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Halo 2 Novelization (Prologue)
Posted By: Chris Totzauer<topher938@hotmail.com>
Date: 2 June 2005, 9:14 PM
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1218 hrs.
UNSC Destroyer Midway
In orbit around Jericho VII
"All the colors of the rainbow," he sang to himself, recalling the song from his youth. All the colors of the rainbow. So beautiful, he realized.
Death often is, he reflected, turning away from the observation port. Walking away sullenly, he turned back to gaze one last time upon the planet he had so very recently called home. He saw others walking away as well, like darkly silhouetted mourners at a funeral in hell, as the intensive global firestorm swept over the once lush paradise of 30 million people.
And we had only evacuated 40,000, he lamented. How long had he called this place home, he wondered. Four years? Service in the United Nations Space Command left little room in one's life for a steady home, so four years in one place wasn't bad.
But now, watching his home, the home of millions of human settlers and colonists, destroyed by an unstoppable enemy, he began to wonder if he ever would have a real home.
Of course, they all had a real home, he told himself. He just hadn't seen it in 12 years.
It was the place his family had left nearly a century before, to settle on Reach. The home he had to protect. And it was the one place he knew he didn't want to go back to till this war was over. If he did, it would mean that he, and all the other officers, sailors and marines of the UNSC had failed.
For their mission since this war had started was horribly simple: protect humanity or die trying.
He had acted under those goals, serving in front line units from the age of 22, freshly graduated from the UNSC Naval Academy on Reach. Right away, he had served aboard the Adams, a heavy frigate attached to Admiral Cole's Fifth Fleet.
Commander Richard Harper, UNSC smiled at the memory. So long ago, he thought, as he strolled out of C Deck's observation lounge and onto the lift.
Stepping out onto the rubberized deck of the bridge, he felt truly at home, if not entirely safe.
Only 3 months in command, he was the first commanding officer of the UNSC destroyer Midway. Construction on the 500 meter long warship had been so rushed, she had left the dry docks orbiting Mars without a shipboard AI, a standard feature on all her sister ships of the class. Only recently did they receive one.
The image of a robed individual appeared on the holo projector next to the nav station.
The technicians had been surprised when this AI had been completed. While it had retained all the required knowledge and processes necessary for a starship-grade AI, it had also acquired a sense of independence seldom seen in an Artificial Intelligence. They had called him Avian, citing his flighty demeanor and personality.
"All shipboard systems ready for jump, and all planet-side ship personnel accounted for, sir." Avian stated.
"Thank you. Lets get an out-of-system vector from Admiral Wriley."
Avian touched his robed hand to his bearded chin, simulating thought. "Receiving data from UNSC cruiser Independence. Slipspace vector calculated and laid in." He paused for a second, and then looked up. Warning. Covenant fleet exiting slipspace and resuming orbit around Jericho VII. Plasma bombardment continuing."
Harper raged inside. It was all too mechanical. This isn't how death is supposed to be. He was sitting there watching millions of people die, and there was nothing he could do about it.
"Acknowledged," was all he could muster. After a moment, he collected himself.
"Prepare for slipspace jump in conjunction with the fleet"
Ensign Simms at Navigation worked at his controls. "Aye sir. Slipspace drives online and ready."
He looked at the view screen as distant specks of light appeared across the left side of the screen. Hundreds of green motes of light congealed together into a series of whirlpools across the blackness of space.
Hundreds of Covenant warships appeared. Frigates and destroyers, and dozens of larger cruisers and assault carriers floated out of the maelstrom, racing to finish the work that the human fleet had bled to stop.
He watched the remnants of the UNSC fleet jump to slipspace. Only about two dozen ships remained from a force of 150 ships that had died in the previous hours, to save the citizens of Jericho VII, a futile attempt, but one that had to be taken anyway.
He watched the covenant ships continue their series of criss-crossing orbits, bombarding the planet's surface with plasma, turning what remained of his home into a series of bright glassy patches of hell.
He reaffirmed why he was fighting with that image.
More than anything; more than his life, or the lives of the men under his command, the survival of the human race had to be assured.
Why the covenant had attacked humanity over 12 years before was still a cause for speculation. They saw humans as an affront to their gods, and set out to purge the galaxy of the galactic virus called humanity.
Their ultimate goal, everyone knew, was the greatest prize of all: Earth.
"And with everything I am, I swear to uphold the ideals of democracy for all humanity, and to protect the citizens Earth and her colonies, till death." He repeated the oath he took upon enlistment in the United Earth Space Corps.
Somehow, he thought, remembering the horror that was now Jericho VII, somehow, I can't let that happen to Earth.
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