//------------------------------// // Chapter Three // Story: Halo, Equestrian Covenant // by Shady Steps //------------------------------// September 19, 2552 Three days turned out to be vanishingly little time at all when considering the monumental task before the small fleet, probes were deployed rapidly until the fleets supply was utterly exhausted. New probes from what little material was available had been commissioned but Huragok were busy with the many millions of repair tasks for ships that had not long ago been party to the most deadly battle of the war required. Twilight had also been adjusting to her new position, Thel expected competence and Twilight was eager to prove herself, she was the only Equestrian to take up arms in war in over a thousand years. To say the Shipmasters under her command were sceptical of her ability was an understatement. The system was rather standard affair, four barren worlds, a gas giant, sixteen moons, twelve orbiting the gas giant and a ring of asteroids around the very edge of the system, the only Forerunner installations present was an extensive mining facility on the gas giant designated Threshold and Halo itself. A wide screen of Type-31 Fighters had been deployed in groups all over the system. Each had two crew members and about a weeks food supply, if the human ship appeared the fleet would know almost instantly. The cargo bays of Twilight's ships had been emptied of ground assets as the purple mare ordered her forces down to Halo, the ring was an incredible thing, each section a monument to natures beauty and the mastery the forerunners had over technology. Twilight had chosen a scattering of islands and hilly ranges to deploy her forces with standing orders for each group to map the area and interface with any forerunner system they could, progress has been slow but promising. Dealing with the other task forces when necessary had proven to be awkward at best, with so much work to do and so little manpower it was common for dozens of requests for supplies, personnel and reports to be made from one task force to another over the course of a day. Honestly Twilight was beginning to suspect that Thel’s motivation for his division of the fleet was to avoid having to be caught in every attempt at power politics and force appropriation. Finding time for sleep had been difficult with so much work to be done and it was unsurprisingly, when she had just settled down for five hours of rest that she was awoken by the alarm.  The Human ship had been spotted. The recon picket had been too slow to raise an alarm, or the Human ship had just gotten lucky and had exited slipspace closer to Halo then they had any right too. The ship was currently approaching the ring rapidly on the only vector that did not put a task force between it and the ring. The Human ship was long and segmented around one point one seven kilometres, its entire rear was comprised of massive engines two obvious and powerful cannons run the length of the ship, there were hard points for the primitive point defence systems the humans employed, three human fighters offered a screen to the ship and had pulled ahead to detect any traps that could have been placed along the vector of the capital ship. As planned all of the Covenant task forces were currently advancing upon the Human ship, it seemed task force three would engage first, at current trajectories it seemed that the Human ship would be between the task force and Halo, no doubt the humans had devised some plan of survival that incorporated the ring itself. Ordering her ships to advance with all haste Twilight ordered Savo 'Sralcamee, the Shipmaster of the Sacred Inquisitor to begin recording a message. “To the Human ship, the UNSC Pillar of Autumn. You have trespassed upon holy ground, you are to use all of your momentum to turn away from the ring and disable your weapons systems, should you turn away from heresy and submit yourself here you shall be treated fairly, no harm will come to your crew should you disable your weapons and turn away from the ring I swear this upon my honour. I am Inquisitor Twilight Sparkle” Twilight rolled her jaw as she finished recording her message, hopefully the humans would see reason in this place, surely even they would not dare to blaspheme in this holy place. The chase continued and the Pillar of Autumn had no doubt received her message, it would have taken about fifteen minutes to reach them and about nine minutes for any response to reach her. Task force three was far closer and would be the first to receive any response that was offered, Twilight could only hope The Prophet would respect the lifeline she had offered the Human ship. Just Minutes before Task force three would intercept the Pillar of Autumn, closely followed by Task force one and two, then finally her own task force, the Humans responded. “To the Covenant and the ‘Inquisitor’, I am Captain Jacob Keyes of the UNSC Pillar of Autumn, my official response to your ‘request’ is as