>>4647511
>>Check your surroundings, where the hell are you?


I thought you were dead.

>>4647511
>>Check your surroundings, where the hell are you?
Total mission success

>>4647511
>Check your surroundings, where the hell are you?

>>4647511
>Check your surroundings, where the hell are you?

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You carefully patted around the area where you lay with your right hand and quickly came to the realization that you had been lying in a standard cot in some darkened room. Swinging yourself to the side, you sat upright and let your feet touch the cold metal of the deck. Starship floors usually had some level of heating, though you would never have been able to tell from the sudden chill that danced across your feet. Usually, the feeling would have been quite unwelcome, but the fact that it took your mind off the dull throbbing pain in your side was enough to stymie your ire.

You had to wait for a few seconds as your eyes adjusted to the dark, so while you waited, you listened out for anything other than the gentle thrum of the ship's reactor. You could hear the sound of multiple EKG machines, the small devices dutifully beeping out the heart rate of the people they were attached to. You could hear the sound of multiple people breathing, some breathing lightly, some breathing heavily. Either way, you knew that you were in a room that had been turned into an improvised medical ward.

And the ward was packed.

As your eyes adjusted to the dark of the room, you began to make out more and more of the medical ward. By your chemically-addled count, there were a dozen cots in the room, including yours. The cots were arranged against the walls, with portable monitoring equipment mounted to the walls next to the occupants. The lights were off, draping the room in almost total darkness. The few pin-pricks of light coming from the screens of the monitoring equipment and the little red light of the security camera mounted on the wall opposite to the door.

You couldn't tell who occupied the other beds, though you assumed that they were sleeping off surgery anesthetics. Putting people in cryo while they were under often-times resulted in their chances of survival going down the toilet, and given how the occupant of the bed closest to you seemed to be missing part of their leg, you assumed that everyone in here had received the tender mercies of the auto-surgeon.

Tender is definitely the operative word there... you though to yourself as you gently dabbed at your left forearm with your right hand. Sure enough, most of it was covered with a thin plastic film, probably to cover an equally thin layer of gauze over the actual wound.

>Check around the cot, is there something to wear?
>Gather yourself, how did you get here?
>Call out, was someone asking for you?
>Other (write-in)

>>4647591
>Check around the cot, is there something to wear?

See if we have our comms earpiece near us

>>4647591
>>Check around the cot, is there something to wear?

>>4647591
>Check around the cot, is there something to wear?

You knew that you couldn't stay there. Not because it's your obligation as the captain to be on the bridge, but because it was surprisingly chilly in the improvised medical ward, and you don't want to stay around for too long. As such, you carefully lent over and strained to reach under the cot for anything to cover yourself with. It only took a few seconds before your fingers brushed up against the lip of a small, standard-issue footlocker. You carefully dragged it out, keeping mindful that the other people in the room needed to rest. You undid the latch on the front, and carefully lifted the lid up. With the room left in darkness, you'd have to fumble around for a bit as you got dressed, but that was to be expected from your wounds alone.

You had barely pulled out what you assumed was a shirt when you heard a quiet -but still noticeable- buzzing noise from the wall to your left. You instinctively looked over at it in time to be almost blinded by the sudden light. You instinctively turned away and blinked a few times to avoid the sudden light. But when you turned back, you found yourself looking at the two-dimensional image of a young woman in a dress that had been designed before humanity first took to the stars. The woman looked at you and smiled as you recognised the figure.

That was your AI, and the person responsible for your surgery, Diana.

The image of the AI tapped her ear with her right hand, before pointing roughly in your direction. You figured out after a few seconds that she was gesturing to the footlocker, and was probably trying to imply that there was an earbud in there. Sure enough, after a couple of seconds, you found a small, one-inch box that contained a standard communications earbud. You carefully put it in your right ear and was rewarded by the sound of the AI's voice.

"Captain, can you please nod if you can hear me?" The AI asked, her voice remaining neutral as she asked you to answer her. You simply nodded, earning you a smile from the AI's avatar.

>Ask Diana a question (write-in)
>Keep quiet and get dressed, you can ask her what's going on once you're out of the room.
>Other (write-in)

>>4647690
>Keep quiet and get dressed, you can ask her what's going on once you're out of the room.
Best not disturb the others.

>>4647690
>>Keep quiet and get dressed, you can ask her what's going on once you're out of the room.
"When i am out of the room, we can talk about the mission."

>>4647690
>>Keep quiet and get dressed, you can ask her what's going on once you're out of the room.

>>4647690
>>Keep quiet and get dressed, you can ask her what's going on once you're out of the room.

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"When I am out of the room, we can talk about the mission." You instructed the AI, speaking low and trusting the earbud's in-built microphone to pick up what you had said.

Diana didn't respond, the AI seemed to figure out what you were planning to do and left you in relative privacy as she switched off the utility screen that she had projected her avatar onto. To replace the light that had been put out by the screen, she turned on the room's lights at a low setting, giving you just enough light to see what you were doing, without actually waking the other people in the room up. Still, a couple of people groaned in their sleep at the sudden increase in light. You carefully put on the grey tunic -most likely ONI's equivalent to the standard navy version- and took care not to agitate your torso wound my moving too much. It was still a relatively long and uncomfortable affair between your two wounds, but eventually, you got it in place. Following on after that was the set of trousers, socks, working shoes, and a belt. Finally, a baseball-style cap filled out the rest of the uniform. Strictly-speaking, the cap wasn't necessary, but you hadn't had a shower since just after you left cryo, and you didn't know what state your hair was in, so you decided not to chance turning up on the bridge with bed-hair and put it on.

It didn't pass your notice that the belt was lacking the pistol and holster that was usually mounted on it.

With your clothes on, you carefully stood up, making sure to use the frame of the cot for support as you stood up. You took a second to stretch, letting out the tension in your body with some standard stretches. You could probably do it as you walked, but you didn't want to fall over because you had decided to do two things at once. Still, the minute or so it took to limber up gave you some time to think.

>Look around the ward, who else is here?
>Leave the room, Dyad is probably waiting for you on the bridge.
>Other (write-in)

>>4647758
>>Look around the ward, who else is here?

>>4647758
>Look around the ward, who else is here?

>>4647758
>Leave the room, Dyad is probably waiting for you on the bridge.
Grab a coffee from a machine outside and something to eat while walking. We need some energy

>>4647758
>>Leave the room, Dyad is probably waiting for you on the bridge.

Need a tiebreaker

>>4647758
>Look around the ward, who else is here?

You decided to take it slow and look around the ward on your way out. Both so that you could get an idea for how many people had needed surgery, and how that broke down between soldiers, civilians, and scientists. Not to mention that you also wanted to avoid going too fast and falling over, checking on each of the beds would be a great way to pace yourself.

At least, that's what you had thought. As you walked around however you found that actually identifying the wounded was harder than it looked. The scientists and civilians all looked the same, to the point that the only one you were able to peg as a scientist was the woman in the bed across from yours, you had seen an elite blow her leg off to captured her. The marines and ODSTs were easy enough to pick out, their neural implants marked them out as combat personnel. The link between your command neural implant and theirs was probably being facilitated by Diana, the AI was probably using your earpiece as part of a bridge between the permanent implants. It was definitely a weird feeling to look at someone, and instantly know their name, rank, and serial number. Still, you took notes of the injuries, most of them being either burns or complete amputations. Not that amputations were an inherently debilitating thing, medical prosthetics had come very far after all. All UNSC ships carried 3D printers, and with either some specialised equipment and a good doctor, or an AI, a new limb could be produced and fitted within a few days. Actual recovery and physical therapy was another thing entirely though, but if you worked on a warship then you could be back at your post in a matter of months.

You were about to leave the ward when a new connection to your neural implant stopped you in your track. You looked down at a woman lying in one of the beds and felt your breath catch as you recognised her in an instant.

"Dyad?"

Your XO lay in one of the cots by the door. Gauze covering the right side of her face. Aside from that, she looked fine. Her arms were nicked in a couple of places, but she wasn't missing any limbs. She was sleeping peacefully enough, her breathing was strong and steady. Hell, she was even snoring a bit. Still, it was a shock that your XO had wound up in the same place as you.

Just what the hell happened while you were out?

Congratulations Wells, this is definitely going to look good on review. You thought to yourself, before carefully leaning down, and patting your XO on the shoulder. She didn't stir, which told you more than enough about the number of drugs in her system. As such, you walked out of the room, pausing one last time to look around.

A baker's dozen wounded in here, not counting yourself, how many more would already be in cryo?

>CONT

>>4647889

You walked over to the door, opened it with a few taps on the keypad, and walked out, letting the bill of your cap block out the worst of the light as you walked into the ship's hanger. The door closed behind you, leaving you alone in the empty hanger, most of the crates containing ablative panels and repair equipment having been left behind on Arcadia after repairs had been effected.

>Head up to the bridge, you need to know what's going on.
>Head to the mess hall, you need something strong.
>Ask Diana a question (write-in)
>Other (write-in)

>>4647891
>Head up to the bridge, you need to know what's going on.

>>4647891
>Head to the mess hall, you need something strong.
Not too strong, we only have the one kidney for the moment.

>>4647891
>Head up to the bridge, you need to know what's going on.
Now's not the time for drinks.

>>4647891
>Head to the mess hall, you need something strong.

>>4647891
>>Head up to the bridge, you need to know what's going on.

>>4647891
>Head up to the bridge, you need to know what's going on.

File: prowler bridge.png (1.2 MB, 1920x1080)

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Wasting no time, you turned and walked towards the door that would lead you back towards the stairs that would lead you up to the cryo bay, and past that the bridge. You strode over to the door, opened it, and immediately turned and walked the other way as you realised that you had gone the wrong way, and had been heading towards the mess hall.

You were hungry, that was to be sure, but you had a standard to uphold damn it.

After finding your way aft, you took a left up one of the sets of stairs going up past the escape pod silos. Part of you hoped that you wouldn't have a situation where you'd need to use them, the increased number of people aboard would take up valuable seats. And being the captain, tradition demanded that you be the last person to abandon ship. Of course, there was the option to try and use a cryo-pod as an improvised escape pod, but you'd rather not chance it. The pods weren't designed to survive re-entry.

Speaking of the cryo pods, you checked how many pods were occupied and found another dozen pods already occupied with a mix of injured and uninjured people. You recognised one of the occupants as the head-case helljumper that you had recovered from the ONI research camp. It made sense to put the people who had cracked into cryo, the prowler barely had the facilities to handle the wounded as-is, looking after them was simply impossible.

You arrived on the bridge a few minutes after leaving the cryo bay, having only stopped to check out the medical bay and the number of supplies remaining. The door to the prowler's bridge opened silently, giving no warning or hint to the people on the bridge that an officer had just entered their midst.

"Captain on deck." Diana called out over the bridge's speakers, ruining any chances you had to observe them silently. Almost as one, the assorted ensigns turned stood up and saluted, while the two other officers on the bridge simply had to turn to face you. Both of them stood on the raised dais in the middle of the room, apparently having been talking with Diana, who's holographic avatar stood on the small holotank installed nearby.

The taller officer was the ODST that you had recovered from the ONI black site. Lieutenant Antonwicz still wore his burnt, battered and bloody BDUs, though apparently, he had changed his bandages, he gave you a slight grin as he saluted, one that you hoped was born out of respect.

The shorter officer was the ONI spook who was originally meant to be your tactical advisor for the mission. Lieutenant Karmann was barely half the height of the helljumper, but you could already tell that he had been the one calling the shots while both you and Dyad were asleep.

And behind them all, out of the bridge windows hung Arcadia. The world that you had almost died on.

>Ask for a situation update, why are you in space?
>Ask for a report, what happened while you were out?
>Other (write-in)

>>4647999
>Ask for a report, what happened while you were out?

>>4647999
>>Ask for a report, what happened while you were out?

>>4647999
>Ask for a report, what happened while you were out?

"At ease. Lieutenants, what happened while I was out?" You released everyone back to whatever they were doing before you entered the room, instead turning your attention on the two ranking officers. While you could infer what had happened merely from the wounded, you wanted them to explain what had happened.

"Well, after you went under from surgery, me and Lieutenant Commander Dyad assaulted the old UNSC FOB that the covenant was holed-up in. You know, the one in the ruins of the ONI alpha site." Lieutenant Antonwicz began the explanation, beating the smaller ONI officer to the punch. "Diana softened up the base with a volley of missiles before we hit the ground, and we deployed with two eight-man squads, sixteen men in total."

