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Desecrating Providence (Chapter 1)
Posted By: Marty<duffym@gmail.com>
Date: 30 January 2004, 8:05 PM
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Desecrating Providence (Chapter 1)
This story follows a contingent of Marines who escape a second assault on Sigma Octanus IV, and, not wanting to lead the Covenant to Earth, or the remaining inner colonies, follow the footsteps of the Pillar of Autumn by cruising towards the star formations illustrated on Sigma Octanus' rock formations.
There is a Prolouge (split into two parts) for this story in the archives. Search my author name in the Fan Fiction section if you wish to read it. It really isn't necessary to read in order to follow the story. It simply explains how and why the survivors escaped from Sigma Octanus.
CHAPTER 1
0238 Hours, October 2, 2552 (Military Calendar) /
Aboard Longsword fighter, uncharted system, Approaching Planet "Threshold"; Earth Survey Catalogue Number B1008-AG
Union lines were being charged by legions of fierce Confederate attackers. Though 65,000 Confederate soldiers outnumbered his force of 25,000 riflemen, Rock, a class C artificial intelligence, managed to miraculously stonewall the Confederate advance during a simulated Battle of Chickamauga. The construct huffed triumphantly as his tiny holographic gunmen prevented the battle-hardened enemy from taking Horseshoe Ridge, destroying the Federal army, and, ultimately, conquering the Union controlled state of Tennessee.
Rock was only able to enjoy his moment of victory for three computation cycles before he was forced to turn off the Longsword space fighter's holograph tank to concentrate on more important tasks. As the construct made the necessary calculations to guide his pair of Longswords into high orbit around an orange-purple gas giant, he marveled at the statistics. After nearly three hundred reenactments of this particular American Civil War battle, he had only managed to defeat the powerful Confederate Army seven times. Rock wondered if "The Rock of Chickamauga", Major George H. Thomas, the man upon whom which Rock's AI persona was modeled around, was actually a brilliant tactician, or if he had just been amazingly fortunate.
The good fortune must have been inherently programmed into Rock's algorithms. Along with five Marines, he had escaped destruction on the fallen colony world of Sigma Octanus IV. Two of those Marines were in the final stages of waking up from cryo-sleep in another compartment of the fighter. The AI double-checked their status. Bio-monitors indicated that one of the two men, Captain Albert Rochester, would need several hours to thaw in order to prevent permanent dry-ice damage to his wounded back. A forth degree plasma burn left a small, but critical portion of upper back charred and torn, so Rock would have to carefully isolate and thermally bandage that portion of his body the exact instant that his system began circulating blood again.
Rock's artificial emotions echoed a sense of annoyance. "Lovely, another task to monitor."
Though no other person or construct was around to hear it, Rock had shown an unusual Human trait: he had spoken to himself.
Rock was frightened by the abnormal behavior he had just shown. In an attempt to refresh his core, and repair it of potential damage, Rock enthralled himself in menial calculations. While submerged in the Longsword fighter's navigation system, the AI construct noticed a curious error. After making a full analysis, Rock realized it was actually quite a serious error. His Longsword's navigation computer indicated that his tiny group of survivors had only been gliding through the stars for a month.
The construct froze for thirty seconds; he was being overworked. Rock quickly terminated all non-critical processes. Rock's paused Civil War battle was deleted, the attempt to orbit the star system's large planet was abandoned, and other small tasks were aborted. Now, with a large capacity to debug this serious error, the AI went to work.
Rock accessed his memory core to recall all events leading to the escape from Sigma Octanus IV.
A standard quality video feed played on the Longsword's main view screen. Twelve Longsword fighters ascended an orange-tinted atmosphere and broke free into an enemy infested space. Seventy Covenant ships, big ones: cruisers and carriers, were bombarding the planet to glass. Though no Covenant fighters were harassing the Human refugees, a small oval-shaped Covenant corvette was moving to intercept them. The lateral lines of the space ship were glowing red and the ship was preparing to fire a wave of superheated plasma torpedoes. The man piloting the Longsword, who presently was about to wake up from cryo-sleep, Major Adur Imam, jerked the Longsword at a strange angle in order to avoid a collision with another Longsword that was blasted by a lucky Covenant pulse laser shot. Rock fast-forwarded through the video. He didn't want to have to see the rest of the escape from orbit; too many good soldiers died.
Rock resumed the video feed and Imam was right on the tail of a Covenant Seraph fighter. With the push of a button, an AGSM-10 missile launched and slammed into the teardrop shaped Covenant fighter. The Seraph's shield generator exploded into blue-white fire. Decompression resulting from the explosion sent the Covenant fighter into a blindingly fast spin. It was obvious that the pilot of the Covenant ship had to be dead from the outrageously high gravitational force caused by the damage, so Imam abandoned the chase and cut the engines. The second surviving Longsword slowly made its way towards a metal object floating in the void. Rock recalled that the last Longsword that the Covenant had managed to blast ejected one of its two Marines in a cryogenic tube that was being used as an improvised escape pod. Miraculously, the two remaining Longswords beat back six Seraph fighters and recovered the Marine.
