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Credit: "Winter
Halo" by XX
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By
the year 2552, Earth's overpopulation had forced many of her former
residents to colonize other worlds. Using the reality of faster-than-light
travel provided by the Shaw-Fujikawa Slipspace Drive, Earth's
government, through the United Nations Space Command, put its
full weight behind the colonization effort. A keystone of humanity's
colonization efforts was the planet Reach, an interstellar naval
yard that built colony ships for civilians and warships for the
UNSC's armed forces. Conveniently close to Earth, Reach was also
a hub of scientific and military activity.
Thirty-two years previous, contact with the outer colony Harvest
was lost. A battlegroup sent to investigate was almost completely
destroyed; only one badly damaged ship returned to Reach. Its
crew told of a seemingly unstoppable alien warship that had effortlessly
annihilated their forces.
That was humankind's first encounter with a group of aliens they
eventually came to know as the Covenant, a collective of alien
races united in their fanatical religious devotion. Covenant religious
elders declared humanity an affront to the gods, and the Covenant
warrior caste waged a holy war upon humanity with gruesome diligence.
After a series of crushing defeats and obliterated colonies, UNSC
Admiral Preston Cole established the Cole Protocol: no vessel
may inadvertently lead the Covenant to Earth. When forced to withdraw,
ships must avoid Earth-bound vectors- even if that means jumping
without proper navigational calculations. Vessels in danger of
capture must self-destruct.
On Reach, a secret military project to create a force of super-soldiers
took on newfound importance. The soldiers of the SPARTAN-II project
racked up an impressive record against the Covenant. On the ground,
the SPARTANS always won, but every time the Covenant were defeated,
they would withdraw to orbit and bombard the entire planet's surface
with super-heated plasma, scorching and burning it until it was
left as barren and smooth as glass. This came to be known as "glassing"
the planet.
The existing SPARTANs were recalled to Reach for further augmentation.
Their new mission was ambitious: board a Covenant vessel and learn
the location of the Covenant homeworlds. Perhaps creating such
a diversion as an attack at home would give the UNSC fleet more
time to upgrade and prepare for the next wave of attacks.
Two days before the mission was to begin, the Covenant armada
appeared in the Reach system. The SPARTANs' highest ranking officer,
Master Chief Petty Officer 117, was forced to split his forces
into two teams. A small contingent, including himself, stayed
in orbit in an attempt to secure a stray NAV computer aboard an
orbital station. The rest of the SPARTANs were sent to the surface
to protect the generators supplying power to the orbital Magnetic
Accelerator Cannons (MACs).
The Pillar of Autumn, the unsuspecting and aged vessel
that had been retrofitted with the necessary arsenal to engage
the Covenant and deliver the SPARTANs, was one of the last surviving
ships in the decimated UNSC fleet that defended Reach. The Master
Chief stood aboard the Bridge and watched as the Covenant cruisers
glassed Reach, along with million of people, and the SPARTAN's
entire ground team.
As a few of the ships began to turn their attention to the remnant
of human ships around the planet, Captain Keyes took the only
recourse he had. The Pillar of Autumn, with the last SPARTAN
on board, made a blind jump into slipspace, hoping to lead the
Covenant away from Earth. Here is where our story begins...
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