July 17th, 2552 / Orbit of Sigma Octanus IV / Sigma Octanus System
Captain Jacob Keyes POV
I've always hated the quiet before a battle.
The kind where the hull hums with restraint, the crew whispers at their stations, and even the vacuum outside feels like it's holding its breath.
We hang in high orbit of Sigma Octanus IV—twelve UNSC warships fanned out in high anchor formation. My ship, the UNSC Iroquois, sits at the outer edge like a loaded revolver in a holster. Her MAC is primed. Her archer pods are hungry. Her reactor hums like a war drum. But nothing moves in the void. Not yet.
The chair beneath me groans as I lean forward, elbows on knees, studying the latest sensor readouts flickering across the Iroquois' primary display.
"Still nothing?" I ask quietly.
Lieutenant Dominique leans toward her console. "Sir, nothing on radar, nothing on optical. But…" She hesitates, glancing my way. "Ensign Lovell's slipspace prediction flagged an anomaly."
I nod slowly. That's the part keeping me from sleeping for the last six hours.
Ensign William Lovell.
Smart kid. Too smart for his own damn good. Assigned to a backwater tracking post because he mouthed off to the wrong Lieutenant Commander—but he didn't waste his punishment. By doing his job and doing it right, he'd spotted something no one else had:
A gravity wave ripple where there shouldn't be any.
A bulge in subspace the exact shape and mass profile of a potential Covenant assault flotilla. Lovell may have caught them entering the system before they'd even exited slipspace. He forwarded the anomaly report to FLEETCOM in orbit. I read it twice.
Then I trusted it. Issued a system-wide yellow alert before they could drop out of slipspace. A roll of the dice. One my career might've paid for—if I was wrong.
But I wasn't.
They arrived six hours later.
Not in formation. Not with fanfare. But slamming out of slipspace in waves, scattered, like sharks breaching around a sinking ship.
"Seventeen Covenant vessels," Dominique says, her voice just above a whisper. "Confirmed. Six destroyers, four frigates, two CCS-class battlecruisers... and a carrier. CCSO-class."
God help us. They brought a goddamn flagship.
I stand slowly and look through the reinforced viewport. Ships of the UNSC Defense Fleet hang like black knives in the dark, arranged in a three-dimensional net across Sigma Octanus IV's orbital plane. Admiral Stanforth sits at the center of the formation aboard the UNSC Leviathan, coordinating the response. I don't envy the man. If this turns into another Harvest, another Jericho VII… we're screwed.
But we're not caught sleeping. Not this time.
"MAC status?" I ask, eyes still on the void.
"Charged and holding at ninety percent," Dominique replies crisply. "All archer pods loaded and primed. Casaba-howitzer MK II warming up."
The bridge goes silent. Even the comms chatter from fleet net simmers down to whispers.
I look at the tactical screen.
The enemy is here.
We are ready.
And Lovell? The ensign with the disgraceful jacket and golden instincts?
He's not in orbit. He's not in uniform.
But today, we fight because of him.
"Bring the ship to full alert," I say. "Warm the reactors. Inform Admiral Stanforth we have visual confirmation."
"Aye, sir."
The lights dim red across the deck. Bulkhead locks hiss closed. Every soul aboard takes one last breath of peace.
The Covenant has arrived.
And the Iroquois is ready to meet them.
Orders scatter like ash in a wildfire across fleet-net.
Below us, Sigma Octanus IV braces for invasion—but for once, we're ahead of it.
"The ground insertion wave just cleared launch zones," reports Lieutenant Dominique. "Titan deployment confirmed. All dropships green."
I give a single nod. "Keep updating me every five minutes."
"Aye, sir."
Through the viewport, I catch the faint shimmer of reentry flames as hundreds of armored drop-pods punch through the upper atmosphere. Titans—the walking tanks we stole from dreams and nightmares—descend like spearpoints, each strapped with enough firepower to topple a building. Alongside them are Spartans, ODSTs, and mechanized infantry detachments. For once, we're not sending them in to die for a hopeless cause.
The orbital defense platforms—seven of them, positioned in geosynchronous orbits over population centers—activate with grim resolve. Their massive MAC coils begin cycling, the Casaba-howitzers beginning to warm. Titan squadrons launch from their hangar decks, each one fitted with zero-G stabilization and booster rigs to brace the platforms from boarding actions.
