would be completely armored up the whole time anyway.)
Seconds later, the Targhee vibrated as the first salvo of Archer missiles left their pods, a fraction of a second after the Autumn launched. "XO, on my mark." Sakai held up a small metal key, then inserted into a small slot on his command console. "Three, two, one, launch."
The two officers turned their keys, and a pair of Shiva nuclear-tipped missiles leapt out of their silos. A fraction of a second after launch, the shipboard AIs aboard the two human cruisers took over guidance, and they fell in behind the cloud of Archer missiles. Another cloud of Archers followed soon after. Both the Targhee and Pillar of Autumn each carried twenty pods of Archers. In the last minute they had fired nearly half of them.
The Phantoms within the Covenant strike group were the first to engage the incoming missiles. Heavily modified, the dropships had been converted to a gunboat configuration, to escort the fragile boarding craft. Each one had five pulse lasers, perfect for engaging the incoming missiles. More than half of the Archers were vaporized, with a few more shot down by the Seraphs and Banshees in the formation. Even so, two boarding craft, along with a pair of Phantoms and five fighters were killed by the first wave of Archers. Then the Shivas arrived.
All four of the nuclear-tipped missiles made it into the Covenant formation, and on command ignited their thermonuclear warheads. Colter and Yuri spaced out the warheads to blanket as many of the Covenant vessels as possible in a lethal dose of x-rays that would kill shields and fry electronics. Not to mention giving the aliens crewing the incoming craft a lethal dose of radiation. A third of the boarding craft died outright, along with half the fighters. More importantly, all but two of the escort Phantoms were destroyed or knocked out of the fight; through an accident of fate the Shivas were perfectly positioned to catch nearly all of them.
Fifteen seconds later the second wave of Archers arrived, hitting the disorganized remnants of the Covenant formation. Many of the surviving craft did their best to evade, and a few missiles were even shot down. But the human missiles still exacted a heavy toll. Barely a fifth of the Covenant fighers survived, mostly Seraphs. The unshielded Banshees that survived the nuclear detonations were too fragile to survive even a single hit. Both Phantoms took multiple hits and disintegrated, but their sacrifice managed to protect some of the boarding craft. Eight of them survived and began their final approach to the human vessels, accelerating as hard as their engines could push them.
"The hell did they think would happen?" Sakai muttered as he watched contacts vanish off the screen. His strategy had been simple, but turned out to be quite effective when the Covenant simply charged in. Why weren't they engaging with their battlecruisers? Were they really that fearful of damaging the ring?
"Ivan, Longswords are free at your discretion." Sakai had delegated command of the fighters to Captain Mikulin, who had them holding a loose formation in between the Targhee and Pillar of Autumn.
"Copy that. Let's see if they can thin the herd a bit more." Seconds later, all eight of the fighters turned and accelerated toward the depleted Covenant formation, arranging themselves into four pairs.
The Covenant ships were coming fast enough that the Longswords only managed a single head-on pass; the human fighters blew through the center of the Covenant formation as a single unit, engaging the boarding craft and fighters with their autocannons and missiles. Though they only destroyed two of the boarding craft and a few of the fighters, the did succeed in drawing off the majority of the escorts. The Covenant pilots, either undisciplined or misreading the tactical situation, peeled off to chase the Longswords, which dove for the backside of the ring. The Covenant managed to kill two of them, but the boarding craft were left defenseless as they closed into the range of the Targhee's point defense guns.
The refits to both cruisers included the addition of numerous 50mm point defense coilguns, both replacing the earlier rotary cannons and increasing the number of mounts. An additional pair of naval coilgun turrets was also mounted to each cruiser. Enabled by the improved reactors fitted to the Targhee and Pillar of Autumn during their time in the yards over Reach, the new weapons were perfect for tearing apart small ships like corvettes and fighters. Or boarding craft.
By now the Covenant vessels were close enough to be visible on the Targhee's high resolution exterior cameras. As Captain Sakai watched them fly into a wall of tracers, he had to acknowledge the near-suicidal bravery of the Covenant pilots, and the sturdiness of their craft. The first boarding craft, a Leech, hit by dozens of 50mm rounds, still made it kilometers inside weapons range before falling to pieces. The second disintegrated moments later, followed by a third. The few Seraphs that had stuck with their escorts did their best to suppress the human guns, attempting a bombing run against the Targhee. Only one of the six survived long enough to fire its weapons, destroying a cluster of point defense guns milliseconds before exploding.
The fourth and fifth Covenant vessels made it close enough to the Targhee that their wreckage hit the cruiser's hull, denting the armor plating and destroying a single 50mm mount. The sixth, a Tick, evaded most of the gunfire and simply screamed past the Targhee at less than a kilometer range, headed for the Pillar of Autumn. As it passed clear of the Targhee, the Autumn's sensors locked on to it and engaged it, destroying it well short of its target. But the final two boarding craft made it through the flak screen, damaged but still under control. Both Ticks hit the starboard side of the Targhee at high speed fifty meters apart from each other and latched on. Quickly, the boarding tubes activated, and concentrated streams of plasma slowly began to eat through the Targhee's hull plating.