"We hit the Covenant forces hard, and the Lieutenant Commander provided valuable operational recommendations during the mission. In spite of that, we still lost a significant number of men during the assault. We recovered the scientists as planned, though only six of the ten total managed to survive. During the operation, we lost another six marines with a couple more wounded. Additionally, another two armed crewmen were killed and six more were badly wounded. We hit the Covenant pretty hard too, multiple elites dead including at least one Zealot. During the assault, the prowler engaged and shot down a Covenant dropship that was attempting to land reinforcements. We remained ground side for a little under a minute, before dusting off." The helljumper gave you a brief explanation about what had happened planet-side. You were surprised that another Zealot had gone down, weren't they meant to be the Covenant's equivalent to special forces? Still, eight dead and six wounded to recover six scientists wasn't a good trade, you just hoped that it was worth it.

Having apparently grown tired of the ODST hogging the spotlight, lieutenant Karmann continued with the impromptu briefing before the other Lieutenant could speak again. "With all other members of the command staff out of action, I took command of the ship and took us back into orbit. There was nothing else to do planet-side, and with the information pulled from the Zealot you had killed, we already knew that a Covenant fleet was incoming, so staying in-atmosphere wasn't a good idea. We tended to the wounded, though a seventh scientist died of their wounds before we could get them into cryo. Right now, we are currently in orbit around Arcadia, close to one of the lagrange points."

>Ask about the Covenant, how long until their fleet gets here?
>Ask about the innies, how are they looking?
>Ask why you're still here, shouldn't you be going?
>Ask about the Zealot, who killed it?
>Other (write-in)

>>4648211
>Ask about the Covenant, how long until their fleet gets here?
>Ask about the Zealot, who killed it?

>>4648211
>Ask about the Covenant, how long until their fleet gets here?
Sounds bad.

>>4648211
>>Ask about the Zealot, who killed it?
>Ask about the Covenant, how long until their fleet gets here?

>>4648216
Backing

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"Another Zealot? Who got that kill?" You asked, as you looked around for the camping chair that you had pilfered on your first day aboard. Thankfully, it was folded and strapped to one of the posts on the dais. Part of you assumed that the zealot kill was a team effort, but then again, you had killed one yourself with the power of stolen gear and a combat knife.

"That would be the Lieutenant Commander, ironically enough she was using your shotgun at the time." Antonwicz smiled, before asking. "Say, did they pull you two out of helljumper training or did you both just get lucky?"

"Given how the two of us are going to be on medical leave for a while once we get back home, I'm gonna go with the latter." You answered with a smile, before walking over to where your seat was stashed. Standing was imposing and all, but it was uncomfortable as hell.

"Then I feel bad for any poor hinge-head that tries to board your ship. Here, lemme handle it." Karmann stated, before helping you with your seat. Surprisingly enough, it only took a few seconds for for the one officer with two working hands to get the seat free, and a few more to set it up.

"Any idea when the Covenant are gonna show?" You asked the two as you sat down, the seat was nothing special, but you'd take it over remaining standing.

The two lieutenants were quiet before Karmann answered. "That's the thing sir, they should be here by now."

"Not that it's our problem, sir. We can bounce now without having to worry about them being around to track our vector out." Antonwicz stated, and you could tell what his argument was. He wanted to leave immediately. Not that you blamed him, sitting around and watching a world burn wasn't something you wanted to see either.

>Spool up the slipspace drive and leave, you're done here (WILL END THE MISSION)
>Stay and wait, you have a duty to see how this ends.

>>4648263
QM thank you for coming back. You give me hope.

>Stay and wait, you have a duty to see how this ends.

>>4648263
>Stay and wait, you have a duty to see how this ends.

Ok, I'm gonna call it here for today. You can still vote as this is somewhat important, but I think we know where the wind is blowing.

Thanks a lot for the turnout, I'm honestly surprised that this many people would show up. I'd figured that after a year wolfpack would have been a long forgotten memory, I'm happy that isn't the case. It really means a lot after how shit this year has been. I'm sorry that I just up and left one day, but work amped up one day and didn't stop for a while.

Anyways, like always, If you have any questions then feel free to ask them and I'll answer them before we start tomorrow.

>>4648315
Dont forget to shill yourself on the QTG

>>4648263
>>Stay and wait, you have a duty to see how this ends.

>>4648263
>Stay and wait, you have a duty to see how this ends.
Remain ready for leave in case we are in danger. For now let s continue with the briefing.


>>4648315
Yours was a great quest. And after the last mission there is more than one or two people that should still remember it.

>>4648263
>>Stay and wait, you have a duty to see how this ends.

>>4648263
>Stay and wait, you have a duty to see how this ends.

>>4648315
Ive been anxiously awaiting your return thunderhead! Great to have you back.

>>4648315
Welcome back man

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"We'll stay here and wait, we need to see this through." You decided after a couple of seconds. While you didn't want to witness the death of another world, you were obliged to see the mission to its end. If only so that the rest of the UEG would know what had happened here.

And so, you waited. While the prowler you commanded had never been designed for comfort or combat, it excelled at staying hidden and waiting. Against the covenant, prowlers were the only class of ship that consistently managed to survive encounters with covenant fleets. Against the innies and their unsophisticated sensors, the prowler could roam around practically unhindered. If you wanted to, you could have easily packed up your gear and be gone in under an hour.

You decided to leave your network of observation drones out in the void, the clarions would easily show up as lingering space debris on the rebel's screens, while the smaller and stealthier black widows could evade detection and record data. The network over Arcadia gave you a perfect means to monitor what was going on around Arcadia while you waited for the hammer to fall.

"How is this anything other than a delayed death sentence?"

You couldn't help but think back to your XO's stance on what was about to hit the world. She wasn't a fan of the idea to not tell the innies of what was coming, and you were in the exact same boat. It was hard to justify leaving them in the dark, especially when you had already completed all of your objectives. You couldn't save the colony, and chances were that you wouldn't be able to save half of the people planet-side, but you couldn't bare to do nothing.

You could also understand the reasons for leaving them in the dark. Leaving things to play out would inevitably kill off a significant number of people who would otherwise be trying to raid supply lines and steal weapons bound for the frontline of the war. And it wasn't like the UNSC was already implicated in what had happened here. A massive cyber attack wipes all ships in the area of their navigational data just a couple of hours before the Covenant butchered the world? You didn't need to take what would be a rumor and make it into a known fact.

>Warn the innies about the attack. (???)
>Leave the innies in the dark.

>>4649142
>Leave the innies in the dark.

>>4649142
>Leave the innies in the dark.

>>4649142
>>Leave the innies in the dark.

>>4649142
>>Leave the innies in the dark.
We can hope they kill some covenants before they all die. Get a drink later on, saving them is what we would want to do but it goes against everything us and our soldiers have done today.

>>4649142
>Warn the innies about the attack. (???)

>>4649142
>Leave the innies in the dark.
Big F for the innies

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You clenched your fist and cursed yourself for what had to be done, but you didn't have a real choice in the matter.

What could you do? Send out a warning on all bands that the Covenant would be showing up in some indeterminate amount of time? The innies wouldn't listen unless you included some proof, and if the Covenant spec-ops team you had just encountered was smart, they'd simply grab their dead and leave with the only evidence to mark that they had ever truly been there. All you would serve to do was announce your presence, and give any survivors something other than the Covenant to cast their hate upon.

You couldn't think about it anymore. If you kept trying to justify your actions then you would just make yourself feel worse. Instead, you focussed your attention on something else. And you found something else to occupy yourself with.

The innie ships were still on guard from the cyberattack that you had launched before heading planet-side. What you assumed counted as the planet's defence fleet had broken down into five separate flotillas, each one lead by a Stalwart-class light frigate. You still didn't know how the innies had gotten their hands on all of the ships, though from what you could gather from the one that had just slipped its moorings, you guessed that most of them had been hulked in combat and left by both sides. It was pretty standard practice for UNSC prowlers to return to the site of a battle to mark out dead ships for recovery. Most of the time, there was a decent window of time between when the Covenant would leave the scene of a battle, and when their salvage ships would arrive to rend the UNSC ships apart for their base materials. So it would make sense for the innies to try and pick out some wrecks that UNSC salvage flotillas had ignored.

That also meant that there was at least one leak in fleetcom, you'd include that in your report.

>CONT

>>4649267

Going back to the innies, they backed their captured frigates with converted merchant vessels and pleasure craft. Small vessels that probably originally lacked a slipspace drive, and probably relied on targeting data from the frigates to hit anything. Small flights of old fighters and converted gunboats filled in the gaps for them, providing some slight increase in firepower. They weren't lacking for orbital defences either, your sensors found active weapons signatures from a wide variety of stations and converted asteroids in orbit of Arcadia and her two moons. They ranged from small modular stations with a couple of archer missile pods, all the way up to what you assumed were improvised orbital defence platforms. The innies seemed to be using a mix of scavenged military-grade MAC guns and overcharged civilian mass drivers to form some vague imitation of the defensive grids found over valuable inner colonies. And while you couldn't see them, you were damn sure that there was at least a couple of commercial nuclear demolition charges mixed in there, just waiting for the activation signal to be given.

All in all, the defences around Arcadia were extensive and well-armed by insurrectionist standards, it would have made them a tough nut for the UNSC to crack with the few ships that could be spared from the front. If you had to guess, it would have taken at least a carrier group to have broken through the defences here, and the UNSC couldn't spare that many ships.

Against the Covenant, however, they'd be lucky to manage even a single kill.

Still, you ran the numbers, back and forth through your head, matching force projections against the strength the Innies had to hand. And none of it came back good. Against the fifteen or so ships of a standard glassing fleet, the innies would be slaughtered with only a kill or two to their names. They could probably give a bloody nose to a smaller fleet lead by a single battlecruiser, but even that would probably slaughter them.

You were sat there trying to figure out a scenario where the innies could win when the words you had been dreading were finally called out.

"Slipspace rupture detected."

>CONT

File: Covenant Armada.png (619 KB, 1200x500)

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>>4649270

Your eyes shot up as the automated message was played out of the bridge's speakers. It only took a couple of seconds for the prowler's powerful camera array to be focussed on the incoming approach vector, but in those few seconds, you would swear for the rest of your life that you could practically see the slipspace tears where the Covenant fleet was emerging from, so many ships dropped out of FTL almost at once that you could almost see the dancing flickers of light caused by the momentary tears in reality as the ships entered real-space.

And your heart stopped cold when the feed from the camera was finally projected on the screen above you. Dozens of ships had dropped out of slipspace in the first couple of seconds, and more were arriving before your eyes. The wave of Čerenkov radiation from the sudden arrival of that many ships tripped a couple of nuclear detonation alarms on a station in front of you. And at the head of it one -no, wait- two assault carriers. The largest ships in the Covenant armada, fleet-killers in their own rights, had come to reap destruction upon Arcadia. To call what you were seeing a "battle fleet" would be misleading, you were looking at an execution force.

There would be no battle here, only slaughter.

>Sit and watch, there is nothing else to do.
>Spool your slipspace drive, it's time to go.

>>4649274
>>Spool your slipspace drive, it's time to go.

>>4649274
>>Spool your slipspace drive, it's time to go.

>>4649274
>>Spool your slipspace drive, it's time to go.

>>4649274
>>Spool your slipspace drive, it's time to go.

>>4649274
>>Spool your slipspace drive, it's time to go.
glad you're back, thunder

"Diana, spool up the drive. We're bugging out." You ordered as the prowler's onboard systems logged the individual drive signatures of the two carriers, over a dozen cruiser-class warships, and dozens more destroyers and lighter escort vessels had already appeared with more on the way. And all of them were either charging their primary energy weapons, or they were already charged and awaiting firing solutions.

"Diana, hold off on charging the drive, plot us a route out first. Captain, we shouldn't be running." Lieutenant Karmann ordered, before turning to face you. His face was pale, but he kept a stern-set expression. Behind him, the unit-markers for the insurrectionist vessels slowly started to move as they reacted to the new and murderous arrivals.

