Update: fixed some spell check errors reviewers caught, evidently I wasn't careful enough when proofreading. Apologies. (Be careful not to hit 'replace all' instead of 'ignore all'!)
And now, we finally get close to the (possible?) endgame. Definitely not ripped off from Red Flag in any way.
Let me know in the reviews if the site's acting weird again about showing new chapters, I've noticed it on a few other fics as well.
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.
0635, 22 September 2550
UNSC Camp Saranac, Ballast
The auditorium was far more crowded than the last time Chac Lon had been here, despite the early hour. He'd seen Rhone sitting at the other end of the room, and briefly made eye contact before the admiral returned to his conversation. All three Spartans from the fight on the ring were here as well, along with another trio Chac Lon didn't recognize. The rest of the room was filled with assorted human officers. Mostly. A contingent of Sangheili, including 'Madam and his friend from the ice moon sat in a back corner, unarmed and with a dozen military police sitting nearby. Clearly the humans didn't fully trust them yet; Chac Lon was at least allowed to bring his sidearm into the briefing.
Chac Lon idly doodled geometric patterns on his notepad as he sat waiting for the humans to get the briefing started. He'd taken one and a half stimulant tablets, which was enough to get him into the unpleasant state of being not quite at full mental capacity but physically very twitchy. He could hear his kig-yar fidgeting in their seats around him; likely they'd done the same. Hopefully his body and brain would come into equilibrium by the time the important stuff started.
The first few minutes of the briefing were indeed uninteresting; some junior officer introducing himself, showing classification markings, outlining a rough agenda, the usual. Things did start to get interesting about ten minutes in, as they started talking about the incipient split in the Covenant. After an ONI assessment from a few months ago got brought up, things got a bit heated.
"So you had assessed this as a probability, based on the tensions your hundreds of unaccountable Prowlers saw in Covenant systems months ago, and you still didn't think it was worth briefing the Navy about or planning for?" An irate officer (a captain judging by the ranks on his shoulders) yelled at the ONI representative sitting on the other side of the room.
"As the slide mentioned, it was a LOW probability. The Covenant has had internal tensions before, and there were five more probable explanations for what we were seeing. And just think about it! If someone was running a marathon, would you expect them to do 25 miles, take off their shoes, and start stomping through broken glass?! It would make no sense! And yet-"
"And yet it happened, and now we figure out how to take advantage of it." A higher ranking officer, another one that Chac Lon didn't recognize, cut the argument short. He continued;
"In the last two weeks there's been attacks on at least four human colonies: Meridian, Cascade, Mikoyan, Madagascan Probably more that I haven't been informed on. All of them were small and disorganized compared to normal Covenant incursions, repelled with only partial civilian casualties on each world. Now, what does that tell us?"
"Low-level commanders going off on their own, absent direction from high command?" One officer replied.
"Could be desperate, or just trying to do smash and grabs for resources." Another added.
"Were these brutes or elites?" Admiral Rhone asked, putting forth the question that was doubtless on the mind of both the kig-yar and sangheili in the room.
"Both."
"So the rest of the elites didn't get the memo. Guess the rest of the split-lips are a bit more hard-headed than the ones we've got here." One UNSC Army officer quipped. As Chac Lon saw the elites angrily stirring in the corner of his eye, the officer held up his hand. "Peace. It's been a long quarter century, and besides, it's not like there's not a couple billion turkeys still fighting with the Covenant."
Chac Lon was unperturbed. It was true, after all. He wasn't rich enough to pay off all of them.
"Regardless of our feelings, the fact of the matter is that whoever comes out on top of this civil war is almost certainly going to retain the elimination of humanity as one of our primary objectives. So, the question is, how do we prevent that?" Rhone asked. There was a bit of murmuring around the room, before the presenter brought up a crude picture of a mushroom-shaped space station. High Charity.