And in the black beyond, the real curtain rises.
The next innovation from Spartan Command and first deployment of purely AI ships.
"Drone fleet Ares launching now," calls out the tactical officer.
I watch as hundreds of glinting hulls spark into motion, trailing their carrier ships like a school of metal piranhas. Three command ships remain behind the net, human engineers and Smart AI trios embedded into each one, coordinating the ballet of death.
The Covenant fleet breaks into a fan as they angle for our flanks—but our drones react with exacting precision, swarming toward the weak points, harassing the battlecruisers before they can fully deploy their fighter screens.
And then—like a minefield snapping awake—a new layer of defense hums to life.
"MAC mines deployed," Dominique says, awe in her voice.
On my display, the tiny red dots of omni-directional defense mines flicker into place like a halo around the planet. Each one carries a micro-fusion core and a scaled-down MAC cannon rigged to fire in any direction. The moment a Covenant ship drifts too close, it'll be like poking a bear with a steel spike.
The Casaba-howitzers—our newly minted directed-energy lances built from repurposed nuclear warheads—charge silently aboard each ODP. One shot is likely all they get, but if it hits…
Even a Covenant shield will scream.
"All fighter squadrons launched, sir," another officer chimes. "Our skies are full."
I nod slowly, hands behind my back, gaze fixed on the sprawling chaos beyond the glass.
Casualties used to be the opening line of every engagement.
But since the drone fleets joined planetary defense doctrine… they've dropped. Hard.
Doesn't mean they're gone. But we're not using up our best anymore just to measure an enemy's teeth. The drones take the first bite. We bring the hammer next.
"Enemy destroyer entering mine range."
The tactical screen flares.
A micro-MAC slug streaks out from a nearby mine, striking the destroyer mid-section. The shield ripples. Two more fire before it can react.
The enemy destroyer begins to list, engines flickering.
"Mark it. That one's ours," I mutter.
The Iroquois rumbles beneath my boots as our own MAC coils spool to readiness.
It's begun.
The Covenant fleet tightens into a hunting crescent. All spreading like a noose.
"All ships: fire control confirms MAC trajectory vectors accounting for gravitational drift and mine interference," the gunnery chief announces.
"Release fire plan Theta-3," I command.
That's our brawling plan.
The one that puts lead where their shields are already stressed.
MAC cannons thunder across the fleet. Seventy-six coordinated bursts, each one launching a depleted uranium slug the size of a bus at near-relativistic velocity. Our mines pulse to life—realigning by gravity control nodes to open fire like a crossfire web.
And the drones?
They blitz.
Like wolves tearing open a herd of cattle, they surge into the Covenant formation. Railgun rounds flash. Point-defense batteries light up the void. A CCS cruiser's prow vanishes beneath a flurry of micro-MAC hits and Casaba lances.
"That one's losing shields—mark it!" I snap.
"Three UNSC ships are maneuvering to intercept," the comms officer calls out.
A moment later, the Vengeance, Raven Spear, and Adjudicator fire. Triple MAC slugs punch into the weakened CCS cruiser's neck.
It explodes, bleeding reactor plasma and hull into space.
We're finally returning the favor.
"Sir! Slipspace rupture—six more Covenant ships, bearing 343 mark 2!"
Damn it.
"Redirect drone Cluster 2 and engage."
The AIs within the drone command ships are already working overtime, predicting attack vectors and deploying flanking pods.
Casualties spike—our cruiser Montpelier takes a plasma torpedo amidships and begins venting atmosphere. Fire suppression systems hold. The Resolute Dawn veers hard to avoid a hull-shredding barrage of pulse lasers and raking plasma beams.
But the Commonwealth dives between them, loosing another MAC round that clips the shields off an enemy destroyer and slams it backward into the debris field.
"Captain, ODP-3 is reporting boarding threats. Covenant dropships inbound."
"Order the station titans to clear them off the hulls."
"Already in motion."
Through the chaos, I see it clearly: this isn't a battle like the old days.
No desperate last stands. No praying for reinforcements. No suicidal final runs with everything to lose.
Now, we trade for every inch. We punch for every second. And the bastards are finally starting to bleed.
"MACs recharged. Fire again on my mark."
