There wasn't much to look at anyway—rocks, a lone tree, lots of dirt... a bunch of nothing. When space travel became a thing, Earth pretty much became a sanctuary. Most of the land was turned into a nature preserve of sorts, with people getting cramped into megacities. At least there was color, Red told himself as he watched the dull scenery through his night vision visor. He wondered if the sickly green, old-timey night vision goggles would be more appealing to look at than whatever this was.
"Still nothing, Sarge," he groaned a little as he swiveled his chaingun around from its pedestal, the convoy continuing on its designated route.
"Just keep looking," came an annoyed reply through the radio. They couldn't turn on their lights and had to rely on their helmets to maintain stealth, though the sound of five Hogs didn't exactly help with that. Two standard M12 Warthogs on the flanks, an M12G Gauss Hog on the lead, and two M831 Troop Hogs on the rear, much closer to the center. With this many people looking in every direction, it was still a mystery as to why they found nothing.
"Yo Mitch. Any bizarre theories you have with our current predicament?" teased Red. Mitch sat in the passenger seat of the Warthog with an XM510 Grenade Launcher on his lap, looking out to the great expanse on the right... maybe. With the helmet, it was impossible to tell; he could've been sleeping all this time for all they knew.
"It's a draw," Mitch declared confidently. "The Covvies got their asses kicked and are now preparing their next attack. The UNSC likewise, lost too much defending Earth and has pulled out; they are regrouping somewhere." Mitch's theories typically tried to make sense of what was going on, but like any other time, holes in them could be easily found.
"You idiot. Regroup where? This is Earth! There is nowhere else to go!" Red exclaimed, though he himself had no idea what was going on. If the Covenant had won, why hadn't there been an evacuation order broadcasted on every frequency? Why wasn't the planet glassed yet?
"I don't know! But we do now know from which directions they are coming, right? The UNSC could be moving the fleet and MAC stations facing that direction now as we speak."
"It's space, you dumbass! There is no 'direction.' Besides, the Covvies have way better jump drives than we do; they can easily position their ships anywhere they please!"
The conversation was soon disrupted with the Warthog going over rough terrain; one of its front wheels started catching air, having run over something before slamming back down. The vehicle soon swerved wildly. It took several seconds, but the driver regained control and was soon back in position within the convoy. "Can you two shut the hell up! I'm driving in pitch darkness here!" Zack angrily shouted, trying to focus on what was in front of him.
“The hell was that?!” shouted the sergeant over the radio. Red glanced at the nearby Troop Hog where some of the officers were riding, and the one sitting at the front passenger seat was staring in their direction, clearly upset.
“Just… some animal, Sir!” Zachary lied over the radio, glaring at the two before quickly focusing his attention on the nonexistent road.
“Wasn’t my fault, he asked,” complained Mitch before continuing to look in his designated direction.
Red groaned and leaned on his chaingun, causing the pedestal to slowly rotate, allowing him to lazily watch his sector. He slowly got consumed with boredom when something caught his eye. He stood at attention, squinting. “Hey, Sarge. I think I got something.” Adjusting his VISR, Visual Intelligence System, Reconnaissance, like some smuck’s poor attempt to make the acronym work, Red zoomed the lenses toward the horizon as best as his helmet could. “I see light at my 4 o’clock, approximately three klicks.”
Sergeant Ramirez stood from his seat and checked the anomaly himself. There was indeed a light, not sure if it was worth investigating; however, he called for a spotter just to be sure. “Patterson! Get me eyes on that thing!” he shouted over the radio.
“Yes, sir!” replied the man on the other Warthog. “Where is it again?” He hefted his SRS99-AM Sniper Rifle toward the rear, trying to catch a glimpse of this anomaly.
“It's on 135 now,” commented Red as he checked the compass on his heads-up display. The convoy continued to move farther and farther from it. It would be out of sight in a few more minutes.
“Tracking…” Adjusting the scope several times, giving him a much clearer picture of what they were looking at. “It's not just a light; I see a couple of them, Sarge,” finally replied the scout to the sergeant.
“What do you think it is? A city?”
“Nah, Sarge, the light is far too weak, more like a series of fires.” Maybe that’s why no one saw it earlier, as modern lights would normally be visible for miles.
Tapping his foot against his seat, finally the Sergeant made a decision. “Viper 4-Actual, this is Viper 4-2IC, we got an unknown about three and a half clicks from our current position, bearing 138. Over.”
Lieutenant Harris stood from his seat, he was on the front passenger seat of the other Troop Hog, looking toward the rear, spotting the faint light. “Convoy Halt!” he ordered over the radio. “Patterson! What do you have?” he called out as soon as the vehicles stopped.
“A series of fires, Eltee! Nothing much to say unless we take a closer look,” quickly replied the spotter, still keeping an eye toward the rear.
The Lieutenant stared intently at the light, turning around, he saw nothing but more dull earth, wide expanses of dark plains, more rocks, and lone trees. Whatever this fire may be, it’ll be a lot better than a whole bunch of nothing. “Sully, call it in; we are checking that out.”
“Yes, sir!” replied the radio operator, sending a coded message through the radio net.
“No… No! No! No!” he screamed as the secondary thruster started to lose power, hundreds of error messages and data points flooding his vision, but Apollo understood them all. Rerouting the power from the damaged sublight engine towards the functioning ones, pushing all of them to their structural limits. They roared with all their might as the lumbering forty-four million metric ton behemoth tried to escape its current predicament.
