Covenant CSO-class Supercarrier Long Night of Solace, Reach orbit, August 14, 2552
Rho 'Barutamee, Supreme Commander of the Fleet of Valiant Prudence, had left the bridge of his 28 kilometer-long capital ship; he passed down the long hallways, approaching a Seraph hangar for an inspection of the starfighters stationed there. Without the assistance of the propulsion platforms installed at regular intervals in his flagship, the journey from the bridge at the core of the ship's bow to the starfighters' hangar would have been rather tedious as the distance to be traversed was nearly 10 kilometers. Standing at an impressive 8'6", the Fleetmaster towered even over many of his Sangheili brethren, let alone the other, weaker species of the Covenant such as the slender, avian/reptilian, and businesslike Kig-Yar or the squat, timid, and numerous Unggoy.
Even since the Covenant had been formed over three thousand years ago between the strong, mandible-mouthed reptilians of Sanghelios and the physically frail yet technologically advanced San' Shyuum who had long wandered the galaxy on a Forerunner Keyship, no race had joined (or been forcibly absorbed) that was found fitting or competent to command the religious hegemony's massive fleets and armies in lieu of the Elites.
The Fleetmaster had many important issues plaguing his mind, first and foremost being the whereabouts of the Field Marshal and many of the other Devoted Sentries, the chapter of Zealots who'd been attached to his fleet with the task of recovering Forerunner relics from the human-controlled planet. His Zealot strike teams had been out of contact with the fleet for many days, bogged down in battle with the humans as they diligently sought the relics of the gods. If his suspicions based on the Luminary's readings were correct, the treasures waiting to be discovered on this human planet would be dwarfed only by the discovery of the Holy Rings themselves. Barutamee sought a path to Maethrillian, capital city of the ancient Forerunner empire, hallowed citadel of the gods. But with Vadamee's arrival already upon him...
Thel 'Vadamee was an astounding warrior and strategist, to be sure. The humans' resistance would soon be crushed following the arrival of the Fleet of Particular Justice, but Barutamee had little interest in the genocide of the humans. It puzzled him that the Prophets so vehemently demanded the extermination of a race that would have made a fine addition to the Covenant if the valor they consistently displayed in battle was any indication. Barutamee himself considered reclaiming the holy relics more important on a spiritual plane, as well as a practical one.
However, his fleet's inability to quickly destroy the human orbital defenses and military on the planet had incensed the Ministry of Resolution, and Rho feared that his covert and illicit gathering of Forerunner artifacts might be uncovered should the reinforcing fleet place him under significant scrutiny.
Covenant SDV-class Heavy Corvette Ardent Prayer - Hangar
"So it's gonna be like that..." Spartan Jorge-052 muttered in resignation, casually slamming his hand against the malfunctioning detonator. With both a timed and remote detonation of the slipspace bomb no longer an option, someone had to stay behind and go down with the ship. Turning to the only other survivor of the UNSC's strike team, Noble Six, he announced, "Well, I've got good news and bad news..."
Long Night of Solace
"Fleetmaster Barutamee! The Fleet of Particular Justice is to rendezvous within the next few minutes." A Sangheili comms officer called out to him.
"Very well... has there been any communication from the Ardent Prayer yet?" Barutamee replied gruffly. "A comms malfunction should have been repaired by now, especially with a Huragok aboard the vessel" he thought with rising suspicion and anxiety.
Ardent Prayer
Jorge-052 handed off his dogtags to Noble Six and said "Listen. Reach has been good to me. It's time to return the favor. Don't deny me this." Lifting up Noble Six, the colossal Spartan-II bid farewell to his brother-in-arms. "Tell her to make it count."
Tossing the smaller Spartan through the hangar's containment field and back toward Reach using nothing but the planet's gravity to pull him down from orbit, Jorge gravely turned his back on his homeworld and made the final preparations, with only the quietest ghost of doubt troubling his mind. The loss of the supercarrier would surely buy enough time for the UNSC to reinforce Reach and let the Covenant bleed themselves dry trying to take it. Wouldn't it?
Long Night of Solace
The standing bridge officer observed from his holographic viewscreen from the shipmaster's throne as Ardent Prayer silently pulled into its refueling station. Much like the Fleetmaster, he found the silence of the corvette unsettling. His anxiety was quickly proven justified as the officer operating the sensory systems blurted out "Impossible! General! Ardent Prayer is making an unstable tear in the Void Space!"
The top of Stark Tower, New York City, 2012
Loki looked down upon Erik Selvig, the middle-aged scientist who'd befriended his brother Thor several months ago, with a tolerant disdain. "At least this insect has learned to kneel. The others will follow soon once the Chitauri lay their armies low" he thought smugly. "Tell me, mortal, when will the portal be ready?"