follows, go to hell” instantly following the message the Pillar of Autumn disengaged its primary engines and activated thrusters on the ‘side’ of the ship spinning in place but maintaining the momentum carrying it towards Halo. For a moment the ship appeared to coast, flying sideways towards the ring before its fore was lit with fire, its main cannon roaring brightly, in the same motion it returned to its course and fired its engines again, such agility had rarely been reported in a human ship and never in a ship of this size. At first Twilight had feared for the ships of the task force three, they had after all been closest and were not the most powerful ships in the fleet. But the cannons shot, a deadly trinity designed to break though the shields of Covenent ships. Had missed the task force by quite a wide margin. The shot seemed to simply miss, a warning shot? Confusion turned quickly to dread as the trajectory of the deadly weapons was made clear. Far outside of the effective range of the Human ship Just Cause had accelerated to a speed well beyond its normal rating, clearly eager to join battle with the humans, but such a terrible speed meant that any attempt to maneuver without slowing first would cause critical structural damage. Just Cause saw its doom approaching far too late, it tried to turn, risking the entire ship buckling in order to maneuver using its most powerful engines in an effort to avoid the deadly projectiles. The hull warped and twisted, bright blue fluid leaked from the cracked ship like lifeblood from a terrible wound. Then the shields lit light from the impact of the first shot, the second and third found no such resistance, in an instant Just Cause was reduced to twisted metal and corpses. Whispering a prayer Twilight turned back to the battle at hoof, Task force three had entered effective weapons range with the Pillar of Autumn, yet no main weapons had been fired. A closer scan found that Task force three had deployed its entire inventory of insertion pods and was currently using its point defence systems to pepper the Human ship with barely any noticeable effect. The reasoning for this madness was made clear as a message finally reached her ship. “By the will of the Gods I hereby call upon my authority as Prophet, Reclamation protocol is now in effect, my first decree is thus, no main weapons are to be fired upon the human ship, the risk to Halo is too great! Any who defy this command shall be declared a heretic and shall be fired upon.” Task force one and two met with the Pillar of Autumn and again the human ship turned its terrible weapon firing and Twilight watched in horror as Boundless Awe was reduced to nothing. More boarding pods and point defence fire, bright orange blisters coated the hull of the Pillar of Autumn and in response the ship fired its cannon again and Esteem was no more. Communications blasted through unencrypted channels as Task force four met the battle, screams of fear, anger, death and madness filled her ears. The final words still echoing from the dead and the horrible cries of those who would soon join them. The communication chatter from boarding teams painted a bleak picture, the first teams had been deployed to detonate explosives to destroy the cannon but from what Twilight could gather the operation had been countered with the deployment of Demons.  “Inquisitor! What are your orders?” Twilight snapped her head to the Shipmaster, the old campaigner was outwardly calm but curiously, his left leg was bouncing up and down. Twilight looked at the display again and found fear grip her heart, she could not disobey Reclamation protocol, it would do nothing but incense the manic zealots. It was a stupid thing to test the resolve of those who would seek paradise in death. “Deploy insertion pods and focus all supplementary weapons fire amidship, aim for the ‘U’ in the UNSC painted on the side, if we can melt the plating in that area we might be able to dig deep enough to disable one of the reactors.” Savo 'Sralcamee nodded and gave the order just as the Human ship twisted once again and fired. Pilgrim was torn apart less than a second after the Pillar of Autumn fired, there was quiet on the bridge of the Sacred Inquisitor for a moment before Savo slammed his fist into his command throne. “Damn that foolish so called Prophet!” he swore drawing gasps from the bridge crew, Savo ignored them and continued.  “If our hands were not bound in such a foolish way this Pillar of Autumn would have not survived to fire a second time!” Twilight glanced about, finding her eyes meeting quite a few of the Sangheili bridge crew as they cast fearful glances back in her direction. “Its true” Twilight felt her heart skip a beat as she spoke, the thrill she supposed, of sounding as a heretic “The Prophets fear of damage to Halo stems from ignorance, a missed plasma torpedo would cause nothing but superficial damage to so grand a structure.” Tension that had swallowed the room suddenly dissipated, even with the screams of the dead and dying and occasional rumble of human missile impact on the shields there was a palpable air of relief. Had the bridge crew feared her response? Had they presumed she would act in ignorance? Death and destruction filled her senses, how could she lie to herself when the truth was staring her in the face. The Prophet of Stewardship was responsible for the deaths of thousands today. “Shipmaster! The Humans are abandoning the ship! Dropships, escape craft, even the fighter craft they are using them to land on Halo!”  “Like rats fleeing a ship” Twilight tapped her chin before engaging the fleet wide communications “This is the Inquisitor, All insertion pods, use the empty Human escape craft bays to deploy” Moments after Twilight issued her orders she began to see Insertion pods rush towards the empty life pod bays and the Pillar of Autumn spun as if in direct response to her order and faced Sacred Inquisitor, Twilight had enough time to shout out a warning before her world went white. As consciousness slowly returned to Twilight the little mare let how a low nicker of discomfort, her head was pounding and with each breath she felt searing pain as what felt like lacerations and burns pressed against medical gel. Opening her eyes to take in her situation Twilight found herself staring at thick, fluffy Bluish plumage. One of her Honour Guards was naked and sat quietly over her, a common reaction from the protective warriors. When a Griffons charge is wounded they would provide medical attention, move the charge to a defensible location and build a recovery nest, the behaviour was less training or culture and more like a deeply ingrained instinct, Twilight hardly considered her condition ‘wounded’, more lightly singed in any case. Tapping the Griffons side to get the colossal bird to snap out of its meditative dozing Twilight swallowed a few times to soothe her sore throat. “Report” There was a pause as the Griffon picked herself up and stepped to the side to allow Twilight some measure of dignity as the Unicorns horn lit and Twilight ran through a series of spells to detect any real damage to her body or mind. “A few hours ago the Human ship fired upon this Battlecruser before disgorging the humans in many transports onto the surface of the ring. The Sacred Inquisitor suffered extensive damage but the angle of attack and one of the shots missing meant that the hull buckled rather then suffered a penetration however four forward decks were exposed to the void.” Twilight blinked away the cobwebs in her brain and got to her hooves, the stinging from her wounds serving to ground her firmly in consciousness. Her magic detecting nothing of note, not even a concussion, was comforting. She noted that the griffon who had sat over her had begun to don its armour once more. “Good, good... A penetrating shot would have driven a hole through the entire ship, wait no no... Not the entire ship it would have stopped after about six hundred meters, the hanger or so, less if it passed between decks, still more than enough force to pass though the bridge, I would be dead at least.” Twilight chewed her lip only to find it cracked and bloody. “The energy from the weapon transferred to the hull and though the hull to the crew, that rendered me unconscious but not dead, but I was on the bridge...” Twilight worked her jaw, to dispel the stiffness. “The bridge is suspended in a shock absorbing lattice independent of the superstructure, any force that would render me unconscious would have crushed any crewman located in the forward sections of the ship utterly” Twilight turned to look at her Honour guard. “Your assessment of the damage is accurate Inquisitor” the griffon bowed her head in respect to the many dead as Twilight stomped her hooves in frustration. “That short sighted, ignorant, stupid excuse for a Prophet!” the purple mare shook her head and turned back to the griffon as her shouting drew in the rest of her guard, and her pilot, from an adjoining room. “What is that status on the Human ship? Are there still holdouts?” Twilight looked at her attendants as the looked anywhere but at her. “Inquisitor, the boarding parties were destroyed by multiple Demon formations operating thought the ship, it is still under Human control and is currently on a collision course with Halo, at its current velocity it would be dangerous to deploy any more forces, they would die when the ship impacted Halo’s surface anyway.” Her Pilot at least had the heart to look her in the eye as she reported this embarrassing mess of a battle. “The Humans are landing forces on Halo... How many are we detecting?” Twilight pushed past her attendants as she spoke, her Guard had taken her to one of the armouries, thankfully one that was very close to the bridge. “I don’t know Inquisitor, the ship began firing single occupant insertion pods at the ring and dropping a lot of mass to wreak havoc with our sensors. Then dropships, about twelve, were deployed and the fighter