"If we stay here, then they will find us. With that number of ships, they definitely have the numbers to saturate the orbital space around Arcadia and find us. And with that much firepower here, we won't last long enough to make an emergency jump." You answered as the first spears of angry blue and red light shot between the Covenant armada and the outmatched defenders. You didn't need to look up at the screen to know how badly those first shots had hit the innies.

Karmann took a second to think, before rephrasing his argument, taking a calmer tone. "Captain, I know that you are used to the more... common way of encountering the Covenant. But allow me to reiterate that prowlers are designed to handle these odds. There's a reason why only a handful of our sister-ships have been lost throughout the war."

"And you think that we can take this risk? Would you really put our mission in jeopardy in order to watch a world burn?" You asked flatly, ignoring the pathetically one-sided engagement that you had a front-row seat to.

"Yes." Karmann answered, but he specified his answer before you could draw him up on it. "I would risk the rescue of some scientists to watch one of their worlds burn. If putting ourselves at risk for a few days or so gets us the break we need to hit one of their resupply points -or better yet, a habitable world- then by god we should take that chance!"

You... you could see where he was going with this. It would mean extending your mission out here by a substantial margin. And by extension, stretching your onboard supplies to their absolute limits. But at the same time, it could give the UNSC the lucky break it needed to go on the offensive for once.

>CONT

>>4649387

Well, that or you follow some Covenant ship into unknown space, and never return home due to a terminal case of plasma exposure.

Although, a happy middle ground could be staying around long enough to record the Covenant fleet's exit vector. You remembered that the vice-admiral did unofficially ask you to stick around long enough to try and find info on Covenant mustering points, and recording their exit vectors would give a good amount of info. Unless the Covenant were following the UNSC's example and were stringing multiple jumps together to make vector tracking practically useless.

>Follow Karmann's advice, and follow one of their ships through slipspace. (roll 1d20)
>Stay around and record their exit vectors, you can have someone else follow it up.
>Disreguard his suggestion and leave, you're not about to put the mission in danger.

>>4649390
>Stay around and record their exit vectors, you can have someone else follow it up.
Not a good idea to throw ourselves out of position without preparations.

Rolled 5 (1d20)

>>4649390
>>Follow Karmann's advice, and follow one of their ships through slipspace. (roll 1d20)

>>4649390
>>Stay around and record their exit vectors, you can have someone else follow it up.

>>4649390
>Stay around and record their exit vectors, you can have someone else follow it up.

>>4649390
>>Stay around and record their exit vectors, you can have someone else follow it up.
>we are in no shape to follow up.

File: covenant destroyer supported.png (879 KB, 571x800)

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You considered the lieutenant's words as you watched the battle unfold in orbit of Arcadia. Then again, to call it a battle would make it seem as if the defenders even had a chance. Granted, the human fleet and their orbital defenses put up a gallant fight. Charged mass drivers and scavenged MAC guns fired almost as one into the oncoming Covenant fleet, pouring fire into the few ships that had charged ahead of the pack, battering their shields away and peppering their hulls with fire. Quick-firing mass drivers poured fire into shield-less ships as the first and only volley of missiles left the ships that launched them. Almost all of the missiles failed to reach their marks and were annihilated in a barrage of pulse-laser fire along with the few pilots who had bravely flown their craft towards the Covenant fleet in a vain attempt to do anything to stop the slaughter. The few remaining missiles that hit their mark included a single nuclear-tipped weapon, the blast registering it as a civilian-grade demolition device. The weapon must have been fired on a bearing, rather than at a specific vessel, as the device detonated between a pair of covenant cruisers. One of them must have lost its shields, as part of its hull was burned away while the other hid behind its shield.

The covenant fleet didn't give them a chance for a return volley. Energy projectors slashed out and practically vaporized most of the innie fleet in a single strike. Of the actual warships, one of them was put down for good after being practically dissected by multiple capital-ship grade plasma beams, while the other was vaporized with a single blast from the main energy projector from the leading assault carrier. The three remaining vessels had been obfuscated by Arcadia itself, having been patrolling the other side of the planet when the attack began. The two supporting flotillas and gun-stations facing the enemy fleet were destroyed in short order, almost all of them gone before they could fire again.

"Captain, I have calculated the slipspace jump. Should I charge the drive?" Diana called your attention back from the slaughter, and back to the question that was still hanging in the air.

"Delay that, we'll watch for their escape vectors." You answered quietly, before turning your attention back to the Covenant fleet.

The fleet had split up into four distinct groups. The first and the second groups went straight for Arcadia's moons, having probably been assigned to destroy any stations that hung in orbit over them, and to glass any habitats on the moons themselves. The third group held the majority of the fleet and slowly moved into low orbit over Arcadia, repeating a dance that had been performed over every human world the Covenant had dragged into its murderous embrace.

>CONT

>>4649548

The fourth group, on the other hand, was more interested in killing the rest of the innie fleet than the world itself and threw themselves into low and fast insertion courses to get themselves in amongst the three remaining defense flotillas, which were moving to hold the space above the town of Abaskun, the last vestige of civilization on the planet. You had no doubt in your mind that jackals commanded those Covenant ships, they were the only race that seemed to throw caution to the wind enough to risk burning up in the atmosphere in order to get a kill.

Their fast approach gave this improvised group a significant speed advantage and dipping ever-so-slightly into the upper atmosphere played merry-hell with the innie's missiles. And even the orbital MAC-guns had trouble tracking them, as some of them couldn't track around fast enough to acquire the incoming ships. Still, the innies poured fire into the Covenant outriders, and for the first time in the battle, actually seemed to score a kill. A covenant corvette's engines were shot out from beneath it, leaving the ship to fall into the planet's gravity well. A frigate had a faithful meeting with a pair of nuclear devices and disappeared from your sensors. But still, more ships made it past the barrage, and into close-quarters. Another frigate used it's momentum to crash straight through a converted merchant ship, letting its shields take the brunt of the impact. A pair of jackal raiders ignored the defense fleet entirely, instead focusing their attention on slaughtering civilian shuttle craft that were trying to escape into orbit. The brutal, close-in fighting lasted for around five minutes before the Covenant group broke away, having lost a couple of smaller ships in return for practically decimating the rebel defensive fleet.

On the other side of the planet, the execution was about to begin. The main Covenant fleet had formed up into two lines, stretching from pole to pole. The first being made up of the assault carriers and cruisers, with the smaller destroyers following around a hundred miles behind them. For some reason, the Covenant had apparently started to start their glassing operation above the alien ruins that ONI had set up their old alpha site next to.

>Try and get a feed from the alpha site, what does it look like from the ground?
>Keep watching from above, you'd rather not dredge up some bad memories.

>>4649551
>Try and get a feed from the alpha site, what does it look like from the ground?

>>4649551
>>Try and get a feed from the alpha site, what does it look like from the ground?

>>4649551
>Try and get a feed from the alpha site, what does it look like from the ground?

File: alpha site overlook.png (1.8 MB, 1600x748)

1.8 MB PNG

"Diana, can you bring up a feed from one of the cameras at the ONI alpha site?" You asked your AI, you'd only be able to get a couple of seconds worth of a recording, but the shot alone would probably have some intelligence value.

"Of course, standby." Diana responded, before shuffling the orbital feed of the Covenant fleet to the left-most monitor. It took a couple more seconds before the screen crackled into life as the AI forced machinery that had been practically dead for close to two decades back into life. The camera feed came in at a jaunty angle and was rife with static for the first few seconds before Diana could stabilise the feed and clean up the shot. But even from the first few seconds, you could make out the telltale concrete plateau of the ONI alpha site, and the jungle beyond it.

And hanging above it all was a single assault carrier, five-point-three kilometres of brutal weapons and powerful shields, all wrapped up under the lumpy and weird aesthetic of Covenant ship-building. The bulbous bow and stern were connected by a deceptively thin-looking neck, and what appeared to be a kind of city-scape that hung to its hull like barnacles. A glowing blue-white orb of searing hot plasma grew under the vessels snout, like a savage dog frothing at the mouth.

The image alone sent shivers down your spine, this was not something you felt comfortable watching.

Diana turned the camera away from the ship and instead turned it against a handful of dropships that seemed to be flying alongside it, their cargo doors open to expose the pale forms inside to the heat and radiation of the glassing beam. You quickly realised that most of the kneeling forms inside the dropships were human prisoners, but not all of them. Mixed in among them were some jackals and a couple of elites that must have done something abhorrent to suffer such an execution.

The camera feed zoomed out, returning once again to watch the carrier as it made ready to end a world.

>Roll 1d20

Rolled 3 (1d20)

>>4649615
>>Roll 1d20

Rolled 17 (1d20)

>>4649615
May the dice gods help us

Rolled 18 (1d20)

>>4649615

Rolled 14 (1d20)

>>4649615

File: Glassing.jpg (110 KB, 1536x1152)

110 KB JPG

The feed from the camera slowly started to degrade as more and more power was pumped into the carrier's glassing beam. Static cracked across the recording like heavy rain on a ground car's window, even in spite of Diana's best efforts to keep it stable. Despite that, you think you saw something around the carrier's hangar. Or what you assumed was a hanger, why else would there be a massive gap in the hull right under the ship's neck?

And with one last burst of light, the feed abruptly cut out. The final discharge of plasma having finally killed the connection to the planet. Almost as one, the entire bridge crew looked out the main window, and saw a single pinprick of light erupt on the surface of Arcadia, followed by more as the rest of the fleet began their butcher's work.

"Diana, can you clean up the last ten seconds of the ground side recording?" You asked the AI as everyone was preoccupied watching the world below you burn. Diana complied silently, and in a few seconds had the recording up and playing on repeat over the central screen.

"What do your squid-eyes see?" Antonwicz quietly asked you, his eyes torn between what was happening to the planet, and what you were looking for on the recording.

"Diana, zoom in on the hanger-like structure at the base of the carrier's neck. Set playback speed to fifty percent." You ordered as you saw the same flash over and over but couldn't make out if that was a fault in the recording, or if you had just about spotted something.

"Stop!" You snapped, and the playback froze two and a half seconds before it cut out. There, just about highlighted in the massive plasma discharge from the carrier was a shape that was far too smooth and uniform to be a glitch in the recording.

"What's there?" Antonwicz asked, still staring at the still, unable to really see what was there.

"I might be wrong, but I'm pretty damn sure that a something just slipped aboard that carrier." You explained, before standing up and pointing at the screen. Diana seemed to know what you were thinking and placed a dot on the screen where your finger was pointing. You roughly marked out the odd displacement over the carrier's hull with the improvised cursor, highlighting it to the two lieutenants.

"Are you sure, sir?" Antonwicz asked very carefully, his tone measured, but obviously concerned. You turned to face him and looked dead in the eye of a man who thought that you were cracking under pressure. "I know that this is a tense situation, but I don't see anything there."

"I think I see it. Diana, can you highlight the area that the captain circled?" Karmann took your side, though, from the sounds of it, he was just as unsure as you were about what was there. Regardless, Diana did as she was told, darkening the area of the hull around the section you had highlighted in order to bring out what you had only just managed to glimpse.

>CONT

>>4649697

The ODST was silent for a couple of seconds as he looked back at the screen, before then sighing. "I'll take your word on it, but I still don't think that there's anything there."

You took that as enough, before looking back at the orbital feed. This time being projected from a satellite overlooking Abaskun. The camera let you watch as the few shuttles and transports on the ground immediately dusted off and streaked into the sky, and a few more dived down into the atmosphere to try and evacuate as many people as possible. A couple of freighters hung in lower orbits, putting themselves at risk of being trapped in the planet's gravity well to get the shuttles aboard faster.

The glassing fleet was still practically on the other side of the planet, but they managed to get a line of sight on the fleeing shuttles. There was a flash of light before a sudden blast of plasma slashed at a close group of shuttles. The beam had lost some energy passing through the kilometres of atmosphere and must have been unfocused a bit to increase the diameter of the weapon, but even then it was enough to burn the shuttles out of the sky with no effort at all. Still, the shuttle crews were either brave or foolish, as they continued making their runs. They countered the incoming attacks by increasing the spacing between them so that only a couple of craft could be destroyed in each shot. The freighter captains on the other hand, lit their engines and burned away from the planet after the first shot. Shuttles still managed to make it aboard and drop off some more people, but after a couple of minutes, the freighters reached the minimum safe jump altitude and left the planet -and the shuttles that were just a minute too late to catch them- behind as they jumped into the relative safety of slipspace.