Selvig, cooperating with Loki's invasion plan yet also beginning to subconsciously resist, answered in a nearly zombie-like monotone, "Sir, I'm running a few diagnostics on the activation sequence. It should be ready very soon."
Loki's eyes narrowed slightly, but chose to ignore the negligible resistance to his scepter's power. He had only a moment to relax, however, before the Tesseract abruptly sparked to life, causing a beam of energy to continuously fire into the sky. "I assume you've finished, then?" Loki said with a self-satisfied tone.
The scientist's astonishment set that happy thought to rest, however. His previously monotonous voice began to show concern. "No, milord. The engineers who prepared the device must have made a mistake in programming the diagnostic process. I'll set it right immediately." he said, frantically trying to regain control of the device.
The energy beam began expanding into a large, crackling sphere about a mile above the city of New York, shining blue from Cherenkov radiation emanating from it. Loki began to suspect a serious problem in the Tesseract's portal-generating device as the sphere seemed too unstable to be a wormhole. Suddenly, what appeared to be a lump of some silvery polymer nearly nine kilometers in length launched out from it at an unavoidable collision angle, quickly crashing into the Upper New York Bay and causing a small earthquake.
"WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS, MORTAL?" Loki thundered in a voice that seemed unnaturally forceful, as if spoken by several men at once.
The scientist frantically altered the frequencies of the Tesseract's power output, and the sphere began to implode as the energy beam dissipated, culminating in an anti-climactic, small release of energy. Selvig responded "The errors have been corrected, sir. The portal to your army should be ready to open very soon. It seems that the program for the diagnostics hadn't fully taken into account the chain-reactive tendencies of the device, allowing for a premature activation which created a small tear in subspace. It's fortunate that it was quickly remedied; if left unattended the collapse of that subspace tear could have resulted in a powerful electromagnetic pulse. Luckily I managed to channel most of the energy back into the portal itself, so any further repercussions..."
Loki's attention had drifted away from the hapless scientist, however, as he spotted an Iron Man suit landing at the top of Stark Tower.
Ardent Prayer
Instead of atomized oblivion, the next thing Spartan Jorge-052 experienced was... turbulence and a state of freefall. Looking up, he saw that the hangar containment field was no longer active, but the hangar bay itself was largely unchanged. Shaking off his astonishment for the time being, Jorge kicked off and fastened his helmet back on (which had been floating a few inches above the floor) and took a look outside the ship.
"Alright, now I've seen everything," the Spartan thought as he caught sight of the classical Statue of Liberty. "If this isn't some near-death hallucination, I'm in the United States at some time before the Rain Forest Wars." To minimize the damage he'd take from the impact, Jorge locked his armor, a mechanism that immobilized the suit but massively increased its durability and shock absorption, when the ship appeared to be about to collide with the Earth.
The Long Night of Solace, with the Ardent Prayer caught underneath, forcefully plummeted into Upper New York Bay, chipping off the tops of several buildings and flattening many others as it landed, creating a land-bridge between Staten Island and Brooklyn, covering several city blocks with the remainder of its severed hull. The supercarrier fragment's orientation had partially submerged Ardent Prayer and its docking bay, tilting them a few degrees relative to the sea floor; Ardent Prayer hadn't completed its docking procedures by the time the slipspace bomb went off, and was leaning against the Solace's wreckage.
The colossal Spartan deactivated his armor's lock and quickly tried to regain his bearings, shutting out his pure astonishment of what was happening for the time being and concentrating on what he could do something about. Knowing the corvette would soon be boarded if enough of the Covenant aboard the supercarrier survived, Jorge looked about for any weapons that hadn't slid out of the hangar in the violent landing.
Checking the Pelican he'd boarded the corvette on when they were in orbit above Reach, which had wedged itself under one of the hangar's overpasses during the crash, Jorge found his M247H heavy machine gun, which he'd given the nickname Etilka, and a few other weapons jumbled inside. Retrieving Etilka, he also picked up an M6G pistol and a M392 DMR to complement it. Peering out into bay, Jorge saw that the waves caused by the Solace's crash landing had seriously disturbed the surrounding area, and emergency personnel were beginning to usher crowds away from the wreckage of the fallen Covenant flagship.
"Pelican's still busted," Jorge thought to himself, trying to brainstorm a quick escape from what could very well be over ten thousand Covenant soldiers. Grinning under his helmet, Jorge remembered the vector Noble Six had used to board the ship, "But since the corvette is stationary, getting back to the Sabres should be possible now. I guess I'll get to see what I was missing when Six was piloting one above Reach."
Stark Tower
Picking up his glass, Tony Stark said "Not a great plan" to the aspiring tyrant. Stepping out from behind the bar, Stark continued, "When they come, and they will, they'll come for you."