craft, four of them, then single use craft were fired at the ring, I don’t know how many, we destroyed only a few of them, so many made it though our fighter screen.” Twilight stepped over and around wounded but still quite alive crewmen as she pushed towards the bridge. “What kind of mass was deployed? Human ships don’t make use of such crude systems normally.” “Decoys, each of them displays as a weak lifesign and is about the same size as one of the insertion pods, they were ejected at the same time as the insertion pods but were quickly identified and ignored. But they saved quite a few of the insertion pods.” “Interesting... The humans deployed the ‘decoys’ when they began the acceleration towards Halo?” “Yes, it seems that is when the Humans decided to abandon the ship and crash it” The bridge was dilapidated, consoles had been utterly ruined in a dozen ways, blood coated the floor from the unlucky ones who had suffered far worse injuries than Twilight had and coolant pooled in dented floor plates. “Inquisitor” the shipmaster glanced at her when she entered the bridge with her attendants. “It is good to see that your wounds were minor, I was surprised by how much you bleed”. “I am quite well, I hope you did not suffer any wounding?” Twilight trotted forward, any damage to the Shipmasters screens had been quickly repaired. “Nothing, thrown about like a toy and nothing to show for it, my wife will be disappointed” Twilight smiled and shook her head. “My Pilot reported that the Human ship has deployed ‘decoys’ what was done about them?” Savo 'Sralcamee shrugged and tapped at a display. “They were deemed tactically insignificant and largely ignored, there are hundreds of them.” Twilight nodded. “Put a claim marker on them, I want them all collected and in our cargo bays.” Savo looked at her quizzically but Twilight continued. “Has the Human ship impacted Halo yet?” “No Inquisitor, the ship has maneuvered in such a way as to slow its decent and land rather then crash directly.” Savo displayed the ship on one of the displays. Even as Twilight watched the ship was making adjustments to its trajectory, in a few moments it dawned on Twilight what such activity meant, no simple computer could manage such a landing. “What a stupid discision” Twilight could feel a grin on her face and had to hold back a laugh. “Inquisitor, as far as I have seen only our dear Prophet has made tactical errors?” Savo leaned back as he examined the screen. “The Human bridge crew, that heretic Jacob Keyes, he is still onboard.” Twilight turned, giddy, towards the Shipmaster “We can capture him!” “How do you know he is on that ship? We have no operatives on the ship to report this, any adjustments could be conducted by a computer or a human artificial intelligence.” “No no no. Any artificial intelligence would have been destroyed or spirited away with the evacuation, it's how humans act to deny valuable intelligence. Anyway, look here!” Twilight lit her horn to manipulate the image, zooming into a dull grey deckplate with a lump in the middle “A single escape ship that has not been fired and it is located just over a hundred meters from the bridge of the human ship.” Savo frowned, squinted his eyes at the image, then turned to Twilight and looked Thoroughly unconvinced. “Would a human Shipmaster risk his life like this? He could have left other humans to change the ships course while he fled or simply programmed a computer to perform a landing.” Twilight shook her head. “Humans don’t trust each other, they like to keep a tight grip on information and expertise, it would not surprise me if this Jacob Keyes was the only one outside of an artificial intelligence that could control the ship at all. Anyway, we will need to capture any humans who use that last escape ship, we will follow the ship and then deploy a dropship to follow the escape ship to its landing when its deployed” “We have orders from the Supreme Admiral”  “What does he want us to do?” Twilight shifted the display, the rest of the fleet was in disarray, some of them were trying to find survivors in the debris of the destroyed ships and the rest were rapidly deploying whatever ground forces they had onto a hilly continent on the surface of Halo the majority of the humans had fled too. “His orders are to remain in orbit and conduct repairs” “I have no intention of deploying any of my capital ships as staging grounds, that would slow the repairs massively anyway. All I will require are some dropships to go and collect the Human bridge crew.” Twilight smiled and checked to see if the main hangar was damaged. “That is an interpretation of the Supreme Admiral’s orders...” Savo paused, searching for the right words. “You are following his orders in part but knowingly acting in a way that is outside of his orders, there are other forces deploying, no doubt they will collect whatever human is on that last escape ship” “My presence is currently unnecessary, Shipmaster Figa 'Nrazumee of the Penance and you are more