Almost immediately, however, a pair of heavy destroyers in orbit over the other side of the planet turned to match the freighter's vectors and dipped back into slipspace. They must have been forwarded tracking data from the assault carrier and were rushing to follow the human vessels wherever they ran, so that they could destroy them the instant they returned to realspace.

The few remaining innie orbital defences turned to fire on the glassing fleet, only to be enveloped by a swarm of fighters. You hadn't seen the Covenant fighters deploy from their motherships, but their arrival spelt doom for the remaining survivors. Of the three Stalwart-class frigates that had once defended the area, only one remained in any way mobile. This last frigate was trying to dock itself to another frigate's dorsal hardpoints to carry it away from the slaughter. Both vessels were filling the void around them with missiles and gunfire, but against the onslaught of fighters, it was just too much, and the intact frigate was forced away from its crippled comrade. A minute later, the crippled ship finally went critical and exploded as it's reactor overloaded.

>CONT

File: Covenant mark.png (2.03 MB, 1600x1067)

2.03 MB PNG

>>4649699

With the only other warship destroyed, and the last shuttles into orbit either magnetically docked to the outer hull or dead, the last frigate turned-tail and ran, leaving people stranded planet-side to their fate.

They didn't have to wait long, which you supposed was a mercy. The Covenant carrier reached Abaskun only an hour or so later, trailing fire and glass in its wake. What probably took years to build up and return to civilisation was reduced to glass and ghosts in only seconds. It was a process that was repeated across the planet. From the ruins of Fort Deen and Pirth City, to the tiny farming communities across the Mu continent. The smoke and ash from the bombardment concealed a lot of the damage, but even through kilometres of black clouds, you could see rivers of molten rock and glass from space. It took only a couple of hours for the first wave of Covenant ships to make their round of the planet, and twice as long for the second wave of destroyers to melt the rest of the world in their wake. By the time the last of the Covenant ships lifted up into high orbit, the beautiful blue-green holiday world was a distant memory, replaced by an angry brown and red hunk of rock and fire. You didn't need to look at the moons to know they had suffered a similar, but less horrific fate.

But before the Covenant fleet left for good, they had one last insult to lay upon the world. The assault carrier charged it's glassing beam one last time, and carved a glyph of some sort into the surface of the planet. You didn't know what it meant, but you didn't need to know the exact meaning to understand the threat behind it. And the promise, that the Covenant would not stop until they were victorious.

With their mission of murder done, the Covenant fleet simply turned away from the planet, and made to jump into slipspace. As if what they had done was just... unremarkable.

>Follow one of the Covenant ships. There needs to be some sort of vengeance for this.
>Record their exit vectors and return home. There's nothing left to do.
>Other (Write-in)

>>4649702
>>Follow one of the Covenant ships. There needs to be some sort of vengeance for this.

>>4649702
>Record their exit vectors and return home. There's nothing left to do.
Job's done time to head home.

>>4649702
>>Record their exit vectors and return home. There's nothing left to do.

>>4649699
>Record their exit vectors and return home. There's nothing left to do.

>>4649702
>Record their exit vectors and return home. There's nothing left to do.

>Record their exit vectors and return home.
We will get justice one day, just not today.

>>4649702
>Record their exit vectors and return home. There's nothing left to do.
It's time to leave.

>>4649702
>>Record their exit vectors and return home. There's nothing left to do.

>>4649702
>Record their exit vectors and return home. There's nothing left to do.

File: covie fleet.jpg (141 KB, 1600x900)

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"Diana, start logging their exit vectors. Prioritise the carriers." You instructed as the fleet pulled away from the ruins of Arcadia. With the destruction of Arcadia complete, you could turn your attention to the two moons. Both of them were largely unaffected by the glassing that they had endured, largely due to the fact that neither of them had an atmosphere or ecosystem to be destroyed in the first place. Still, the molten sections of their surface that had once accommodated mines or surface habitats could be seen with the naked eye, like angry red bug bites.

Curiously, neither of them seemed to be marked with a symbol similar to the one recently burned into Arcadia.

Regardless, you turned your attention back to the fleet in time to see them leave. The telltale blue flashes of slipspace portals appeared just off the bows of the Covenant ships, which they then dove into, leaving the system through those tears in reality. The carriers once again lead the fleet out, followed by the larger combatants, and then their escorts. You glanced up at the main screen in time to see only a couple of exit vectors appear. You assumed that was good, if they were following humanity's lead and were jumping on random vectors, then you'd expect that number to be far higher. Of course, that also assumed that they were being sloppy and were jumping directly to their end destinations. If they were breaking their journey up over multiple jumps, then they'd be almost impossible to track.

"Exit vectors recorded and logged. Orders?" Diana asked as the final radiation bursts from the Covenant fleet hit your ship, leaving the prowler alone in the graveyard.

"Spool up the drive and jump back to Reach. There's nothing else here." You ordered, before getting up and walking off the bridge. There was nothing else to do, and you had other things to do.

>Get into cryo, you want to be in better shape for your inevitable surgery.
>Get something to eat and write your report, you ought to get that sorted while it's still fresh in your mind.
>Other (write-in)

>>4650601
>>Get something to eat and write your report, you ought to get that sorted while it's still fresh in your mind.

>>4650601
>Get something to eat and write your report, you ought to get that sorted while it's still fresh in your mind.

>>4650601
>Get something to eat and write your report, you ought to get that sorted while it's still fresh in your mind.

>>4650601
>>Get something to eat and write your report, you ought to get that sorted while it's still fresh in your mind.

While you wanted nothing more than to spend the trip back to Reach in blissful sleep, you still had a few things to do before you could steal away inside one of the pods. Namely, you needed to write up your report on what had happened since you arrived in-system. In order to get the energy required to do that, you needed something to eat and drink to stay awake. You retrieved a data-pad from one of the storage lockers set into the walls, before making your way down to the mess hall to grab something. On your way past the cryo bay, you noticed that more of the pods were filled than you originally realised. More than what you assumed were iced for medical or psychological reasons.

"Most of the scientists and civilian contractors elected to enter cryo in order to reduce the strain on resources and to give the lightly wounded time to recover while en-route home." Diana explained as you inspected one of the pods. You simply nodded and the answer, before continuing past the pods and down into the hanger bay. You entered the cavernous room to find a couple of marines floating by the ceiling, having turned off the artificial gravity systems to hang a divider curtain from the ceiling. Another pair of marined floated by the wall to your right, where they were setting up a basketball hoop.

"Hey, skipper! Gravity should be good on your side, just don't cross over the line we've marked with red tape." One of the marines noticed your arrival and called out the warning. The rest turned to you but didn't straighten up or salute. Generally speaking, saluting or acting formally in a zero-g environment was avoided in order to focus on staying safe and secure, so you let it slide. You thanked the marine, and let him get on with his job. With many of their pods being occupied by the civilians you'd picked up, they'd need a way to stay healthy and occupied during the trip home. And without a dropship to worry about, the hanger was just waiting for someone to make use of it. Besides, the mess hall would probably be used exclusively for eating and maybe watching some films, so moving the exercise equipment into the hanger would work wonders for ensuring that the two would have ample space.

You entered the mess hall to find a couple of engineers and marines eating and relaxing. A couple of them acknowledged your arrival but didn't move to salute you. Like in the hanger bay, this was for practical reasons, but not for safety purposes. Smaller ships like corvettes often lacked an officer's mess, so the officers and the enlisted would share the mess hall. Such shared mess halls were practically neutral ground, where everyone could relax without really having to worry about rank and all. You figured that the same applied for prowlers, as they seemed to have a similarly cramped internal layout and spent longer out on patrol.

>CONT

>>4650745

Either way, you left the men to what they were doing and walked over to one of the auto-chefs installed against a wall. Sat somewhere in between the loathed food and drink dispensers installed on older UNSC ships, and the larger automatic cooking assistants installed in most modern mess halls. The auto-chef could "cook" meals with some help from either the ship's AI or from a pre-selected list of dishes. Diana had apparently taken control of this particular unit, as it was already putting a dish together by the time you walked up to it. You only had to wait a couple of minutes before the meal was done, and you could take it to sit down.

As your butt hit the bench, your coms bead crackled into life. "Captain, lieutenant commander Dyad has woken up, would you like to see her before she enters cryo?"

>Call Dyad over, you want a word.
>Let her head to cryo, she deserves her rest.

>>4650748
>>Call Dyad over, you want a word.

>>4650748
>>Call Dyad over, you want a word

>>4650748
>>Call Dyad over, you want a word.

>>4650748
>>Call Dyad over, you want a word.

>>4650748
>>Call Dyad over, you want a word.

File: wounded, but thirsty.jpg (161 KB, 1000x1414)

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"Is there somewhere private we can use?" You asked the AI as you looked down at your meal, a mixed dish of vegetables and a steak with gravy. Given that this was a prowler, there was a good chance that the steak was made out of actual meat rather than the substitute that most people had to eat. Having good quality food was worth paying out of the nose for -if your mission happened to include putting a bunch of people on a tiny ship- and it wasn't like ONI was hurting for a budget. While you could just warm it up in a microwave, you still felt a bit unhappy to leave it.

"Mission bay two should suffice. It's right next to the ward and the door should block out most of the audible noise. I'll tell her to go there." Diana told you where to go as you got back to your feet, you'd take your drink with you at the very least. You took a sip of your drink, before turning and retracing your steps back into the hanger. You entered to find that the marines had got the divider curtain in place, and were chatting amongst themselves in zero-g. Though you couldn't make out exactly what they were saying, you assumed that they were arguing over if they were going to play basketball or gravball, the only real difference between the two being if there was gravity or not. You ignored them and walked over to the mission bay where your XO was waiting.


The room had been fitted out to carry your clarion spy drones and their launch tube. The launcher assembly dominated the middle of the room, with the four drones sat on their racks against the wall. The drones were left bare, though you could make out impact damage from tiny bits of space debris. Some tech would have to make repairs on them, but thankfully, he seemed to be putting that off. You walked around the launcher module, and into the back of the room, where you found your XO waiting.

One arm in a sling, the other one holding a bottle wrapped in a crumpled paper bag and some disposable cups. She looked up at you with her one remaining eye and smiled as much as she could with a cup in her mouth.

>Write-in

>>4650811

>You look like you fought a meat grinder and lost

Help her out with the cup

>>4647511
Holy fuck I hadn't expected this too come back, Dope.

>>4650811
>Missed me?
>Let me help you with that.

>>4650811
>>Write-in

>Kept you waiting huh?
>Help with cup

>>4650841
support

>>4650811
"SO what happened after i had to see the doc's?

File: submarine torpedo bay.jpg (96 KB, 613x900)

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"Kept you waiting, huh?" You asked with a smile, before reaching over and plucking the cup from her mouth. Your XO chuckled as you sat down, leaning up against one of the walls. You slowly sat down opposite her, making sure to take it slow.

"Nah, I was just getting comfortable." She said as she set the bottle in her lap and pulled the paper bag down, revealing a bottle of some cheap store-bought alcohol. She'd probably grabbed it as soon as she heard you were shipping out again, you didn't blame her, grabbing a bottle for the road was pretty common in the fleet. She struggled with the plastic wrapping around the neck of the bottle, before looking up and saying. "You look like shit."

"I look like shit? You look like you fought a meat grinder and lost. Here, lemme do it." You replied with a chuckle, before taking the bottle off her. The hilarity of the situation wasn't lost on you, the two of you by all rights should be in hospital beds, maybe even in induced comas. Instead, the pair of you were having drinks next to some multi-million credit equipment on a ship that you didn't even want to know the price tag of.

You pried the packaging off the bottle and poured the drinks, stopping only to hold onto something when Diana announced that the ship was jumping into slipspace. The mission bay had the feel on an old-timey torpedo room, and had more than enough hard-edges to break yourself on if the transition into slipspace was rough. The liquor was cheap and probably had a low alcohol percentage, though given that you were running on one liver, it'd take less time for you to start feeling it. Dyad downed her drink almost as soon as you poured it, so you topped her up before downing yours.

"So... it's finally over." Dyad sighed as you sipped your drink, you nodded to her over the rim of the disposable cup. The soon-to-be commander was silent for a couple of seconds before looking you dead in the eye.

