Chapter Text
19/9/2552 (UNSC military calendar)
“What is the point of colonizing worlds beyond what we need to survive? Simple. Mankind is not the only species in this galaxy. As the nation-states on Earth once competed for resources, land, and prestige, so now does the human race with the other races of Citadel space. Most already do not consider us as anything more than interesting pets, and many hold outright hostility towards us for our abnormally swift ascension to Council status. Everything humanity has achieved is due to our speedy expansion and constant military presence, along with good old-fashioned human ingenuity. Most of the Citadel races patterned their technology on Forerunner designs. Everything we have achieved, bar the Mass Relays, we have done ourselves. Slipspace, mass accelerators, artificial intelligence, even space travel itself, humanity developed all of it alone. We had no ruins to learn from, no leftover technology to build from. We were creative, and we took this galaxy by storm with that creativity. Alone, we are a threat. The Council knows that we are needed to keep their hold on the Milky Way because we are independent of the Forerunners. They believe they own us, and there may be truth to that perspective, but there will come a day that the galaxy is protected by human warships, not turian. Those who failed to understand humanity’s strength will rue that day, my friends.”
-Excerpt from a 2219 lecture series by former UNSC Admiral Nathan Prescott on humanity’s place in the universe—and only partially exaggerating.
Captain Jacob Keyes looked out the windows of the cruiser Pillar of Autumn’s bridge. “Cortana, all I need to know is did we lose them?”
“I think we both know the answer to that,” a tart female voice replied, slightly distorted by the telltale warble of synthesized speech. The blue hologram of Cortana, the Autumn’s shipboard AI, floated in the holotank next to the main data screen.
“We made a blind jump. How did they-”
“Get here first?” Cortana interjected. “The Covenant’s ships have always been faster. As for tracking us all the way from Reach… at lightspeed, my maneuvering options were limited.”
A lie. Cortana had fed in deliberate coordinates—random enough to the causal observer, Threshold was a decidingly uninteresting world, but the choice was not uninspired. She’d elected to use coordinates gleaned from the Forerunner site beneath SWORD Base, both out of curiosity and out of the hope they would find something, anything, to turn the tide. Keyes, however, did not necessarily need to know that.
“We were running dark, yes?” Keyes asked, crossing to the ELINT console.
“Until we decelerated,” Cortana confirmed. “No one could have missed the hole we tore in sub-space. They were waiting for us on the far side of the planet.”
Keyes returned to the main screen. Pulling his pipe from his fatigue’s pocket, he lit up. Normally, he would never commit to such a breach of regulations, but they were well off script now, so why not? “So where do we stand?”
“Our fighters are mopping up the last of their recon pickets now, nothing serious, but I’ve isolated approach signatures from multiple CCS-class battlegroups. Normandy is in silent running and has confirmed three capital ships per group… and in about ninety seconds, they’ll be all over us.”
“Well, that’s it then,” Keyes sighed. “Bring the ship back up to Combat Alert Alpha, set Condition One. I want everyone at their stations.”
“Everyone, sir?”
“Everyone. And Cortana.”
“Mmm?”
“Let’s give our old friends a warm welcome.”
Cortana projected a predatory grin. “I’ve already begun.”
Wakefulness crept in slowly, painfully, as John’s eyes began to open. Cryogenics was an old technology, achieved before the discovery of slipspace but with a far too niche application to be realistically useful, and so remained little more than a scientific curiosity until the realities of long-distance space travel became obvious. Slipspace, and eventually the Mass Relays, made things easier, but cryo remained a staple technology of human military and civil astrovation. He found a naval rating in his field of vision as both his vision and the frosted over lid of the cryopod cleared. The clear glass lifted away.
“Sorry for the quick thaw, Master Chief,” the sailor said. The name tape on his fatigues read Shephard. His rank was Chief Petty Officer, based on his stripes. “Things are a little hectic right now. The disorientation should pass quickly.”
In the observation theater, another rating waved. “Welcome back, sir,” he said over the intercom. “We’ll have you battle-ready stat.”