"Some of our audience already knows what this is. For the rest of you, this is High Charity. Capital of the Covenant, a gigantic, slip space-capable station hundreds of kilometers across. Population unknown, but likely in the billions. Our intelligence tells us it's the political center of the Covenant, home to the majority of their leadership caste, the 'Prophets'. It's also a massive production hub for ships and weapons. In short, it's the single biggest center of gravity in the entire Covenant."
"We're going to take it off the board." At that, the presenter left, and another officer, high-ranking by the looks of them, walked on to the stage.
"I am Vice Admiral Michael Stan forth, and you will be under my command for this operation. Eliminating High Charity as a factor will not be easy. We have a limited window of unknown duration while the brutes and elites fight it out. And the thing can move through slip space Despite that, this is the best chance humanity has had to win the war, whether that is by shattering the Covenant, forcing them to the negotiating table, or simply buying enough time for us to close the technological gap." He paused, then continued.
"I've brought each of you here because you are the best tactical and operational minds the UNSC has, and present your own unique perspectives. You have thirty-six hours to prepare your plans; my staff will divide you into groups, and ONI is here to provide the most up to date intelligence and answer any questions. Welcome to Operation MAGIC HOUR."
1100, 24 September 2550
It actually took forty-eight hours, instead of thirty-six, but they had a plan. Of sorts. There were still countless details that needed to be figured out; how many Marines would they need, what weapons they would use, exactly how they would accomplish their secondary objectives once they got onto High Charity. But they had a plan for getting on to High Charity, and what their primary objective would be once they got there.
The sangheili, surprisingly, had been the most helpful with figuring out how to disable High Charity. Disabling was the key word; the sangheili were vehemently opposed to simply blowing apart the station, and so were Chac Lon and the kig-yar. For all they knew, there could be millions of their species still on the station. And even destroying it to eliminate the Prophets might not work; the wily creatures definitely had contingency plans. There were rumors that there were hidden worlds, scrubbed from every navigational chart, where they could hide for a thousand years and ride out anything. Even if that wasn't true, the Hierarchy doubtlessly had a fleet of vessels ready to risk them away from danger. Capturing or killing the Covenant's leadership would be an objective for the Spartans, but not the primary one.
That would be the station's weak point; its power source. High Charity did have some fusion reactors, buried deep in the interior of the station. Most of its power came from one source; the Forerunner 'Dreadnought', that sat at the center of the upper districts. Little was known about the ship; what the Forerunners had truly used its for, what was inside the ship, or even its true name. But the sangheili did know that its engines provided the majority of the power needed to run High Charity. Without it, the station, its shipyards, its forges, and likely its slip space drive would be crippled.
Even if the Forerunner ship itself was essentially indestructible, the connections between it and the station's power grid would be as vulnerable as any other Covenant technology. That would be their target.
The slip space drive on High Charity was the crux of the other big problem MAGIC HOUR had to solve. The UNSC didn't actually know where the station was! Instead, they'd have to get their hands on navigational data that had its location. The original thought, recycled from an old plan called RED FLAG, was to disable a Covenant naval vessel, insert an AI, and use that to find High Charity's location. However, Chac Lon and the kig-yar had another, easier idea. Hundreds of trading vessels traveled to and from High Charity each day, to supply the thousands of tons of food and other things the station needed to keep its populace from starving. Even now, with the Covenant in a state of civil war, they still needed trade.
And Chac Lon knew where the UNSC could find a trading vessel; Earn The kig-yar home world was filled with trading vessels, and discontent was bubbling within the system. Surely, they could take advantage of the chaos to steal a ship from some unlucky kig-yar trader and use it to get to High Charity. Or, if they had to, they could pay off some captain whose devotion to the Covenant cause was less than complete.
Of course, as the humans were fond of saying, the devil was in the details. Any simple tramp freighter wouldn't work; they'd need something large enough to carry two fire teams of Spartans, two platoons of Marines, as well as the sangheili and kig-yar contingents. Along with enough drop ships (Pelicans or Phantoms) to carry them. While this probably would be a suicide mission for most of them, the UNSC didn't want to make that a certainty.
