The planet had been made uninhabitable, the reports said the Colonial SAR raptors aided by UNSC pelicans flying over the hell that had once been Virgon, a temperate paradise home to nearly four and a half billion people. Less than two thousand had been recovered so far most of the planet's bunkers and deep mines had been blown open by the sheer number of detonations. The few survivors were pulled from isolated towns and villages; the biggest of these was a group of nearly four hundred children who had been on a field trip with fifty adults examining ancient Virgonese ruins in the jungle.
Captain Eric Howler sat in his Stateroom looking over the report doing his best to keep the flashes of half a dozen UNSC worlds glassed in the two decade long war out of his mind. With a heavy calming breath he continued reading.
Across the vast fields of wreckage a few thousand more souls were saved from the Colonial warships however the Cylons in this fight had left nothing to chance any ship larger than a Beserk had been hit with at a minimum of a kiloton nuke and broken into multiple highly irradiated pieces, the salvage crews with the aid of more sophisticated and localized UNSC radiation detectors were able to start salvaging parts not touched by the radiation.
Howler started to flip to the next page, when a knock made him look up.
"Enter" he called out.
Commander Wheeler, Gunnery Sergeant Basilione, and "Commander" Robert Hills still wearing the ill-fitting naval uniform. Entered and saluted before being waved to ease. Only Commander Wheeler sat, the two marines stood at rest
Looking to the Gunnery Sergeant first "any issue with the boarding Gunny?"
The ever professional Marine "Negative Sir, i have my report if you'd like it first?"
Eric nodded and the Gunny started "boarding was made without drawing attention to ourselves after disembarking. My team was quickly and quietly able to dispatch the eight Jackals that rushed out as we landed the unarmed UNSC personnel on the deck, helped themselves to the dead aliens weapons and then joined us. We split into fireteams using the deck plans for a Charon we spread quickly and silently discovering several groups of humans and Grunts shackled together doing odd jobs we went to kill the grunts too but the other humans stopped us saying they were prisoners as well they meant humans no harm so they were put under lock and key for someone higher to make the decision by time the ship was ours there was nearly two hundred and fifty grunts awaiting your decision sir as well as two hundred humans. The ship was highly compartmentalized and we found pallets on the deck indicating the prisoners were never really allowed to move around the ship." he looked to Corporal Hills who had a surprised look on his face.
"Sorry sir, I had no idea the only time I was allowed off the bridge was to go to the head in the adjacent room. They brought food and everything else we would need. I only saw around fifty people and it was hard to tell the jackals apart." he finished looking down annoyed with himself.
Eric looked to the man "don't worry about it Corporal you gave us your best guess and it helped." he looked back to the Gunny "Continue Gunny."
With a nod he continued " by the end and after a quick tally there was in fact two hundred and seventy Jackals aboard sir. We also compiled a list of captured covenant small arms of note
200 plasma pistols
38 plasma rifles
20 needlers
4 beam rifles
And the best of them all nearly 400 gauntlet shield generators
"Excellent work Gunny your men have definitely earned liberty and all the booze we can find." Howler praised the man.
The report done he turned to "Commander"Robert Hills "Commander? How about you tell us what happened and how you ended up here?"
Robert twitched and started telling his tale of being a Corporal in the 122nd Marine battalion stationed on the planet of Tribute. A brief mention of the covenant assault that had been repulsed before the fleet left to drive off a covenant advance somewhere else. And then the Pirates attacked him, being captured after his friend and driver had been killed. And then waking up on a pirate Covie corvette.
He stopped for a moment to see if there were any questions when no one said anything he continued.
He spoke of several months of imprisonment with other humans before finally being led to a rendezvous with other pirate ships following Shipmistress Tau'cha including several human ships that had been recovered by the pirates repaired and modified with more advanced systems from destroyed covenant ships as they looted the battlefields after the covenant forces pushed on. He pulled out a pad and said he had compiled a list on the three ships he had modifications a more detailed inventory would follow once a true naval commander was given command.
Eric took the pad giving it a quick look and seeing it matched what the gunny's boarding parties had reported on their approach but noticed under the Colossus's embarked craft
4x M1261 Gauss hogs
2x Wraith Tanks
Were the only ground vehicles the rest were strike craft
5x Longswords
3x Banshees
3x Pelicans
1x Phantom
Nodding his head Eric looked back at the Corporal "Sargent Hills you have done an amazing job ensuring not only the men and women with you survived but fought back and returned to UNSC forces…Mostly. A full briefing on our current situation will follow later today for all of the men with you." he paused looking the marine over "for now get some rest and report to the gunny at 0700 tomorrow. Dismissed"
Looking at the status of the new ships he looks to commander wheeler with a knowing smile "Commander pack your bags the Colossus is yours if you want her. It's long overdue for your own command."
Elizabeth smiled as she stood and saluted "Thank you sir i'll take it."
Howler looked at the crew for the frigate "for the moment take eighty of the Midways crew with you it will be hard but I know you 'll like the challenge."
The next three hours pass with a few more survivors being found but overall the planet and the radioactive and shattered hulls around it were lifeless as the freighter Wanders massive cargo hold filled and they stared filling the hangers of the unused passenger liners with salvaged weapons and the few dozen Vipers and Raptors pulled from the wrecks. Eric called it.
The ships reformed into two task forces one of UNSC and the other Colonial just as before the UNSC ships led the way for each jump retracing their steps picking over the carcassess of the murdered Colonial ships and the Destroyed Cylons as they went aboard the Cylon ships a discovery was made seventeen humans of six different types like clones. What was even more birizar was each of them gave off weak UHF radio waves that interfered with UNSC theta band channels upon autopsy they found two cybernetic implants slightly more advanced than the UNSC standard.
The one at the base of the neck had a massive storage drive and the remnants of code that reminded UNSC tech of AIs primary code matrix. However what had UNSC personnel scratching their heads is it was completely blank even when AIs were wiped there was always a few thousand lines of residual code left behind. The same with the ship computers the moment the computer lost power it auto deleted everything.
The second one in the clone's wrist was discovered to be a Cylon direct link node. Nearly identical in its make up to the cerebral storage and interface of UNSC links allowing the user to directly interface with computers bypassing monitor keyboards and use the raw power of their mind.
All the UNSC ships pulled the Colonial ships within a hundred feet or so and activated broad spectrum jammers focused on the Thata and the bands around them. As Marines with photos of the six scoured the colonial ships and found three more who upon hearing of the search put killed themselves or rampaged killing several others before being put down themselves. The jammers active when they died their stored information just autowiped instead of just disappearing.
With information of critical importance and not much left to salvage the ships jumped directly to Scorpia