The tech said something about “freezer-burn” as Master Chief Petty Officer SPARTAN-117 pushed himself out of the cryotube and onto the deckplates of the Pillar of Autumn. He stood at 218 centimeters in full armor and weighed 130 kilos without it, the weight of the suit adding 321 kilos to his weight. His boots clanked on the steel deck as the tech stared up at him in awe.
Normally, personnel went into cryo naked; covered skin reacted poorly to the cryo process. Short on time as Reach was abandoned, he had been frozen in full armor, and his skin burned and itched. He banished the pain from the front of his mind, a skill he had gained through experience and training.
The PA crackled. “Bridge to Cryo B, this is Captain Keyes. Send the Master Chief to the bridge immediately.”
“Captain, we’ll have the skip the weapons diagnostics and I-”
“On the double, crewman.” The Captain’s voice left no room for argument.
“Aye aye, sir.” Shephard turned to the Spartan. “The Skipper seems jumpy, we’d better get moving. We’ll find you weapons later.”
The Master Chief nodded. It didn’t concern him. He’d taken weapons from Covenant troops before.
The sound of plasma fire. “They’re trying to get through the door!” the tech in observation shouted. “Security! Intruders in Cryo B! No, please don’t-”
An Elite Major burst through the hatch and fired three pulses into the defenseless sailor’s chest. The Master Chief’s fists clenched. A fellow soldier was dead. The enemy was nearby, and he could not reach them.
“Sam! Sam!” the tech Chief shouted. “C’mon, we’ve gotta get the hell out of here!” Turning, he ran towards the hatch out of the cryo bay. The non-com had little choice but to follow. They ran down the corridor to another hatch. The sailor stood in front of it as the proximity sensor opened the door. Moments later, an explosion shredded him and drained the Master Chief’s shields by half.
MJOLNIR armor, the trademark of the Spartans, was part armor, part mech suit, part point defense system. Each suit was protected by a personal shield system reverse-engineered from the Covenant brand. Most soldiers had personal kinetic barriers, but that only worked on physical objects. Most Covenant weapons were energy-based, and their shields worked on energy weapons as well as kinetic weapons. In space, their shields were impervious to all but the heaviest mass accelerators, while their plasma torpedoes ignored kinetic barriers and burned through Titanium-A battleplate like tissue paper.
The Master Chief was very familiar with the design of a Halcyon- class cruiser. He reversed course and vaulted over a set of pipes set as a maintenance point along the bulkhead. As he moved through the hatch on the opposite side, he saw sailors trying to escape the Covenant. An airtight bulkhead closed across the corridor, locking the Covenant out as well as acting to compartmentalize the ship. Any depressurization would not spread.
The Spartan kept moving. Still lacking a weapon, he made his way from firefight to firefight, moving towards the bridge. Cortana was constantly giving orders over the PA, coordinating the counterboarding effort. He stopped before a hatch to allow it to open. As it did, he saw the light blue armor of an Elite Minor.
The alien roared a challenge. Lacking a weapon and knowing the range was too short for the alien to use his own, the Spartan prepared to meet the Elite’s attack. Before it could charge, a storm of 7.62mm bullets rained down on the alien’s shields and forced it back behind another hatch, which sealed behind it. “Chief, Cortana says get to the bridge, double quick!” a Marine shouted to him. The Spartan nodded his thanks and went on his way.
He came to an intersection where a group of Marines and a few sailors with pistols were engaging a group of Covenant in a firefight. “Sir!” a Marine PFC called. “The Captain needs you on the bridge ASAP! Better follow me.”
Grateful for the escort, the Spartan nodded and kept his head down. No sense getting shot at all, even if you had shields. The PFC led him through a makeshift CCP that the Marines had set up in one of the mess halls. They moved fast, staying out of the overworked corpsman’s way as he moved from man to man. The opposite door opened into another firefight, the Marine calling, “Get clear, Chief!” and firing a long burst from his rifle. The Spartan moved, somehow avoiding being hit and reaching the bridge. “Captain Keyes is waiting for you, sir,” the Marine said before jogging back towards the fight.
The Spartan walked up the left hand bridgewing and came to attention behind the Captain. “Captain Keyes,” he said.
Keyes turned around. “Good to see you, Master Chief.” He shook the Spartan’s hand. “Things aren’t going well. Cortana did her best, but we never really had a chance.”