I watch a CCS cruiser flare red on our targeting net. Damaged. Flickering shields. Trying to turn away from the onslaught.
"Fire."
Three rounds hit—one from a destroyer, one from a mine, and the last from the Iroquois herself.
The ship disintegrates into slag and vented fire.
God help me, I smile.
I see them—two Covenant ships breaking from the battle line. Fast. Intentional. They don't waver. A CCS-class and a CRS destroyer, both on a hard vector toward the atmosphere, nose-down and engines flaring hot.
They're heading for Cote d'Azur.
Every instinct in me sharpens to a razor's edge.
If they glass the city… there's no coming back from that.
"Helm, bring us about—intercept course to intercept vector Alpha-Seven-Niner."
The Iroquois groans as her drives spool and swing. Inertial compensators strain under the sudden G-force, but this girl's a thoroughbred.
The covenant ships are leading the way for a carrier. They fire plasma torpedoes. The heated gas locks onto and tracks us.
Even crazier thoughts cross my mind.
"They'll beat us there, sir," Lieutenant Hall warns.
"Not if we thread the needle."
The bridge crew goes quiet.
"You mean to turn back around and charge the carrier?" Lieutenant Hall is baffled.
Time to gamble.
Not time to explain.
"Feed maneuvering calculations to NAVCOM. Set up a grav-assist loop around the planet's upper atmosphere. We're going to slingshot."
They stare at me for half a beat before diving into action.
This wasn't a textbook maneuver. There wasn't a textbook for what I was about to do.
The instinct for war isn't born from a college or academy. It's born from necessity, desperation—and maybe just a little madness.
"MAC capacitors full. Archer pods three through twelve loaded," weapons calls out.
"Copy. I want firing solutions for both enemy vessels the moment we come around the loop. Then plot a course straight towards the carrier."
"We're going to be blind until we clear the planet's limb," comms adds.
"Then we make the shot count."
The Iroquois begins her plunge, skating the upper layers of Sigma Octanus IV's gravity well, cutting a hair's breadth above the atmosphere. The artificial gravity dips for a moment, then compensates as the ship pitches and rolls along the tight curve. The skin of the hull sings with thermal friction and the constant strain of physics barely held in check.
The plasma torpedoes follow closely, as though hellhounds desiring to drag us back to hell.
"Altitude falling to critical margins—buffer at ten percent."
"Hold her steady."
Through the viewfinder, I watch the Covenant ships descend like scythes, shields glowing faintly in the void.
My hands grip the console tighter than they have in years. My jaw is locked. My pulse is calm—but the beast in my chest is roaring.
This isn't about a kill.
This is about denial.
They won't touch Cote d'Azur. Not while I'm still breathing.
"Three seconds to loop apex," NAVCOM announces.
Everyone braces.
This is the moment where we either skip like a stone across the thermosphere and burn out, or rise from the curve like a blade from the forge.
"Now!"
The Iroquois rockets up from the loop, all drives flaring as the nose whips up toward the stars. Both Covenant vessels light up the HUD, square in the reticule.
I slam the command key.
"Fire archer missiles."
The Iroquois screams free of the slingshot curve like a rail round from a MAC cannon. The atmosphere peels away behind us in vapor trails of fury. The Covenant destroyer and cruiser sit on our bow—right where they were supposed to be.
They never saw it coming.
"Archer pods three through twelve, full salvo away!"
The Iroquois exhales death.
Dozens of missile contrails spiral out around us like smoke-wrapped knives, each one tracked, timed, and coordinated with precision born of desperation and defiance.
The CCS-class cruiser is the first to react—its shields flare, blue-white plasma licking across its flanks as the first MAC slug slams into its ventral curve. The shield bends. Flexes.
Then cracks.
Its partner, the destroyer, knocks out a third of the missiles with point defense. The rest deplete the shields just enough.
"Fire the MAC!" I order.
A MAC slug slams into the cruiser like Thor's hammer, the alien metal yields to extreme force. The cruiser is gutted bow to stern. Fire and atmosphere vent before the ship rapidly dives into the atmosphere, all power lost.
The second slug plows through the wounded shield on the destoryer and tears through its core like a surgical lance. The reactor goes next—like a sun behind a veil. In a heartbeat, the cruiser is reduced to a molten spine of debris and expanding plasma raining into the atmosphere of Sigma Octanus IV
The carrier tries to veer.