When the main power grid started wailing in pain, Apollo rerouted the excess to the secondary, causing countless junction boxes, fuses, and transformers to overload. But he didn’t relent, drawing power from all sorts of sources to get the ship as far from ‘here’ as possible.
When the beast finally began moving again, a smile crept upon the AI’s face. A job well done, He wanted to pat himself on the back, though he lacked the physical form to do it. Till he saw the light. Well, he didn’t really ‘see’ it. One of the external cameras saw the flash as the event horizon of the Covenant’s slipspace rupture collapsed.
They are simply too close; there is not enough time. The ship would be caught in the explosion. They can’t be ‘here’. Milliseconds ticked by; Apollo watched as the shockwave inched closer and closer toward the Prometheus. The great white light, fascinated by its beauty as it ever so slowly expanded before his very eyes, but in the background, hundreds of scenarios, strategies, and simulations ran through his neural matrix. There has got to be a way out of this, a way to save the ship.
He could probably use the energy powering the engines to reinforce the ship’s plating, preventing a data wipe… but without the thrusters, the ship would fall out of the sky, destroying much of the city below. There has been damage throughout the ship’s Titanium A battle plate armor; the EMP wave would easily slip into the gaps, and the probability of losing ship data is just too high. Maybe he should protect just the key systems? But that would mean the ship won’t be able to defend itself afterward. No… there has got to be another way.
Then an idea comes to mind. Apollo is unsure if it will work, but it's the only option he has. Quickly, he uploads himself to the Slipspace engine’s computer core and begins disabling safeties from the system. It is theoretically impossible to jump within the gravity well of a celestial body, like a planet. Creating a black hole to open a slipspace rupture requires thousands upon thousands of calculations, and gravity from a foreign body would disrupt this delicate system. But the Covenant just did it! Right in front of me no less! Apollo knows that the enemy’s jump drives are leagues better than what the Humans came up with, but no matter, his pride simply would not allow it.
As the final safeties are disabled, the EMP shockwave is already surging the exterior of the ship; he can feel several systems going offline one after another as the EMP wave begins to ruin his network. It is simply now or never. Apollo soon overcharges the Shaw Fujikawa Translight Engine, power rerouted around the ship begins burning through the secondary grid, with the primary already preparing for an emergency shutdown. The Prometheus is soon engulfed in the blast wave as the city of New Mombasa is destroyed around it.
“How about now?” flipping a series of switches before turning his attention to his friend.
“Nope, still nothing.” The console before him remains offline. He double-checks the cable, thinking that might be the problem.
“Damn it. One sec.” He leans closer into the circuit box, moving about some plugs, pulling some out, checking if they are properly seated in position before plugging them back in. He flips the switches back on and says, “Try it now.”
His buddy turns the console on, and finally, the device powers up after countless attempts. “Oh yeah. It's working now.”
“Oh god, finally. Yeah, go call it in, I’ll go help Chief now,” picking up his toolbox before heading to his next assignment.
Walking toward the intercom by the wall, the engineer pulls the receiver and presses it against his ear. “Engineering to Bridge.”
“This is the 2IC.” Ethan quickly responds.
“Commander. Long Range is back online, but we still haven’t found a way to turn off the FTL drive. The previous recommendation stands, please refrain from using too much power.”
“I’ll take that under advisement.” Hayes quickly switches off the intercom and turns his attention to Nathan. “Lieutenant! Get me FLEETCOM.”
Price quickly tunes the long-range communicator to the fleetwide net. His mind races. It has been almost half a day. With the planet still not turned into molten glass, clearly the UNSC is still out there, fighting. Or maybe we have won? Who knows. When the first frequency doesn’t bear any results, Nathan switches to the next one… and the next one… and the next one. Every alternate communication line is dead, even the emergency ones.
Confused, he begins a diagnostic test of the relay, tapping his hand loudly as the program searches for errors. It's in perfect working order. Quickly pressing his finger to the intercom, “Bridge to Engineering. The Long Range isn’t working.”
“But I just fixed that…” a voice in the background says before someone actually answers the call. “Yes, we will look into it, Sir. Standby.” The confused technicians begin checking the array, finding nothing wrong. They have replaced every damaged circuit board, reinstalled wiped data, and fixed faulty connections. It’s just perfect. Not sure what else to say about it. “Uhm.. Negative sir. The Long Range communications array is in working order.”
Overhearing this conversation, “Maybe the Covenant destroyed our satellites?” says Commander Hayes. Maybe there is no satellite for their signals to bounce off to; that’s why no one is responding to their hails. Ethan soon begins remotely controlling an exterior camera to look at the night sky, zooming with such great detail they should be able to see… “Wait, what’s going on? Forget about satellites; there are no ships! Not even a wreckage or a debris field from the battle!”
The larger chunks would take hours to move, but the smaller bits and pieces take months to years to clean up. But there was nothing. Nathan turns on more exterior cameras and begins scouring the night sky for anything. Even the moon was visible amongst one of the shots, filling countless monitors on the bridge. “I don’t… understand.” As the wave of confusion fills the two officers, monitors begin turning off one after another. Interior lights also shut down, covering the entire ship in complete darkness.
“GOD FUCKING DAMN IT!!” angrily wails a certain dwarf, his booming voice echoing throughout the ship.