The holotank flickered back to life, and Cortana’s avatar blinked into existence. “A dozen superior Covenant battleships against a single Halcyon- class cruiser… Given those odds, I’m content with three-” She looked away slightly, as though distracted. “-make that four kills.” She turned to the Master Chief. “Sleep well?”
“No thanks to your driving, yes.”
“So you did miss me.”
The ship was rocked by an impressively large explosion. “Damage report!” Keyes barked.
“I’m reading decompressions on decks nine, ten, and eleven. It must have been one of their boarding parties! I’d guess an antimatter charge.”
“Ma’am!” the Fire Control Officer shouted. “Fire control for the main cannon is offline!”
The Magnetic Accelerator Cannon was based on a relatively old concept dating back hundreds of years to the first experimental coilguns produced on Earth. They (and their counterparts used during early colonization, Mass Drivers) used magnetic principles to accelerate projectiles to speeds unattainable with conventional chemical propellants. The discovery of Mass Effect physics had transitioned humanity from using purely electromagnets to Mass Effect generators to enhance the effect. The MAC relied on asynchronous Magnetic Linear Accelerators in conjunction with a Mass Effect field generator to accelerate an eleven ton ferro-tungsten projectile to 4% of lightspeed. The gun aboard the Autumn had amped capacitor cells, allowing it to recycle five times faster than a standard MAC. Most naval coilguns, like the Onager or 50mm Rampart MLA autocannons, functioned on the same principles, if on a much smaller scale. Aboard MAC vessels, the main gun ran the length of the ship.
Cortana crossed her arms. “Captain, the cannon was my last offensive option!”
“Alright then,” Keyes said. “I’m initiating Cole Protocol, Article II. We’re abandoning the Autumn. That means you, too, Cortana.”
“While you do what? Go down with the ship?” Cortana demanded, incredulous.
“In a manner of speaking.” Keyes motioned with his pipe. “The object we found, I’m going to try to land the Autumn on it.”
“With all due respect, this war has enough dead heroes.”
“I appreciate the concern, Cortana, but it’s not up to me. The Protocol is clear. Destruction or capture of a shipboard AI is absolutely unacceptable, and that means you’re leaving ship. Lock in a selection of emergency landing zones, upload them to my neural lace, and sort yourself for a hard transfer.”
“Aye aye, sir.” As Cortana’s avatar disappeared, the Chief noted that she’d seemed almost choked up.
Keyes turned to the Spartan. “Which is where you come in, Chief. Get Cortana off this ship. Keep her safe from the enemy. If they capture her, they'll learn everything. Force deployment, weapons research… Earth.”
“I understand,” the Master Chief replied.
Cortana’s avatar flickered back into being. “The Autumn will continue evasive maneuvers until you initiate a landing sequence. Not that you'll listen, but I'd suggest letting my subroutines handle the final approach.”
“Excellent work, Cortana,” Keyes said. “Thank you. Are you ready?”
Cortana took a look around the bridge. In many ways, the Autumn was her body, and being separated from it could be… uncomfortable. “Yank me.”
Keyes tapped a few controls and ejected a data disk from the console, which he handed to the Master Chief along with his sidearm. “Good luck, Master Chief.”
The Spartan slotted the chip into his helmet. There was a sensation like mercury dripping down his spine, a feeling he was familiar with. He and Cortana had worked together on Reach, before the battle. “Hmm,” Cortana said from within his mind. “Your architecture isn’t much different from the Autumn’s.”
“Don’t get any funny ideas.”
CIC, UNSC Normandy (SR-1)
“You can’t be serious,” Shepard said.
“Wish I wasn’t,” Joker said, “but you can see for yourself, Commander.”
Shepard could. On the main holotank, a highly detailed model of the Pillar of Autumn hung suspended in motes of light, venting short-lived flame and atmosphere into the Black. Seraph fighters buzzed about the cruiser like moths circling a flame. It was a depressing picture. Not only was the Autumn their only real combat ship, there was a Spartan aboard. Maybe the last Spartan, if the rumor mill was to be believed.
“Commander,” Edie’s smooth female voice intoned. “FLASH transmission from Captain Keyes’ neural lace. He intends to crash-land the Pillar of Autumn on the ringworld construct orbiting Threshold. He is requesting a status report on the Normandy’s slipspace capability.”