Too late.
The Iroquois scrapes along the shield atop the carrier. Alarms blare. The lower decks vent atmosphere.
"Fire secondary bow thrusters. Drop the ship behind the carrier." I bellow.
Plasma torpedoes trailing us like the grim reaper slam into the carrier's shields and into the hull of the carrier.
The result is spectacular.
A chain reaction ignites across the carrier's midsection. Secondary explosions fire off like firecrackers in a dry brush.
Then—gone.
In two minutes, three Covenant ships were erased from reality.
The bridge crew erupts in restrained triumph. No cheers. Just the kind of stunned satisfaction that only comes when death should have taken you but missed.
I exhale through my nose. Slowly.
"They're not gods," I murmur to myself.
"Sir?" Hall says, turning from the sensor console.
"They bleed."
I glance down at the mission clock. Less than two minutes ago we were behind the enemy's arc. Now we've put thee of their vessels into the dirt, and we're still flying.
That wasn't luck.
That was human ingenuity.
That was every single soul on this ship doing their damn job, trusting each other, and doing what they said couldn't be done.
I straighten up, nod to the crew.
"Resume fleet formation. Let's go help the rest of those bastards win this fight."
As the Iroquois climbs back into formation, I catch my reflection in the console glass—grey hair, sharper wrinkles than yesterday, eyes that have seen too much. But for the first time in a while, there's a flicker behind those eyes.
Not hope. Not yet.
But maybe… momentum.
The Iroquois slides back into formation, hull still hissing from atmospheric scrape and Covenant plasma vapor. We're bruised, not broken. Two of theirs down—only a dozen more in the theater.
Vice Admiral Whitcomb's voice cuts across fleet command comms—calm, but carrying the weight of iron.
"Commonwealth and accompanying drone flotillas will advance two-three-zero by five. Break their wedge. Priority targets: assault carriers and shieldless vessels. MAC saturation protocol now active… and Iroquois Damn Good Flying Out There."
We have momentum. Not just us—everyone. The drone fleets are cutting through the flank like scalpels, carving weak points for the manned ships to hammer.
I glance over the tactical map.
ODP-3's Casaba-Howitzer just finished charging. It's tracking one of the last CCS-class cruisers flanking Sigma Octanus IV, shields down. The pulse—when it hits—is a lance of solar fire, kinetic nuclear fury sliced into a scalpel's edge.
Impact registered.
The cruiser's midsection buckles. It's split like a rotted tree trunk—disgorging debris, glowing atmosphere, and whatever crew hadn't already been liquefied by decompression.
"New contact!" Hall shouts. "Another Covenant frigate just dropped from slipspace!"
Of course. They're not letting this world go without a tantrum.
But this time—this time—we're ready.
The new UNSC doctrines are working. Drones with AI flight logic outmaneuver the slower Covenant fighters. MAC rounds curve, bending in paths calculated by the gravity well satellites we seeded in low orbit. It's beautiful—cold, mathematical beauty. Like watching music written in fire and steel.
We don't fight fair anymore. We fight smart.
Even now, Titan reinforcement and rearmament launched from the Commonwealth's underbelly drift through space on magnetic platforms, shouldering railguns and point-defense systems, hammering any Seraphs that get too close. Our mech divisions—flesh and machine bonded—dance in 3D combat the Covenant still haven't adapted to.
Another feed comes online. Ground command from Cote d'Azur. I watch Spartans tear into the enemy that managed to land with disciplined rage. Titans stomp through rubble like giants reborn. The city still burns—but it stands.
"Incoming plasma volley!" Hall barks again.
"Brace!" I shout.
The Iroquois banks hard, inertial dampeners straining. A molten lance of plasma shears past our bow, evaporating one of the auxiliary drones to our starboard. The shockwave ripples through the hull—but we hold.
Whitcomb's voice crackles over comms again.
"Now, all ships—close to knife-fight range. We finish this."
I grit my teeth and watch the enemy fleet try to retreat behind their own chaos.
No. Not this time.
Not again.
We're in the thick of it now. Plasma lances rake across the void, but the Covenant's formations are faltering. They hadn't expected this kind of resistance—didn't account for us adapting. They never do.