Getting there would be less of a problem, but still had its own issues. The UNSC knew how to navigate to Iodide, thanks to Chac Lon and his crew, and ONI had actually gotten prowlers into some of the nearby systems back in the early 2540s. Never mind that two thirds of them were shot down; those were the previous generation of ship, and ONI was confident their technology had improved since then. Just arriving in deep space in the system wouldn't be enough, though. Chac Lon, Tet, and the other kig-yar talked it over with the UNSC, and the best choice was to hit one of the small asteroid mines or trading posts that dotted the system. If they could get a ship there, any ship, it would make it a hundred times easier to get to one of the big orbital docks around Earn the slip space-capable vessels called at.
Chac Lon planned to find an excuse to get down to the surface of Earn If he could find a way to get one of the puppets the Covenant had put in place eliminated, that would go a long way to making a name for himself and getting credibility as a leader among kig-yar. Especially if he pulled the trigger himself.
He'd have to sell it to the UNSC, but he was confident he could manage that. Surely they'd be happy to have a high value target like that eliminated? (Chac Lon didn't think some propped up pirate lords he could barely remember the name of were actually high value, but what the humans didn't know wouldn't hurt them too badly.)
Regardless of whether Chac Lon got to do some killing for selfish reasons, the UNSC would need the support of him and his kig-yar on Earn He didn't have any illusions that they would be at the tip of the spear, that was the Spartans' job, but how many Marines knew the kig-yar language? (A few knew how to read it and speak some basic phrases from working with his group, but not many.) If they had to negotiate with some stationmaster or ship captain, how many humans could pull it off? No, they needed Chac Lon and his team for Operation MAGIC HOUR. And if they pulled a couple rounds away from the Spartans on High Charity, that'd make the UNSC happy!
It wasn't how Chac Lon expected to visit High Charity, but then again this was probably his only chance to get into the upper districts. Shaon Tol already told him she'd pay for any Forerunner artifacts he could smuggle out of the Prophets' quarters. The rest of his crew weren't interested in Forerunner artifacts for historical reasons, but they'd happily buy anything shiny off him. Some of the humans had even surreptitiously talked to him about gathering trophies! Chac Lon didn't have any plans to bring back sangheili or jiralhanae skulls like a few of the Marines had in their barracks, but money was money.
Leaving aside that he'd hardly had any chance to use the UNSC credits he was being 'paid' since defecting to the humans. Even though he and his kig-yar were confined to military bases, someone in the UNSC Logistics Branch had insisted that they had to be officially processed into the UNSC military with all the right paperwork, which meant they needed to be paid. Chac Lon had found out only about sixty days ago that he was 'officially' a Petty Officer 2nd Class in the UNSC, and that his pay was slowly accumulating in a bank account on Reach. Same for the rest of his kig-yar, though they were nice enough to make him the highest ranking of the group. Well, as he'd said, money was money.
3 October, 2550
Chac Lon was exhausted. The last several days were the most intense training he'd ever been put through; he was rarely this tired even after the most difficult of his jobs as a pirate. Ten hours a day of simulated live-fire training, and another five hours of intensive debriefing and planning sessions. The Spartans and sangheili were thriving. The rest of them were not. Admiral Stan forth finally called a pause after several Marines were nearly killed in a training accident involving a simulated plasma grenade. All the Marines were given a 48 hour pass, while the Spartans and non-humans retired to their barracks.
In the midst of the grueling training effort, the assignments for the kig-yar were finalized. Chac Lon, Shim Vol, and Shaon Tol would be part of MAGIC HOUR. The other kig-yar 'officers', Tet, Mir, and Bran, would be staying behind to advise the humans and train the 'next generation' of friendly kig-yar. So far the UNSC managed to find about a hundred kig-yar willing to fight for them out of the prisoners they'd taken over the years. A few were recent prisoners who had an actual change of heart in the past year, but many were just tired of digging trenches at gunpoint. After screening out the insane and stupid, it might be a platoon, not much, but better than nothing. Rumor had it that ONI was encouraging people to try to take kig-yar and ungodly prisoner where they could, but it was still a trickle at most.