Stark's nonchalance and casual quips were beginning to wear Loki's patience thin. "I'm going to especially enjoy watching this one kneel. The insolent and stubborn ones' submission is always the most gratifying" the scheming Asgardian thought as he tried to explain the futility of SHIELD's resistance. "I have an army."
"We have a Hulk." Tony rebutted. "You'd better hope you're army's a hell of a lot more useful than that wreckage you left in the bay."
With affected worry, Loki sarcastically replied, "Oh I thought the beast had wandered off. My army is coming; don't pretend to understand my methods, mortal." Loki bluffed, not wanting Stark to realize that the crash-landing of the Long Night of Solace was actually a total fluke. God-Kings can't be known to make mistakes, after all.
"You're missing the point; there's no throne. There's no version of this where you come out on top. MAYBE your army comes and MAYBE it's too much for us, but it's all on you. Because if we can't protect the Earth you can be damn well sure we'll avenge it" Stark replied, taking a sip of his drink.
"I've had enough of this insect's insolence. He's made light of a god for the last time" Loki thought. Walking forward with his scepter at the ready, Loki asked, "How will your friends have time for me, when they're so busy fighting you?". Tapping Stark's chest with his scepter, Loki was disappointed to hear a metallic tink. Surprised, the Asgardian again tried to gain control of Stark's mind, only to again be thwarted by the arc reactor in Tony's chest.
"This usually works" Loki said, with both surprise and disappointment in his voice.
"Well, you know, performance issues..."
Long Night of Solace
Stirring from his brief bout of unconsciousness, Rho 'Barutamee got back on his feet. From what he could see things were looking grim. The ship's power had been disabled and the hangar he was inspecting had fallen into disarray. The conscious Unggoy were panicking, their Sangheili commanders barely able to keep any order at all. Testing his communication device, he furiously roared to his first officer, "Tak 'Pozralee, what in the name of the gods has happened!?"
When his query was met with silence, the Fleetmaster, slowly growing more anxious and less angry, opened a channel to all general-class officers and said, "This is Supreme Commander 'Barutamee. If you hear this you are to give a report of your status immediately."
"This is General Sato 'Moretumee on the bridge." A grave voice answered, "Our situation is dire: over 65% of the ship has been destroyed; the entire bow and much of the stern, including the engines, have been literally cleaved off by a saboteur's void-space weapon which seems to have been deployed from Ardent Prayer. I've ordered the Yanme'e to effect whatever repairs are possible."
Rho 'Barutamee was one of the few elite Fleetmasters to command a CSO-class supercarrier that wasn't part of the fleet defending the mobile space station and Covenant holy city, High Charity. The Long Night of Solace, a ship larger than many cities, the pride of his fleet that he'd earned command of after years of loyal service to the Covenant, sliced apart by a saboteur on a hijacked corvette. And on top of that he was cut off from the Field Marshal; the holy relics of the gods were out of his reach! "The contemptible cur responsible for this will live only long enough to see his entrails slashed asunder by my blade!" Barutamee cursed inwardly.
"Every section and system of the Solace that can be made operational again is to be repaired immediately! I shall personally order our aircraft and starfighters to begin patrolling the perimeter of our crash site," the fuming Fleetmaster ordered. As if an answer to prayer, the hangar's lighting began to reignite.
Moretumee dutifully reported, "Supreme Commander, the section of the ship that passed through the portal still holds a Light Stealth Corvette, the Shadow's Blade, as well as the Ardent Prayer. The majority of our starfighters and aircraft should still be intact as well." Considering the situation briefly, Sato worried, "If the sabotage came from onboard Ardent Prayer, what happened to Ardo? My brother would not have betrayed us. I can only fear the worst..."
Snapping back to duty before his commander deigned to note his pause, the general continued his report, "The entire ship's power dropped temporarily; I believe that was a side effect of exiting the unstable void-space tear. Life support has failed in many sections, but it can be repaired in time. This planet's atmosphere is breathable for Sangheili; evacuations can be made if necessary. The energy projectors have been destroyed but the point-defense lasers and plasma turrets along our sections of the hull can eventually be brought back online. Shields can be restored as well, but they will top out at only 10% of their full strength and their coverage won't be without small gaps as the Yanme'e and Huragok will need to manually adjust the shield-emitters. We're taking an account of the current crew complement, but so far-," the general abruptly stopped, then very nearly shouted in rage:
"Fleetmaster 'Barutamee! You must order our fighters to scramble immediately! A human starfighter is escaping the Ardent Prayer!"
A/N: To those of you who made it this far, thanks for bearing with me; the beginning was a bit exposition-heavy but I can guarantee there will be more action and plot progression in the next update and onward. Also, the current cover is going to be changed later on; my sister (who's quite good with art in electronic media) is working on a more fitting cover for this but as we all know, real life can get in the way of recreation. Hopefully we'll be able to get the new one up eventually.