Vice Admiral Whitcomb's voice hits the command channel like a thunderclap.
"Execute final solution pattern. Mark all targets. MAC grid, fire on my signal."
I look to the TAC map. Drones are herding what's left of the Covenant fleet—bruised frigates and a trio of CCS battlecruisers—toward grid 119-Delta. They're cutting off retreat vectors like a net tightening around a shark.
They're being herded… into the minefield.
"Captain," Ensign Hall says, half in disbelief. "The omni-MAC mines. We seeded that sector an hour ago."
I nod. "Admiral's playing chess. Covenant's playing checkers."
The Casaba-Howitzers on ODPs 4 and 6 begin spooling again. Their capacitors glow like gods preparing to smite while firing MAC slugs. Meanwhile, our drones form a new perimeter—tight, lethal, and pulsing with electronic interference to corrupt Covenant long-range scans.
Whitcomb's voice is calm. Cold.
"Fire."
Sixty MAC rounds scream through space.
Some come from orbiting defense platforms, some from our heavy cruisers, and hundreds from hidden omni-directional MAC mines.
The Covenant—boxed in, with no momentum left—try to scatter.
Too late.
Explosions bloom across the TAC display. CCS cruisers split apart. Their shields, already battered, collapse under the kinetic onslaught. One frigate tries to spin and flee—only to be impaled by a drone-guided railgun round to its aft section.
A plasma torpedo detonates prematurely, cooking another Covenant destroyer from the inside out.
Then comes the hammer.
ODP-6's Casaba-Howitzer fires—one continuous beam of accelerated plasma-nuclear fury—and slices clean through the last heavy vessel attempting to retreat. Its reactors implode. There's a blinding white flash across the whole battlespace.
Silence.
No new contacts. No enemy signals.
Whitcomb's voice comes through once more. No celebration. No pride. Just war-worn authority.
"All ships. Hold formation. Begin SAR sweeps and debris tagging. We may have won this battle—but not the war."
I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding.
"All stations," I say. "Stand down from general quarters. Maintain alert condition three."
I lean forward, staring at the fading red dots on the TAC screen.
We held Sigma Octanus IV.
But if this is what it took to defend a single colony… Reach may not be enough.
The battlefield has gone still.
A few stray plasma torpedoes flicker into the black before dying out. Wreckage, both ours and theirs, spins slowly in microgravity, a funeral procession of shattered hulls and drifting corpses. The debris fields are thick enough that the drones have to sweep paths for recovery craft.
I stand near the holotable, hands clasped behind my back, eyes locked on the display.
Seventy-four confirmed Covenant vessels destroyed or crippled. Seventeen UNSC ships lost—most of them older frigates or destroyers that never got the full upgrades. Not good, but a hell of a lot better than our usual batting average.
Still… something gnaws at me.
I replay the sensor footage of those three Covenant ships that made the hard burn for Côte d'Azur. It's too aggressive. Too direct. As if they wanted us to see them. Force us to respond.
Force me to respond.
That kind of play wasn't typical of the Covenant. They're fanatics, yes—but they're not dumb. If they wanted the city leveled, they would've glassed it from orbit and been done with it. But instead, they broke formation, took fire, and died charging the obvious.
Which meant one thing.
I lean over to the comms officer. "Patch me into ONI SIGINT. Now."
A few moments pass. Then: static. Then a voice.
"This is Lieutenant Booth, ONI Orbital Intelligence."
"Lieutenant," I say, tone clipped, "give me a full review of all suborbital tracking data over Côte d'Azur. Anything that bypassed long-range sensors, anything strange in the lower atmosphere in the past twelve hours."
A pause.
Then: "Captain… you'd better come see this."
They send the telemetry. Dropships. Covenant craft—stealth-coated, low-flying, high-atmo burners—entered the planet's airspace before the fleet arrived. They slipped in under the radar. Hit a vector straight for Côte d'Azur and vanished inside the urban grid.
My jaw tightens.
"Goddamn it. It was a feint. They were already down there."
Whitcomb had outmaneuvered them in space—but we'd all missed the real op. That city was their objective. Not the orbitals. Not the fleet. And now we had enemy forces embedded in a civilian urban center.
I stare at the screen. My hands curl into fists.
The war was changing. Again.
And the bastards just made it personal.