than capable of managing the repairs in orbit, I will not be of any aid here. You are to follow the Supreme Admiral’s orders, follow my orders to recover the ‘decoys’ and act as commander of the fourth task force in my absence, oh and don’t tamper with any of the ‘decoys’.” Without waiting for a reply Twilight left the bridge. As the Equestrians left Savo 'Sralcamee slumped and shook his head. “Females.” Following in the wake of the Pillar of Autumn proved to be more dangerous than Twilight had anticipated. Great yellow and white blisters of superheated metal coated the ship from the point defence fire of capital ships, sections of the Human ship were crumbling and falling away and yet somehow the whole thing continued to display a seemingly impossible agility without the superstructure of the ship warping at all. Twilight would have to board the ship after it landed to discover why exactly this unassuming human ship was so durable and was able to operate with such extensive damage. In the upper limits of Halo’s atmosphere the escape ship fired and began to make its descent, the majority of the humans had landed on a hilly green continent, a few had landed on an island chain that dotted the sea between the hilly green continent and the desert continent the Pillar of Autumn was going to land upon. Following the rapidly moving escape ship the Covenant squadron, a Type 52 dropship, two Type-25 transports and a wing of three Type-26 Ground Support Aircraft, tracked its descent to a small island with a large Forerunner structure jutting out of its middle. The island was about four hundred meters wide and had an irregular semicircle shape, a thick band of jungle separated the sandy beach on one side of the island and the large steep mountain on the other. The Forerunner structure struck out from the jungle and seemed to climb the mountain with steep spires connected with thin walkways, it was unclear how much of the structure extended into the rock or if it was entirely a leaning structure. It did dawn on Twilight however that the entire ring, even the very natural looking island, was a Forerunner structure. The human craft had dug a shallow ditch as it impacted the sandy beach, a black line that reached from the shoreline to the jungle outskirts were the craft was wedged between a clump of large tropical trees. “The treeline will offer them a lot of cover from the air.” Twilight mused, the dropship was cramped with her entire guard present as well as a Sangheili Major and a Kig-Yar Major, both commanders of the forces she had brought with her, looked over her at the holographic display. “The humans will rush into the treeline and the Forerunner temple, it's unlikely that they will have many warriors with them, I however predict the presence of a Demon.” N'tho 'Sraomee added crossing his arms. “I doubt we will find a Demon here, reports from the continent are filled with claims of Demon presence, the humans only have a limited amount, they cannot be every were.” Tath Kem fiddled with her carbine as she spoke, adjusting the weapons connection to her eyepiece. “This is a human shipmaster, a force of authority in human ranks, one will be here to protect him.” N'tho replied as Twilight looked back at him. “Reports indicate that forests and jungles are the preferred environments of Demons, how do we approach this?” Tath looked at N’tho as the Sangheili carefully thought though the question, after a moment she let out a bark of frustration. “It would be stupid to just walk into a Demon hunting ground, if there is even a Demon about. We should just burn down the entire thing.” N’tho tapped one of the armour plates that protected his lower right jaw. “We have three Ground support craft, two scouts and a mortar tank, deploying on the beach we can strafe the ground section by section while bombarding the forest with the tank.” he nodded as if satisfied with the plan. “Except we need to capture the humans, not burn them to a crisp.” Twilight sighed and looked back at the display “Anyway such a plan would put any forces we land on the beach in danger of being shot from the treeline the moment the humans realised our intentions, our problem is that we don’t know what the humans have with them and every moment we wait allows them to get deeper into that structure.” Tath pointed at one of the many spires that jutted out from the mountainside.  “They are too small to land any forces on but can’t a Griffon just fly over there and walk in?”  “We don’t know how large the facility is, sending any of my Honour guard inside could deny them to us for the entire operation” “Sending any of them into the Jungle is a death sentence, they are in bright white armour, you could spot them no matter were they are. You are not much better” Tath pointed a talon at Twilight's soiled clothes, her pure white and purple uniform had been torn and soiled, dark brown splotches from dried blood and medical gel covered the little mare but she was still dressed brightly enough to standout massively in the jungle. “My Guard and I have active camouflage systems and energy shields, I can promise you that they will not nearly be as exposed as you think.” “There is nothing else we can do, we must simply disembark our ground forces and scouts and follow the main path through the jungle to the temple.” N’tho paused before adding “First a scout supported by a force of Unggoy, I suggest all fifteen we have brought with us, then the Inquisitors party with active camouflage to give the impression of a gap in our lines, then the rest of our forces with the other scout as a rearguard.” “You want us just to walk right in?” Tath rubbed her head. “Any human with a rifle is going to let the Unggoy pass, be unaware of the Inquisitor, spot the two of us and paint the trees with our brains!”  “Then our Inquisitor will know the position of the Human and her Griffons will quickly eliminate them” N’tho smiled “besides, I doubt the human will get more then one shot off before he died, who shall they fire upon I wonder?” Tath made a clicking yap sound as Twilight gave the order to deploy on the beach, even a terrible plan was better then doing nothing. The sky was a moody orange and the sea was a sparkling deep blue as Twilight took her first steps on Halo. She could hear more then feel the pale sand crunch, a thin layer of sand and salt had fused together in the warmth of the day only to be broken with the Unicorns presence. It seemed wrong, sacrilege, like she was dirtying this place with her very presence. She moved forward away from the gravity lift and towards the treeline, her body was utterly concealed by the light bending technology she carried with her. Twilight lit her horn and pulled her plasma pistol from its magnetic lock, she had carried the weapon at her side thoughtlessly for so long, it was dated now she supposed, more of a collectors item then a weapon of war, she could not see it, even a foot or so from her head and held in nothing but magic it was still concealed as light bent around the deadly thing. Crunching, that was her only indication that her guard had formed around her. She could not see them at all but she knew that all of them were more than aware of her exact location, the distinction between an academic political officer and a warrior. Behind her the two Majors, Tath and N’tho touched the beach and quickly hurried to the loose grouping of covenant milling about the beach and looking into the dark treeline, Looking at the human escape craft. The island was not quiet, with dozens of conversations between the fifty or so covenant regulars and the screaming, dizzying cacophony of sound emanating from the thick band of jungle on this island. Birds filled the sky, a hundred flying in lazy circles and even more perched on rocks and trees gazing down at the strange new inhabitants. As Twilight stepped forward she could see figures in the trees, hunched little things with glowing fingers and spines jumping from tree to tree and gazing out over the odd activity on the beach though compound eyes, a sea of strange white bugs collected into little balls in the puddles that dotted the beach in its low tide before being swept away when a weak wave crept up the beach sending the bugs out to sea. Twilight approached the Human craft. It had torn a tree apart as it fell from the sky, ripped though the ground and blackened the sand and earth from the heat of its atmospheric entry. It was vile, a terrible work of art all the more galling in its simplicity. The faint hoofprints in the sand left by Twilights presence were painful, a necessary disturbance of the most beautiful of creations. What the Humans wrought was nothing short of heresy. Trotting carefully into the treeline, doing her best to make as little sound as possible, Twilight looked into the shadowy interior of the craft, her hoof touching the Human made metal. It was slick, warm, wet, wrong and as her eyes adjusted she saw the prone figure, a Sangheili, slumped in the middle of the craft, blood coated the wall on one side and a great deal of his face had been blasted away, his lifeblood left to drip out from the craft onto halo. A murdered captive? A grim trophy of war? What compelled this horror was lost on the Inquisitor. Twilight turned away, the first group of Covenant, a single seat scout Vehicle with a group of sixteen Unggoy had began to move into the jungle at a slow pace. There was a dirt path into the island from the beach, a parting of the trees and bushes that so densely packed the landscape around it, no doubt nature here simply respected the will of the gods. Twilight and her Guard fell into step behind the Unggoy, her pistol felt heavy in her arcane grip as she began to pray. Just as the great continents and the smallest insect upon the holy ground of halo were servants, instruments of the divine, so she too would serve. The infection, the parasite upon this ring would be burnt away by her righteous intent. And the sun set as the Equestrian marched to war.