It was definitely interesting to Chac Lon, but he wasn't worried about that at this very moment. The T'ang knew there was a good chance he'd die on this mission. In the training runs, more than two in three of the UNSC soldiers died, and there were still too many variables they wouldn't be able to account for until they got to High Charity. Chac Lon would do everything he could to keep himself alive, but he was no god.
That was why he had assembled Tet, Mir, and Bran in a silent back corner of the barracks. Two kig-yar he trusted were guarding the door, but anyone on his crew knew not to interrupt a conversation like this.
"There is a chance I will soon be dead," Chac Lon began "but you will not be. Which means you will lead my crew after I am gone. I can't, and won't, dictate what you do with yourselves after the war is over, but I'd ask you to listen to me ramble."
"I think I can manage that." Tet said. Bran added; "We've been loyal to each other for years, why should I stop now." Mir simply gestured for him to continue. Chac Lon knew them well enough to know they were listening.
"I'm no different from any other kig-yar. I love money. Why, though? What do I get out of it? Sure, if I'm rich enough I can eat anything I want, get any mate I want, live anywhere I want, but what does that really mean? Independence. Free from anybody controlling your life, telling you how to live, holding the power of death over your neck."
"I get the feeling you're not telling us to just go back to what we were doing before we found the relic." Mir said.
"Right. We never said it, but we all knew we were living in fear. Fear that the Covenant would finally turn its eye on us and wipe us out. Covenant might be gone, but what if some jiralhanae chieftain or remnant sangheili fleet sets themselves up on Earn and pays off enough kig-yar to go along with it? No, what kig-yar need to do is take that power for ourselves!" Chac Lon was practically yelling by the finished, and paused for a moment to catch his breath.
"Bran, you're one of the only kig-yar I've ever met that actually had it in you to believe something. Mir, Tet, you're a hundred times better at sitting down, planning things, thinking quietly than I ever was. I want to do this, need to do this myself. But if I die on that station, I trust you to do it." As Chac Lon finished, everyone in the room was silent for a moment. Even the guards posted at the door were looking at him.
Tet broke the silence. "So this is why you were so insistent on going to Earn to steal a ship. Show your face, get legitimacy by killing the Covenant's puppet."
"It takes a lot to get kig-yar to follow someone. I've earned your loyalty over years. I'll have to do it a lot quicker for the rest of them."
"And you'll be the friendliest with the humans and have the best trade contacts with them." Mir added, understanding dawning in her eyes.
"You understand it. And why I'm so fixated on slip space drives." Chac Lon said, grinning.
"Well of course. Our traders will need them, and so will our combat ships. How do you plan to build a navy, anyway?" Bran asked.
"I'll worry about that if I get off High Charity. Probably Tet's problem. But, what if we gave slip space drives to all kig-yar? Thousands of ships, heading for thousands of unclaimed systems! Even if the Covenant or that thing on the ring comes back they'd never catch all of us!"
"Just so long as nobody lights off that ring." Tet muttered.
"That's why I'm going to High Charity." Chac Lon replied. The possibility of the Prophets trying to use the Halo when they got desperate did eat at him. Gods willing, the humans would be able to keep them off it. Hopefully while keeping the ring intact, Chac Lon thought as images of the Flood flashed briefly into his mind. That Forerunner construct had said there were seven rings; where were the other six? Did the Covenant know where any of them were? The humans were the 'Reclaimers' but could the Covenant still activate them? Would a single captive human be enough?
These thoughts ran wild in Chac Lon's mind for a moment, before he remembered something his sister taught him years ago; "There is no profit in tearing yourself apart over what you cannot change." He was confident his friends would do well for themselves and all kig-yar if he died. Now, he'd focus on surviving.