"There's something wrong, isn't there?" Dyad asked, and you realised that she knew you well enough to know the reason why you had called her down here.

>"Is there something else I could have done?"
>"It doesn't sit right with me, what I've done."
>"Why are we here? This isn't our job."
>Other (write-in)

>>4650913
>"Is there something else I could have done? Alot of good men and women got hurt or died. Same song and dance as always."

>>4650913
>>"Is there something else I could have done?"

>>4650913
>>"Is there something else I could have done?"

>>4650913
>>"Is there something else I could have done?"

>>4650913
>>"Is there something else I could have done?"

>>4650913
>"Is there something else I could have done?"

>>4650913
>"It doesn't sit right with me, what I've done."
I wanna avoid working with spooks as much as possible.

"Is there something else I could have done?" You asked the question that had been playing off your mind ever since you had stepped foot on the bridge. You couldn't shake the feeling that there was something else that could have been done, something that you had missed.

Your XO was silent for a couple of seconds, before sighing. "Do you mean from an operational point of view or a moral one?"

You simply nodded, wordlessly telling her to give you both sides to the answer.

"Alright, I'll start with the former." Dyad said, before lifting her arm and gesturing towards the wall that you shared with the empty bay turned medical ward. "We came here with an empty bay that could have carried more marines, some combat drones, or something else. Instead of that, we came in without the ability to soak casualties, and both of us paid the price for that. We were not prepared for a worst-case scenario, and that's on you."

"At the time we were only expecting to have to pick up the base's personnel, not fight spec-ops teams, so I set that space aside for them. Perhaps I shouldn't have." You nodded at her operational assessment and gave your reasoning for why you had seemingly chosen to skimp out. The extra cots had been useful, but you had gone in expecting an easy ride, when if your last mission was anything to go by, ONI never had anything close to an easy operation.

"Fair enough, now onto the moral side of it." Dyad took a slug of her drink, before continuing. "There's nothing else we could have done without violating orders. Look, sir, I know how you feel. Frankly, I wish we could have done something too. But we had our orders, and it's not your fault for following them."

>"Saying that I was just following orders isn't a defence."
>"Do you really see it in such a clear-cut way?"
>"Who do you blame then? There has to be someone.
>Other (write-in)

>>4650986
>>"Do you really see it in such a clear-cut way?"

>>4650986
>Thanks XO, can always count on you.

>>4650986
>"Do you really see it in such a clear-cut way?"
Doesn't make it suck any less.

>>4650991
supporting

>>4650986
>>Thanks XO, can always count on you.

>>4650986
>>Thanks XO, can always count on you.

File: 1550350103617.gif (1.74 MB, 372x302)

1.74 MB GIF

So are just okay with what we did from a moral standpoint, or are we trying to get into Dyad's pants? Read the room, if it's the latter.

>>4651036
Yes.

>>4650986
>Thanks XO, can always count on you.

File: 18891552_1431055140266373(...).jpg (88 KB, 1920x1080)

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"Thanks XO, can always count on you." You thanked Dyad for her council. It wasn't lost on you that you seemed to lean on her every time a mission didn't go well, and you were glad that she was at least willing to give it to you straight.

"That's why I'm here!" Dyad raised her cup to you, you raised your cup back, before you both finished your drinks. It'd take a bit of time for the two of you to go through the rest of the alcohol, and she'd have to do the lion's share of the drinking, but aside from that,

"So, where to after this?" Dyad asked as she presented her cup to you, you filled it up for her. Leaning over to reach her cup was a very weird feeling with an organ missing, but you put up with it.

"I'll be getting assigned a destroyer, I'll see how much of the crew I can bring with me but they might be held on the Dawn. It's up to you if you want to come with me." You replied as you poured yourself another cup of weak alcohol. The orange liquor was obviously some kind of mixer drink, something to water down vodka or whiskey, but you'd take it.

Dyad looked back at you with a slight frown, before carefully asking why. "What makes you think I'll jump ship?"

>"The Dawn will need a new commander, and guess who's probably in for a promotion when we get back home?"
>"Getting a replacement eye is gonna take you out of the fight for a decent length of time."
>"At this rate, I'm gonna be in ONI's pocket. Do you really want to tie yourself to me?"
>Other (write-in)

>>4651052
>>"The Dawn will need a new commander, and guess who's probably in for a promotion when we get back home?"
>>"Getting a replacement eye is gonna take you out of the fight for a decent length of time."
>>"At this rate, I'm gonna be in ONI's pocket. Do you really want to tie yourself to me?"

Pretty much all of these.

>>4651052
>"The Dawn will need a new commander, and guess who's probably in for a promotion when we get back home?"

ya all of them fit really well actually Lol.

>>4651052
>>"The Dawn will need a new commander, and guess who's probably in for a promotion when we get back home?"
>>"Getting a replacement eye is gonna take you out of the fight for a decent length of time."
>>"At this rate, I'm gonna be in ONI's pocket. Do you really want to tie yourself to me?"

All of the above.

Also I think you meant Kidney instead of Liver. we only have one liver. 2 Kidneys.

>>4651036
nah man, no panty raiding. Just Xeno killing.

>>4651036
Im more interested in Diana personally.

>>4651085
>He only has one liver

>>4651052
>>"At this rate, I'm gonna be in ONI's pocket. Do you really want to tie yourself to me?"

>>4651100
Did I read that wrong?

>>4651052
>>"At this rate, I'm gonna be in ONI's pocket. Do you really want to tie yourself to me?"

>>4651036
Yes

>>4651052
>"At this rate, I'm gonna be in ONI's pocket. Do you really want to tie yourself to me?"

You grunted as you tried to figure out a diplomatic way to put it, before eventually deciding to just give the three best reasons for why you figured she wouldn't be joining you. You figured that she wouldn't care too much for the bluntness.

"Firstly, getting a replacement eye is gonna take you out of the fight for a decent length of time. Prosthetic or cloned-in, getting it put in is going to take you out for a couple of months. Secondly, the Dawn will need a new commander, and guess who's probably in for a promotion when we get back home?" You pointed out the first two reasons, before sighing and admitting to the one thing that you had been trying to avoid since you received word that ONI wanted to see you as soon as you were promoted. "And at this rate, I'm gonna be in ONI's pocket. Do you really want to tie yourself to me?"

Dyad was silent for a couple of seconds, before putting her cup down, and holding up one of her fingers. "Firstly, what's to say that I can't just put an order in an order for a cloned eye or a prosthetic and then go out on patrol? It'll be waiting for me when we get back, and I can recover on the patrol after. Besides, I'm pretty sure that I can't actually get replacement bodyparts anyway, some of my family members are lacking for limbs and can't get proper replacements."

She raised a second finger for her second point. "Secondly, that assumed I'll both be offered a promotion and command at the same time, which after only a couple of missions in my current station, is highly unlikely. Besides, if the rumour mill is anything to go by, then you might not be able to keep both the frontline posting and your current rank."

Finally, she raised her ring finger as she answered the last of your reasons. "Finally, if ONI really is gonna try and shove you in their pocket, then they're gonna have one fuck of a hard time doing it while I'm around. If I leave, they'll assign some heartless stooge to take my place, and at that point, you'll stop being an actual commander."

"Boss, I'd like to think that we're friends. So I'll put this frankly. If I didn't trust your calls then I wouldn't be here, I'd be back in the Epsilon Eridani system trying to find a new ship. So would you trust me a little bit here?" Dyad gave you a small smile as she affirmed her loyalty to you, before pointing her finger at you. "But don't go thinking that I'm gonna let my standards slip though, you start taking me for granted and I'll hand-pick my replacement."

"I wouldn't want it any other way." You smiled back at your XO. While you didn't like that she was willing to put her service before health and promotion, you were glad that she was firmly in your corner.

>Ask her about her family's condition. Why would she join the fleet if that was a known issue?
>Ask about the rumor. Why won't you be able to keep both your ship and your rank?
>Ask about something else (write-in)
>Shut up and drink, you just want to enjoy the company for now.
>Other (write-in)

>>4651146
>>Ask about the rumor. Why won't you be able to keep both your ship and your rank?

>>4651146
>Ask about the rumor. Why won't you be able to keep both your ship and your rank?
>Mumble softly about Muh ship

>>4651146
>Ask about the rumor. Why won't you be able to keep both your ship and your rank?

>>4651146
>Ask about the rumor. Why won't you be able to keep both your ship and your rank?

>>4651151
supportin

You sat in silence for a minute or so, simply enjoying the low-content liquor. Soon enough though, your curiosity got the better of you, and you broke the silence with a question. "So what's this rumour you've heard?"

"Ah, an old friend of mine from basic said that the new chief of naval ops is planning a rank reshuffle. A lot of things are gonna change, but pretty much everyone is going to be in for either a demotion or a new assignment." Dyad put the blame for the changes at the feet of the new CNO, and you couldn't help but believe her outright. It was pretty normal for new CNOs to make some sweeping change in the first couple of years of being granted the office. And ever since the last one officially stepped down after three colonies were glassed in as many months by a single covenant fleet back in '47, the office had been pretty quiet ever since.

"Captains are gonna get bumped up to oh-sixes from oh-fives, which is gonna exclude them from commanding escort vessels like destroyers and frigates. And there aren't enough cruisers rolling out of dock per-year for all of them to command, so that means a lot of 'em are gonna have to give up their stripes." Dyad finally dropped the part of the rumour that mattered to you.

"So, what? A bunch of captains are gonna get the choice between commanding a warship or commanding a desk?" You asked with a frown. You had only just been promoted, and now this was coming along? You knew what your choice was going to be, but it still felt like a slap in the face.

"I'm not gonna lie boss, I don't think there's gonna be a lot of choice in it." Dyad shrugged as much as she could, before hissing and rubbing her upper right arm.

>Ask her about her family's condition. Why would she join the fleet if that was a known issue?
>Ask about her arm. Why is it in a sling?
>Ask about something else (write-in)
>Shut up and drink, you just want to enjoy the company for now.
>Other (write-in)

>>4652145
>Ask about her arm. Why is it in a sling?
"Heard you managed to take down a Zealot. Nice job."

>>4652145
>Ask about her arm. Why is it in a sling?

>>4652145
>>Ask about her arm. Why is it in a sling?

>>4652145
>Ask about her arm. Why is it in a sling?

"What happened to your arm? Trying to follow my example again?" You asked about her arm with a joke. While you weren't happy that there were only two good arms between the two of you, you still found it ironic that she had also come out of it with an arm injury.

"You wish." Dyad jabbed back at you, before shaking her head and continuing. "No, I fractured my wrist at some point in the fight. It'll heal though, so this'll just be temporary."

"Speaking of the fight, I heard you killed a Zealot." You called back to another thing you and Dyad shared, a dead elite officer under both of your belts. Granted, it was probably something neither of you planned, but

"Killed it with your shotgun too." Dyad revealed, before presenting her cup to you for a refill.

"I swear, if I don't get to keep it after this mission I'm gonna feel so damn cheated." You sighed as you filled her cup, earning a dry laugh from your XO.

"You and me both, boss..." Dyad nodded, before drinking deep of the last of the alcohol. You didn't realise it until you tried to fill up your cup, but you'd already polished off the cheap alcohol. That was fine, you supposed. At the very least you weren't putting too much of a strain on your remaining kidney.

>Head back to the mess hall, you've got a report to write up.
>Help Dyad up to the cryo deck, she probably doesn't need it, but it's better not to chance it.
>Ask Dyad something else (write-in)
>Other (write-in)

>>4652287
>Help Dyad up to the cryo deck, she probably doesn't need it, but it's better not to chance it.

>>4652287
>Help Dyad up to the cryo deck, she probably doesn't need it, but it's better not to chance it.

>>4652287
>>Help Dyad up to the cryo deck, she probably doesn't need it, but it's better not to chance it.

>>4652287
>>Help Dyad up to the cryo deck, she probably doesn't need it, but it's better not to chance it.
"After this mission i seriously need to get back in shape. What about you ?"

"Come on, you need to be in cryo." You reminded your XO as you forced yourself to your feet. Dyad simply nodded, and stood up as well. You took her disposable cup and threw it into the paper bag alongside yours and the empty bottle as the two of you walked past the drones and ut of the bay. Out in the hanger, the marines had apparently settled on basketball and had split themselves into two teams of four.