Shepard punched his earpiece. “Tali!” he demanded. “I need a SITREP on our jump drive yesterday!”
“We cannot jump, Commander!” Tali’s frantic voice filtered through her earpiece. “No, put it there, you bosh’tet!” she shouted at one of the men in her division. Something hissed and a loud bong reached Shepard’s ears in the background. “The passive charge capacitors are overloaded, and the drive’s particle accelerator is out of alignment. It looks like some of the components are melted, and we didn’t take on spares before leaving Reach.” She hesitated. “We’re stranded here, Commander.”
Shepard rubbed his eyes. “sh*t,” he muttered.
The Pillar of Autumn was not a small ship. She measured 1.7 kilometers, with a width of 352 meters and a height of 398 meters, with a mass of nine million metric tons of steel and Titanium-A battleplate. She had been assembled in the Reyes-McLee Orbital Shipyards over Mars in 2510; like all spacefaring craft, her service life was measured in the decades. She could travel between stars with her slipspace drive or use a Mass Relay for nearly instant transmission between relay locations. One place she had never been intended to fly, though, was the gravity well of a planet. Her crew had evacuated aboard Bumblebee lifeboats, the handful of Pelicans to escape the hangars before the cruiser entered the atmosphere, and in the case of the ship’s complement of Orbital Drop Shock Troopers, the 216 SOEIV drop pods she came equipped with. All plummeted towards the surface of the ringworld, accompanied by a cloaked Prowler. The Bumblebees landed almost at random across the exposed surface of the ringworld, while the drop pods landed in a specified LZ chosen before the pods had been released. A single BLACK WIDOW microsat had been deployed by the Normandy during the approach vector, and combined with the powerful sensor suite loaded on the command SOEIV, the ODSTs had a very good idea of what the conditions on the ground were before they landed. The Helljumpers belonged to Major Antonio Silva, commanding officer of the Autumn’s ODST contingent. His pod fell towards the ring ahead of the rest; ODST doctrine stated that officers should be among the first on the ground. This was in service of a few reasons; first, and most practical, was the fact that officers needed to be on the site fast to organize a disorderly situation; second was the deeply-held belief that officers should lead, rather than follow. Someone popped a disk into a reader and pressed the PLAY button, pushing the hyped-up strains of the ODST anthem across the airwaves as the pods burned towards the surface.
The command pod contained Silva and Wellesley, the regimental Virtual Intelligence required to operate the highly advanced sensors aboard the drop pod. He had a male persona, programmed after the Duke of Wellington of Napoleonic fame. Wellesley was a Class-C military VI, and while not a true AI like Cortana, all of his functions were related solely to military applications. This made him rather useful, if a tad narrow-minded.
“So,” Wellesley continued as though a particularly rough patch of turbulence had not previously cut him off, “based on the telemetry available from space, plus my analysis, it appears that the structure tagged as HS-2604 will meet your needs.” His tone changed as a conversational subroutine kicked in. “Perhaps you would like to call it ‘Gawilghur’ after the fortress I captured in India?”
“Thanks,” Silva croaked as the pod inverted, “but no thanks. First: You didn’t take the fortress, Wellington did. Second: There weren’t any computers in 1803. Third: None of my troops would be able to pronounce ‘Gawilghur.’ The designation ‘Alpha Base’ will do just fine.”
The VI issued a passable stand-in for a human sigh. “Very well, then. As I was saying, ‘Alpha Base’ is located at the top of this butte.” A satellite image appeared on the screen centimeters away from Silva’s nose, showing a group of structures. They had probably been set up by the Covenant—or whoever had owned this ring to start. The butte was tall enough to offer the high ground advantage, and the sheer cliff faces would force any attacker onto a few mountain paths or to come in by air—perfect targets for the battalion’s rocket teams.
“It looks good. I like it.”
“I thought you might,” Wellesley replied. “There is one little problem, though.”
“What’s that?” Silva shouted over the roar of the atmosphere on his pod’s skin.
“The Covenant owns this particular piece of real estate,” the VI blithely informed him, “and if we want it, we’ll have to take it.”