"What, do you think I'm gonna fall up the stairs?" She asked as the pair of you walked towards the door leading out the rear of the hangar bay.

"Maybe it'd knock some sense into you." You said as you opened the door, and lead your XO up towards the cryo bay. "Either way, you did drink a lot, so I'd rather play it safe."

"Jeeze, you sound like my brother." Dyad sighed as she followed you up the stairs, apparently making a point to push up ahead of you to make a point. You didn't comment on it, but either way, she seemed fine, so you decided not to escort her into the bay. It'd send entirely the wrong message.

"You know... after this mission I seriously need to get back into shape." You said as you reached the top of the stairs, Dyad had been kind enough to wait for you, and looked at you with a slightly smug expression. Yeah, she could laugh at it all she wanted, she wasn't the one missing some major organs.

"You won't be hurting for spare time during the flight back, that's for sure." Dyad smiled, though you weren't sure if that was just out of kindness or thankfulness for not being the person who had to stay and command the ship. Regardless, she tapped the button to open the door into the cryo bay, and took a couple of steps inside before turning to say goodbye. "See you at Reach boss."

"See you then." You replied, before she shut the door. With your XO secure -provided that she didn't fall over and crack her head on the pod- you turned around and retraced your steps down into the hanger bay. A couple of minutes later, you entered the mess hall to find it far less occupied than it had been when you left. A note on the table closest to the door told you exactly why, apparently there was a poker game happening in the lounge. You would have gotten involved, but you had other things to do right now. So after tossing your trash in the bin, you walked over to your food and sat down again, at the very least the meat was still a bit warm.

>Write your report, you want to get this done as soon as possible.
>Look up some files, maybe ONI has something you can look into (write-in)
>Other (write-in)

>>4652427
>>Write your report, you want to get this done as soon as possible.

>>4652427
>>Write your report, you want to get this done as soon as possible.

>>4652427
>Write your report, you want to get this done as soon as possible.

>>4652427
>Write your report, you want to get this done as soon as possible.

>>Write your report, you want to get this done as soon as possible

Sitting down at the table, you took a minute to dig into your meal. Your earlier theory was proved correct, as the steal was cut from actual meat, rather than being some meat-analogue cast in the shape of a steak. While some would say that there wasn't a noticeable difference in taste between the two, the sheer fact that actual meat had not only thrived as an industry in the early stages of the war, and that current meat prices had sky-rocketed, all proved that the difference was noticeable enough for people to pay big money for.

You broke the report down into key sections and tackled them one at a time. The first covered your arrival in-system, and the deployment of the virus that deleted all navigational data in the area. The second covered the landing and initial investigation of the ONI blacksite, including the recovery of the injured ODST and the recovered camera recordings. The third section was on how and why you took to the field and the subsequent engagement with the Covenant spec-ops unit. The fourth section covered Dyad's assault on the captured firebase and was very heavily based on the information you gathered second-hand from Diana and the marines. The final section covered the death of Arcadia and included the composition of both fleets involved, their movements, and preliminary projections for the total number of people killed.

All in all, a total report length that clocked in at over a dozen pages worth of information. That'd probably be enough to sate the office's need for intelligence.

Leaning back against the wall, you looked down at your neglected plate. Your food had gone cold by the time you had finished writing the first section, and you had barely touched it since. You reheated it in the microwave that someone had plugged into the wall, and polished it off as you decided on what to do next.

>Read up on some combat reports.
>Look up some files, maybe ONI has something you can look into (write-in)
>Find somewhere to catch a nap, you feel tired (TIMESKIP)
>Other (write-in)

>>4652522
>Look up some files, maybe ONI has something you can look into (write-in)
>Other (write-in)
Add in the trajectory of the escaped innie ships.

>>4652522
Back this as well >>4652539

>>4652539

supporting

You can't just let those dirty traitors run and getaway.

>>4652522
>Read up on some combat reports.

File: Stalwart.jpg (183 KB, 1846x1058)

183 KB JPG

You sat there for a couple of seconds, before deciding to try and figure out just where the innie survivors had gone. Chances were that most of them had performed random jumps in order to try and shake off any pursuit while they calculated how to get to another system, but there was still the off-chance that someone had decided to take the direct route home. And if they ended up leading the Covenant to an inhabited colony, then a lot of people could die. While the virus had targeted their nav-data, you didn't know if that specifically went after the locations of human settlements, or if it completely wiped their nav data. Either way, navigation computers being a relatively inexpensive part of a ship regardless of the price increases caused by wartime legislation, so it wasn't out of the question for there to be backups.

"Diana, can you pull up the exit vectors of the innie vessels that fled Arcadia?" You asked the ship's temporary AI, who kindly sent the data over, and projected all of them onto a star-chart. Thankfully, the trajectory of a slipspace jump was already determined by the time a ship entered slipspace, and from there it was a relatively simple affair to extrapolate how far they were going along said trajectory by measuring the size and radiation output of the tear they caused when entering slipspace, relative to the assumed mass of the ship. That was actually one of the reasons why smaller warships were, in a word, faster than larger ships in slipstream space. Their lower mass relative to their drive output allowed them to travel more efficiently. And that was part of the reason why Covenant ships were fast enough in slipspace to "overtake" human vessels.

A lot of the innie ships lacked the power of a military vessel and would be easy prey for the Covenant pursuers. Most of them ended up in the interstellar medium, the void between stars. You were thankful for that, as a couple of the bearings came very close to matching the trajectories required to reach some outlying colonies. One even came close to the Paris system, though the initial trajectory was off by a couple of degrees and the jump over-shot the system.

Or at least, all bar one.

The Stalwart class frigate had taken a direct course to a UNSC system. You didn't know if that was because their nav-data was intact, or if the innie navigational officer knew the trajectory by heart. Either way, it could be worse. The course lead the ship to the Gamma Pavonis system, which was apparently uninhabited aside from some mining operations. Either way, the Covenant had just been served another system on a platter, all thanks to some self-serving innie.

>Set course for Gamma Pavonis. At the very least, you need to warn any freighters entering the system that the system is compromised.
>Ignore it, there's nothing you can do. Unless ONI developed some way to scream a message into slipspace, you can't get the word out in time.
>Other (write-in)

>>4652658
>Inform the Spook and the other Acting officer about this information and if we should ignore it or move to beat it if possible.

>>4652658
>Set course for Gamma Pavonis. At the very least, you need to warn any freighters entering the system that the system is compromised.

>>4652658
>>Inform the Spook and the other Acting officer about this information and if we should ignore it or move to beat it if possible.

>>4652664
This

"Diana, do lieutenants Karmann and Antonwicz have comm-buds?" You asked the AI. With the rational part of your mind and your gut both at odds, you decided to bounce the question off your two highest-ranked subordinates.

"Yes. Please hold for five seconds while I make the connection." Diana replied, before leaving you to count. You found it a bit odd that she wanted you to wait for something that should be pretty instant, though you guessed that it was only to avoid startling them.

"Antonwicz, Karmann, can you hear me? We've got a problem." You asked over the link as a couple of crewmen filtered into the room. You exchanged a nod with them, and let them get to their breaks, making sure to lower your voice so as not to spread the news. "I've just put the recorded exit vectors of the Innie ships through the nav computer. One of them went straight for the Gamma Pavonis system."

"I haven't heard of Gamma Pavonis, are there any colonies there?" Karmann asked, and it was a very legitimate question. You only knew that the system existed because the Hoel had spent a couple of months there on a patrol stint.

"According to data already carried aboard the prowler, the Gamma Pavonis system has some level of illegal activity. There is a standing UNSC patrol mission in the area, with a total of six corvettes and two unarmed picket ships monitoring the system's gas giants. Mining efforts in the area are minimal, with the main focus being an old helium-three mining plant in low orbit over the fourth planet." Diana neatly wrapped up the entire two light-years of space that the system inhabited in three sentences. Which was fair enough, it was a shitty little backwater that was too risky for further investment due to the Covenant's first move against Arcadia

"There's not much point heading over there. The Covenant are faster in slipspace, so we'll probably just find a bunch of wreckage. Corvettes posted in the system can send out the warning to the local area faster than us." Karmann argued against rushing to the system.

"That assumes that any of them survive." Antonwicz pointed out, sounding slightly out of breath as he spoke. He paused for a couple of seconds, before continuing. "I think we should head over there, if only to perform SAR."

Well thanks for helping me come to a decision. You thought to yourself as you found yourself right back where you started.

>Set course for Gamma Pavonis. If only to pick up escape pods.
>Ignore it, there's nothing you can do. The system patrol vessels will handle it.
>Other (write-in)

>>4652784

>Set course for Gamma Pavonis. If only to pick up escape pods.

>>4652784
>Set course for Gamma Pavonis. If only to pick up escape pods.

>>4652784
>Set course for Gamma Pavonis. If only to pick up escape pods.

"Alright then. Diana, set course for the Gamma Pavonis system." You decided after a couple of seconds. While you knew that both the Covenant and the Innies had a head-start on you, the prowler's high speed in slipspace ought to make up for a couple of hours worth of lost time. At least, when you were comparing the prowler to the Innie frigate. There was no way in hell that you'd be able to catch the Covie vessel

"Understood, I'll plot a new course once we drop out of slipspace. Estimated time of arrival should be six days." Diana replied. You didn't know how long your current slipspace jump would last, but you assumed it would only be a couple more hours before you returned to realspace. Cole protocol compliant random-vector jumps were often pretty short so that ships could perform multiple jumps in sequence before needing to stop.

"I doubt there'll be any survivors when we get there." Karmann sighed, he probably wanted to get back to reach as soon as possible.

"We've still got to try, Wells out." You stated, before disconnecting from the shared channel.

>Read up on some combat reports.
>Look up some files, maybe ONI has something you can look into (write-in)
>Find somewhere to catch a nap, you feel tired (TIMESKIP)
>Other (write-in)

>>4652903
>Read up on some combat reports.

>>4652903

>Read up on some combat reports.

>>4652903
>>Read up on some combat reports.

>>4652903
>>Read up on some combat reports.

>>4652903
>Read up on some combat reports.

Why not do some SAR on Arcadia.

I'd be there's probably at least single digit survivors out in the middle of nowhere.

With nothing else to do while you waited for the prowler to drop out of slipspace, you decided to look up some recent combat reports. ONI had access to a wealth of knowledge, and it would be stupid for you to ignore the opportunity to look at things from their perspective. Thankfully, ONI's report handling system was similarly laid out to standard naval systems. Though you imagined that was down to restrictions placed on your ability to access the system. Like it or not, you were still just a captain. And one who had only just come into the office's service, and one that had only just been promoted too. It wasn't unreasonable for the office

There were only two kinds of combat that ever happened on the frontline. Space combat and ground combat. Both were intrinsically linked, though in the grand scheme of things only the former truly mattered. It was a cruel fact of the war that regardless of the victories gained on the ground, it would all be for nought if the Covenant gained control of low orbit over a world.

And unfortunately, ground combat was where the UNSC had at least something approaching a respectable number of victories compared to the Covenant. The news was often flush with stories of smaller marine and army battalions gallantly holding their ground in well prepared defensive networks against hordes of Covenant soldiers. Or of the UNSC's supersoldier of the week putting entire Covenant army groups into disarray by either assassinating their commanders or by blowing up something valuable.

Space on the other hand was a far worse affair. UNSC ships were outclassed in almost every regard compared to their Covenant contemporaries. Even their largest carriers had a theoretical slipspace speed far greater than even the fastest UNSC dispatch vessels, and their line warships could catch up and lie in wait for UNSC vessels as they ran. And on the weaponry side of things, the advantage just got worse. The UNSC's only real advantage was from the massed use of smart-AI to provide targeting solutions at extreme range, and that never lasted in an engagement.

>Read up on ground battles, how long does the UNSC last ground-side?
>Read up on space battles, what's the current kill/loss rate?
>Other (write-in)

>>4657250
>Read up on space battles, what's the current kill/loss rate?

>>4657250
>Read up on space battles, what's the current kill/loss rate?

>>4657250
>>Read up on space battles, what's the current kill/loss rate?

>>4657250
>Read up on space battles, what's the current kill/loss rate?

>>4657250
>>Read up on space battles, what's the current kill/loss rate?

File: 19944454_1470181739687046(...).jpg (171 KB, 1920x1080)

171 KB JPG

You decided to check up on the rates for space combat, the theatre where the UNSC lagged behind the Covenant the most. Though with the average Covenant "destroyer" clocking in at the same size and combat effectiveness as a light cruiser, it wasn't hard to see why. Plasma weapons made an absolute mockery of titanium-A battle armour, and that was without factoring in thermal collapse. While smaller Covenant ships such as raiders and corvettes could only rely on basic plasma cannons, the sheer heat transferred with each impact could overheat a UNSC vessel to the point that the crew boiled inside the ship. There were countermeasures of course, both passively built into the hull of new warships, and active means such as pumping coolant into the worst affected areas of a ship. And that was just with basic weaponry, longer-range weapons systems like plasma torpedoes and beam weaponry on larger Covenant ships could gut UNSC ships in a single hit.

As such, it came as no surprise to you that the kill/loss ratio stood at one Covenant ship killed for around two UNSC ships of a comparable tonnage. And that was with the UNSC pressing all available advantages like AI-assisted targeting equipment, countermeasures, and excessive use of MAC guns.

It didn't shock you that destroyers were the most common class of UNSC ship to both engage the Covenant and be destroyed. The standard Halberd-class destroyer was a tough little nut, which combined speed and firepower into a surprisingly useful platform. However, even with their tough hulls and decent speed, the fact remained that they simply didn't have the staying power against larger Covenant vessels. The fact that the production of Halberds was rushed also didn't help, a rushed vessel was a compromised vessel after all. That was part of the reason why they were organised into smaller flotillas, where they could combine their firepower to hopefully overload the shields of a few Covenant ships before any one ship was lost.

>Look at some recent AARs, maybe you can learn something new?
>Read up on Covenant warships, what are you likely to face?
>Search for upgrades, shouldn't you get something useful for your soul?
>Figure out the rates for raiding groups, what are your chances?
>Other (write-in)

>>4657298
>>Look at some recent AARs, maybe you can learn something new?

>>4657298
>Read up on Covenant warships, what are you likely to face?

Give intel pls

>>4657298
>Search for upgrades, shouldn't you get something useful for your soul?

>>4657298
>Look at some recent AARs, maybe you can learn something new?

>>4657298
>>Search for upgrades, shouldn't you get something useful for your soul?

>>4657298
>>Look at some recent AARs, maybe you can learn something new?

Deciding to look into recent combat reports, you back-tracked through the years to find a few promising candidates. Unfortunately, you only found three combat reports that seemed remarkable enough to be of any use.

The first concerned the battle of Battle of Miridem. Miridem had been a valuable inner colony, acting as a resupply hub for UNSC forces across five other major systems and ten uninhabited systems. The planet had been engaged by a Covenant fleet, and was eventually lost after a month of heavy fighting with significant casulties. The remarkable part about the battle was the presence of routine stellar radiation flares from the system's star. Said flares were of obvious concern to the Covenant, though the first few paragraphs in the AAR didn't explain why.

The second concerned the battle of Skopje. A relative footnote in terms of colonies, Skopje lasted only a couple of weeks before it too fell. However, Skopje was an interesting battle due to it's location. Being located practically inside the planetary ring of a large gas giant, the world was surrounded by asteroids, which the defending CMA forces made extensive use of to act as cover from plasma weapons.

The third and final report was an engagement between a Covenant cruiser and a pair of UNSC destroyers in the gravity well of the brown dwarf Saerus. The engagement between the two sides was characterised as a game of "hide and seek" as the failed star's electromagnetic field was strong enough to hamper the effectiveness of both side's sensors. The magnetic interference had also effected both side's weapons too, as the UNSC only won when one of the destroyers rammed the cruiser deeper into the brown dwarf, the ensuing pressure increase eventually destroying both vessels.

>Read about Miridem, why did the Covenant run from the stellar flares?
>Read about Skopje, how did the CMA use the asteroids to their advantage?
>Read about Saerus, how were both sides effected by the magnetic field?
>Do something else, none of these are really promising.
>Other (write-in)

>>4657383
>>Read about Miridem, why did the Covenant run from the stellar flares?

>>4657383
>Read about Saerus, how were both sides effected by the magnetic field?
make us a better MAC artist and we can begin to understand how Covvie weaponry works.

>>4657383
>>Read about Miridem, why did the Covenant run from the stellar flares?

Miridem -not to be confused with Meridian, a far larger colony- was a small moon that was located in the perpetual shadow of a gas giant. As such, the world was shrouded in total darkness, aside from what light could be generated from artificial sources. The two main reasons why it was colonised in the first place was the presence of an oxygen-rich atmosphere generated by extensive microbial life, and the fact that it's shrouded position perfectly protected it from the violent stellar flares. Said stellar flares would usually have caused widespread damage to sensitive electronics such as communications systems.

When the Covenant fleet entered the system, they made a beeline for the colony, only to suffer some level of disruption from the stellar flares. While no accurate measures could be taken, the local UNSC defence fleet recorded a higher than expected number of kills against Covenant ships. Meanwhile, the Covenant vessels suffered issues with guiding their plasma torpedoes while they were under the effects of the stellar flares. Unfortunately for the defenders, these issues cleared when the torpedoes entered the "safe zone" cast in the gas giant's shadow, and the Covenant fleet returned to full combat capability once the stellar flares died down after a couple of hours. Interestingly, however, the Covenant then prioritised keeping up a defensive blockade around the colony rather than hunting UNSC ships in the rest of the system.

So from what you could gather, the intense outburst of high-energy particles had caused some disruption to the Covenant fleet, though mostly related to their ability to guide long-range torpedo salvos. The apparent effect was minimal, though you wondered if the effect could be replicated...

>roll 1d20

Rolled 13 (1d20)

>>4657434

Rolled 5 (1d20)

>>4657434

Rolled 19 (1d20)

>>4657434

There was no practical way to replicate the effects of the stellar flare, especially not to the degree that it would be able to cause wide-scale disruption to a Covenant fleet. The power requirements alone would be almost impossible to provide and could be better served to send a couple of hundred tons of tungsten into a Covenant vessel. Using it against the torpedoes was also a no-go, as the amount of energy required to even mildly affect a ball of pure plasma would be even more absurd.

However, the flares gave you something far more valuable. At least, in the right circumstances.

You knew what communications frequencies the stellar flares interfered with. And after bouncing the information off Diana, you were able to pinpoint a couple of frequency bands that had provided the best chances for electronic intrusion. Granted, right now it was all just theory, and if the covenant ship you selected to be the test dummy for this theory managed to escape then you would have unintentionally strengthened their counter-SIGINT capabilities. But as far as you were concerned, if you could turn the exploitation of that frequency into a viable option, then your ability to stay alive in a fight would be greatly increased.

>NEW SKILL: EXPERIMENTAL HACK
>One time per engagement, gain plus 2 on any roll to attempt a hack against a Covenant ship. If successful, gain plus 1 to all further hacks against the hacked vessel. If the hacked vessel defeats the intrusion and survives the battle, then the ability can no longer be used.

After going through one of the AARs, you were starting to feel a bit tired, but with nothing else to do, you decided to keep going until you were exhausted.

>Read about Skopje, how did the CMA use the asteroids to their advantage?
>Read about Saerus, how were both sides affected by the magnetic field?
>Read up on Covenant warships, what are you likely to face?
>Search for upgrades, shouldn't you get something useful for your soul?
>Other (write-in)

>>4657520
>>Search for upgrades, shouldn't you get something useful for your soul?

>>4657520
>Read about Saerus, how were both sides affected by the magnetic field?

>>4657520
>Read about Saerus, how were both sides affected by the magnetic field?
Let's learn some more.

>>4657520

>Read about Skopje, how did the CMA use the asteroids to their advantage?

File: Unknown Covenant Cruiser.png (268 KB, 800x600)

268 KB PNG

Deciding to take a look at another AAR, you read up on the battle of Saerus. Given the small scale of the engagement, you figured that it would be a bit of easy reading.

The prelude to the battle was pretty basic. The two destroyers had previously been assigned to a UNSC patrol group that ran into a Covenant fleet. There was a fight, and the UNSC fleet scattered, with the destroyers "Two for Flinching" and "Constantine" escaping to Saerus in order to discharge static buildup from drawing a large amount of power from the reactor and from using said power across a variety of shipboard systems. Saerus wasn't the best choice, given its highly active magnetosphere, though according to the commander of the "Two for Flinching", his plan was to discharge enough static in order to make two safe jumps, and then leave. You had to assume that the commanding officer of the "Constantine" planned to do the same.

However, within an hour of entering low orbit, a Covenant cruiser of a similar design to the one you had encountered with Patrol Group Theta dropped out of slipspace within weapons range of them. Faced with no other options, both UNSC destroyers dived into the gas giant's atmosphere. The covenant cruiser attempted to engage them with plasma torpedoes, but the torpedoes were practically deflected by the gas giant's magnetosphere. As such, the Covenant cruiser followed both ships into the planet's atmosphere.

To call what happened next the galaxy's most dangerous game of hide and seek would be an understatement. The planet's magnetosphere made getting a reliable fix on an enemy vessel's location practically impossible. Meanwhile, with both missiles and torpedoes unable to properly function in the planet's magnetosphere, both sides relied on their heaviest weapons. As could be expected, the combat between both sides was as sudden as it was devastating. The Covenant cruiser technically scored first blood by inflicting a mortal blow to the Constantine with its main plasma weapon. Attempts by the Two for Flinching to drive the Covenant ship away from the wounded destroyer came to nothing, as the cruiser's shields tanked both MAC rounds.

The blow that killed the cruiser came in three parts. The Constantine fired both of it's MAC guns into the cruiser from point-blank range, before ramming the cruiser roughly where it's plasma beam weapon was located. The resulting impact caused both ships to lose power and fall rapidly into the gas giant's gravity well. The Two for Flinching took almost a day to reach orbit, and from there almost two months to return home, but at the very least it brought news of the Constantine's noble sacrifice.

>Roll 1d20

Rolled 7 (1d20)

>>4657621
>Two for Flinching
What an apt name

Rolled 9 (1d20)

>>4657621

Rolled 7 (1d20)

>>4657621

The battle of Saerus was very similar to the battle of Psi Serpentis. Specifically through the UNSC commanders using powerful magnetospheres to interfere with Covenant plasma torpedoes. If you had to guess, the commander of the first ship into Saerus' atmosphere had also watched the final moments of Admiral Cole's last stand and had decided to try and use a similar trick to avoid his own. However, just like Psi Serpentis, everything you had found in the battle was already known. What was worse, was that nothing could be replicated either. After all, while gas giants were common enough in inhabited star systems, you couldn't take one out on patrol with you either. And while you were sure that a similar effect to the magnetosphere of such a large and active planet could be simulated, the sheer power and material cost would make it inefficient for shipboard use.

No, you had to rely on bog-standard speed, emergency boosters, and luck if you wanted to avoid getting reduced down to free-floating atoms.

You yawned again and found yourself surprised. While you had initially hoped to get more done, you were getting more tired with every report that you read. You probably had enough left in you for one more report, and then you'd bookmark some stuff for later. You certainly had enough time to kill on the trip out to Gamma Pavonis.

>Read about Skopje, how did the CMA use the asteroids to their advantage?
>Read up on Covenant warships, what are you likely to face?
>Search for upgrades, shouldn't you get something useful for your soul?
>Other (write-in)

>>4657700
>>Read up on Covenant warships, what are you likely to face?

>>4657700
>Search for upgrades, shouldn't you get something useful for your soul?

>>4657700
>Read up on Covenant warships, what are you likely to face?

>>4657700
>>Search for upgrades, shouldn't you get something useful for your soul?

>>4657700
>>Search for upgrades, shouldn't you get something useful for your soul?

>>4657700
>>Search for upgrades, shouldn't you get something useful for your soul?

>>4657700
>Read about Skopje, how did the CMA use the asteroids to their advantage?

>>4657700
>Read up on Covenant warships, what are you likely to face?

You'd gone through enough AARs for today, it was time to see what other benefits ONI could give you. After all, now that you'd thrown in your lot with them, you didn't see a way out. So at the very least, you decided to see what you could obtain from them to avoid your life being cut uncomfortably short.

Thankfully, the office was nothing if not inventive. Hell, back when you were serving on the Hoel, you played around with at least a couple of new, fancy bits of gear. And after getting a bit of help from Diana, you found your way to the directory for assorted bits of equipment that the office could help you acquire.

>Weapons systems
>Sensor equipment
>Drive and slipspace
>Strike craft and drones

>>4658476
>Strike craft and drones

>>4658476
>Weapons systems

>>4658476
>>Weapons systems

>>4658476
>>Strike craft and drones

>>4658476
>>Strike craft and drones
More on strike craft and pelican upgrades

With your new ship being a destroyer, you wouldn't be hurting for weaponry and armour. The one thing that you would definitely be lacking for though, would be strike craft and dropships. The standard Halberd class destroyer carried only a single hanger, which could only carry a pair of pelican dropships. This meant that a Halberd would barely be able to carry a single longsword, so you'd have to find smaller fighters to fill in if you wanted to carry more than one fighter. Dropships were also another point of concern. Like it or not, if you were stuck with a pair of pelicans, you'd have to look into giving them specific upgrades to improve their combat capabilities.

If you wanted to do more with less, then you'd have to look for something exotic to give you a leg up. And you knew for a fact that ONI could give you a hand with that.

Something else that ONI did very well were drones. Communications, SIGINT, repair, and many other little robots were probably held in the office's pockets. Sure, they wouldn't be as effective in direct combat as fighters, but there were many other ways they could help you.

>Strike craft
>Dropships
>Drones
>Something specific (Write-in)
>Look at something else (Weapons, Sensors, Propulsion)

>>4658580
>>Dropships
better pelicans for the lads will improve ground effectiveness a lot

>>4658580
>Strike craft

>>4658580
>>Drones

>>4658580
>Strike craft

>>4658580
>>Dropships

A bit late due to computer issues, but can I have a tiebreaker?

>>4658580
>Dropships

>>4658580
Dropships

>>4658580
>Strike craft

As far as dropships went, the UNSC's lineup was composed of entirely of pelicans and pelican varients. Which was understandable enough, the dropship line had served faithfully since production started sometime in the 2470s, there was no point in replacing what already worked.

That being said, the office had access to a couple of different pelican varients. Granted, none of them offered anything other than incremental upgrades and modular mission packs. The most substantial upgrade package offered by ONI was the D77-TC/p Pave Pelican. Featuring enhanced avionics and sensors, and a more efficient propulsion and life support setup, the dropship could operate further afield from your ship. You could also outfit it with a variety of roll-on equipment kits, like recon pallets, minelaying equipment, and boarding cutters. And that was in addition to the normal modules, suchas an extended troop bay and missile pods. However, aside from some slightly heavier ceramic armour and IR dampening equipment, they were only slightly better than the baseline pelican dropships.

The only other alternative was the SKT-13 shuttlepod. Essentially an escape pod with the equipment needed to land planet-side removed, the SKT-13 was around a third of the size of the Pelican. So if you were desperate, you could use them for missions. However, due to their complete lack of lifting surfaces, the SKT was limited only to use in space. And it's single-compartment design meant that unless the pilot was wearing a vacuum suit, they would not be able to offload troops anywhere other than a ships hanger bay.

You sighed to yourself as you looked at your two options to replace the frankly over-sized air-wing of the Dawn, a pair of slightly more capable pelicans or six cut-down escape pods.

>Keep looking, maybe there's something you're missing (roll 1d20)
>Look up strike craft, there's nothing worthwhile here.
>Look at something else (Drones, Weapons, Sensors, Propulsion)
>Other (write-in)

>>4658770
>Look up strike craft, there's nothing worthwhile here.

Rolled 15 (1d20)

>>4658770

>Keep looking, maybe there's something you're missing (roll 1d20)

Rolled 17 (1d20)

>>4658770
>Keep looking, maybe there's something you're missing (roll 1d20)

File: Pelican boarding.png (265 KB, 671x372)

265 KB PNG

You were not convinced that this was all that the office of naval intelligence had to offer, and as such, you widened your search from specifically looking for vehicles, to looking for reports including the use of experimental craft in operational use. And soon enough, you found something interesting. It wouldn't be a useful general-purpose craft, but for the missions you seemed to be getting scouted for, it would probably suffice.

Having been first mentioned in reports around 2543, the pelican "boarding craft" was ONI's attempt to convert the workhorse of the UNSC into a chariot for boarding teams. Basically an up-armoured pelican, the boarding craft carried an extended troop bay that accommodated a magnetic locking system and the cutting equipment needed to cut through the hull of a Covenant ship. The armour completely enclosed the cockpit, allowing the ship to survive one or two direct hits from a pulse laser at the cost of forcing the crew to rely on external cameras and sensor input to reach the target ship. From the reports you found, it was workable enough in it's given role, provided that there weren't any Covenant fighter craft in the area. The actual effectiveness of the boarding teams on the other hand was a bit harder to measure due to a variety of reasons.

The idea was operationally sound, it had been deployed enough times with ODST teams that you were certain that most of the mechanical kinks had been worked out. But there was still a couple of downsides. The extra mass definitely made it's acceleration more sluggish, meaning that it would be harder for it to escape if shit hit the fan for whatever reason.

>Take the pave pelican, it'll give you better results overall.
>Take the boarding pelican, you're sure you can make it work.
>Look up strike craft, there's nothing worthwhile here.
>Look at something else (Drones, Weapons, Sensors, Propulsion)
>Other (write-in)

>>4658948
>Take the boarding pelican, you're sure you can make it work.

>>4658948
>Take the boarding pelican, you're sure you can make it work.

>>4658948
>>Take the boarding pelican, you're sure you can make it work.

>>4658948
>>Take the boarding pelican, you're sure you can make it work.

>>4658948
>Take the boarding pelican, you're sure you can make it work.

>>4658948
>take the boarding pelican, you're sure you can make it work.

Yeah, you were confident that the boarding pelicans would be useful. You'd have to look into modifications to the destroyer itself to try and expand your air-wing outside of the two pelicans, but the two modified pelicans would be a decent start. You sent a message off to Diana to prepare a requisition request for when you reached a usable comm-buoy. If worst came to worst, you could probably put in a specific modification request to make something similar yourself.

You yawned again and checked the clock installed on the data-pad. All in all, it had been over twelve hours since you had woken up, and while you could usually stay up longer, you found yourself growing more and more tired by the minute. You could probably stay up and work for a bit longer, caffeine was a hell of a drug. But all things considered, you wondered if there was even a point to it. You'd already gathered a few useful tidbits of information, and you'd have a decent amount of time in the rest of the return trip.

>Go and get some sleep, you'll feel better for it (time skip to Gamma Pavonis)
>Look for something else, you feel like you can continue. (Look for other upgrades but with a -1 on rolls)
>Other (write-in)

>>4660242
>Go and get some sleep, you'll feel better for it (time skip to Gamma Pavonis)

>>4660242
>>Look for something else, you feel like you can continue. (Look for other upgrades but with a -1 on rolls)

>>4660242
>Go and get some sleep, you'll feel better for it (time skip to Gamma Pavonis)
We're still recovering from getting manhandled, let's rest up.

>>4660242
>Go and get some sleep, you'll feel better for it (time skip to Gamma Pavonis)

File: Cramped bunks.jpg (51 KB, 615x409)

51 KB JPG

You decided not to chance it. Almost getting run-through by a plasma sword had left you with some significant injuries, and while they could be mostly treated with some flash-cloned organs and stem-cell therapy, you didn't want to take chances in the meantime.

"Diana, I'm going to hit the rack, who'll have the bridge while I'm gone?" You asked your AI as you stood up and left the mess hall, you'd grab your wash kit and hit the head, cleaning yourself with your current injuries would be uncomfortable, but that wasn't a good enough excuse to avoid it.

"Lieutenant Karmann has the bridge. Your wash kit is in the primary crew storage room, the head is located further up the bow from the crew quarters, I've already reserved a bunk for you." Diana replied, and told you where you needed to go. You had to pull up a map in order to find out where the storage room was located, though thankfully it was located in the crew section of the ship, roughly in-between the head and the crew quarters. You recoverd your small wash-bag and made your way into the only bathroom on the ship.

The crew area in general for the prowler was far smaller than on any other kind of ship you'd served on. Hell, at least the corvettes had gender-separated heads. On the prowler, the head was literally just a couple of cramped toilet cubicle, some wardrobe-sized showers, and a couple of sinks. You weren't sure if the designer was some kind of sociopath, or if space was really at such a premium that they couldn't afford to allocate a few more square inches per shower. Still, the showers at least sealed properly and had an option to turn off the gravity, allowing you to make the best use of the meagre amount of warm water you could use. After struggling around for a few minutes, you climbed out, brushed your teeth, and made your way back to the medical bay, which forced you to walk practically the length of the ship each way.

Once again, you wondered if it would have killed ONI to install a set of stairs or even just a zero-g tunnel between the crew deck and the command deck.

Still, the purpose of your trip was simple enough, as you had to get your dressings changed. While clean medical dressings were still at somewhat of a premium on-ship, Diana assured you that there were enough left in stock for a couple of weeks. After that, there would start to be problems. Though you decided to focus on worrying about that for tomorrow and clambered into one of the cramped bunks in the crew accommodation area. The next few days of the trip to Gamma Pavonis would be monotonous if you had nothing to do, so before going to sleep you came to a decision on how to spend the next few days.

>Focus on physiotherapy, you need to start your recovery as soon as possible.
>Focus on intelligence-gathering, maybe you can learn something else.
>Focus on looking for upgrades, the more modifications you have the better.
>Other (write-in)

>>4660348
>>Focus on physiotherapy, you need to start your recovery as soon as possible.

>>4660348
>>Focus on physiotherapy, you need to start your recovery as soon as possible.

>>4660348
>Focus on physiotherapy, you need to start your recovery as soon as possible.

>>4660348
>Focus on physiotherapy, you need to start your recovery as soon as possible.

>>4660348
>Focus on looking for upgrades, the more modifications you have the better.

You made a note to start early on your physiotherapy. While there wasn't much you could do before you got your hands on some flash-cloned organs, the more you did now, the less mandatory downtime you'd have when you returned home. With that set, you drew the curtains closed, and let yourself drift off to sleep.

The next four days were spent going in-and-out of the medical bay. Of course, most of the physiotherapy you could undergo while en-route was limited to stem-cell therapy on your forearm and some of the less-damaged internal organs. But even then, the process was still rather intensive with the limited resources available. Diana insisted on checking on the areas undergoing therapy every couple of hours and then removing any area that was starting to develop cancerous growths. Usually, stem-cell therapy would just require the recipient to lay in bed for a couple of days while a machine continuously monitored their progress. However, with so many people undergoing therapy in a single bay at the same time, it forced the AI to take more of a hands-off approach.

A little over five days after the destruction of Arcadia, you stood on the bridge of the prowler as the crew made final preparations to drop out of slipspace in the Gamma Pavonis system. The bridge crew had remained awake like you for the trip, and a couple of them were looking worse for wear because of it. You didn't blame them, given the sheer number of cryo pods, you figured that almost all of the crew entered cryo for slipspace journeys while only a handful of people remained on station to ensure that the ship remained operational. It was common enough in the navy.

"Deceleration from slipspace confirmed, arrival in T minus one minuite." Diana announced as Lieutenant Karmann arrived on the bridge, the short spook gave you a weary smile, the two of you had spent a bit of time chatting during the journey, though due to the two of you keeping almost opposite sleep schedules, you had seen very little of each other. And given that he was nursing a mug of coffee, you could tell that he was keeping himself awake to advise you.

"Re-entry to normal space in five... four... three... two... one..." Diana counted down as the prowler started to shake, a bad sign, usually, such a small vessel would have no trouble transitioning back. The shuddering reached a peak before the ship suddenly went still. Diana's avatar appeared in the holotank next to you as the shutters over the main viewpoints retracted away from the viewport, revealing the inky blackness of space.

"Transition successful, stealth baffles are online, welcome to Gamma Pavonis, captain."

>Start actively scanning the local area, you need to see what's going on.
>Look for local infrastructure, maybe there are nearby comms buoys you can use.
>Find out where you are, what's the lay of the land?
>Other (write-in)

>>4660442
>>Find out where you are, what's the lay of the land?

>>4660442
>Find out where you are, what's the lay of the land?

>>4660442
>>Find out where you are, what's the lay of the land?