After watching the rest of the video feed, Rock learned absolutely nothing new: Major Imam had ordered the two surviving ships to go into cryo-sleep and accelerate on a randomized vector for two years before reverting course towards Earth. The AI followed the instructions to the letter and created a countdown clock in order for him to easily create a daily status report log. Some sort of major malfunction must have occurred, perhaps due to damage sustained during the escape from the Covenant blockade, because, according to the navigational computer on the Longsword, the ship had traveled for only one month. Rock checked his other systems checks and discovered the navigation computers and the engine computers on both of the Longswords produced similar results: the ships had traveled what would have taken a month traveling in subspace in the same amount of time in real space. It was impossible.
Major Adur Imam coughed up a mouth-full of regurgitated slime. Like many military personnel, the officer couldn't stand the taste of the disgusting nutrient-rich substance. Imam was glad to be awake, but knew that his two years in cryo-sleep would be a cakewalk compared with the multi-light year journey back to Earth. The ultimate fear that Earth would be glassed upon his arrival loomed in his heart.
Rock had created a subroutine to direct the Major's reanimation. Imam was rather intrigued that the AI was too busy to coordinate the effort himself.
Annoyed that the Longsword didn't have a shower on board, the officer began wiping himself of dead skin and frost with a towel. As he was doing this, he wondered why the Captain in the tube next to his wasn't being revived. Rock's subroutine didn't know either. This made Imam all the more curious, so he floated out of the compartment and moved towards the cockpit.
"Good morning, Major Imam." Rock spoke with annoyance, as if talking to an intelligent being for the first time in two years was a waste of time.
"Good morning, Rock. Why hasn't the Captain been revived?"
"His wounds are too serious for a quick revival, sir."
"Understood." The Major nervously paused and looked out the Longsword's view ports. "Rock, where is the second Longsword?"
Rock's navy-blue uniformed hologram winked into view atop the fighter's hologram-tank. His body flared the entire color spectrum - an indication that the construct was panicked.
"What is it?"
"I was in the process of guiding both ships towards planetary orbit, but I encountered a serious error that required all of my processing power."
A strong gravitational shift sent the Major flying towards the left wall of the cockpit. He could hear the Longsword's engines accelerating at maximum burn towards the exosphere of Threshold.
"What the hell is going on?"
"My apologies, sir. I'm currently attempting to reacquire the second Longsword."
The Major realized the gravity of the situation; the AI had made a very serious mistake.
"Did you abort the orbiting attempt for the other Longsword?"
It took Rock three seconds to respond, "No, sir."
Imam grabbed on a nearby handle and lunged himself towards the pilot's seat. Although Rock's computation abilities were impressive, he was a mere Class C AI; he was hardly capable of flying a Longsword while performing the search for the other ship.
The officer quickly, but erroneously strapped himself to the seat and reacquainted himself with the UNSC fighter's controls. Rock gratefully relinquished control of the ships movements and dedicated all of his data towards locating the second ship.
Imam's ship soundlessly cut through the night with red clouds of friction outlining its descent into Threshold's upper atmosphere.
"Major we will not have the energy to escape the planet's atmosphere once we cross this threshold."
A NAV marker appeared on the Longsword's scope nearly 10,000 kilometers away. Moving at 400,000 kilometers per second, however, the fighter was rapidly approaching the point of no return.
One intense minute ticked by with no sign of the other ship. Rock was hurriedly trying to contact his AI subroutine onboard the other fighter with no success. As Imam was approaching Rock's NAV marker, several collision alarms began to echo throughout the cockpit.
"Be advised Major: multiple contacts falling into the planet's atmosphere. I recommend we break our descent at once."
Major Imam had no intention of abandoning his fellow survivors, but hundreds upon hundreds of small meteors began tumbling through the atmosphere. A rainfall of red-hot material obscured the officer's vision and made flying through Threshold's atmosphere extremely hazardous. The falling debris was simply too thick; he had to pull up.
As the Longsword broke free of Threshold's atmosphere, the scale of the debris became clear: the space around the planet as far as the eye could see was littered with millions of fragmented metal pieces. Imam wondered if the UNSC fleet had battled the Covenant here.
"Talk to me Rock; what am I seeing?"
"Processing data, sir." Responded the construct.
Humongous kilometer long stretches of alien alloy spun gently and soundlessly while colliding into other pieces of debris with explosive force. Imam gasped as an orange fireball erupted upon the impact of the monstrous metallic fragments. Trickling, microscopic metal fragments bounced and clattered against the hull of the Longsword fighter, and the Major eerily looked to the stars as though they were evil eyes starring him down. Major Imam glanced down at Rock's holographic figure as it scratched its furry beard.
"I'd hazard to guess we've stumbled onto something incredible, Colonel." Rock surmised. "There are billions of fragments consisting of rock, ice and an unknown metallic alloy."
"Covenant alloy?"
"No. The metal I'm analyzing is radically different from anything Human or Covenant. I'm detecting random energy bursts and strong radioactive isotopes; this debris field was created recently."
Major Imam had been in the military for a long time, but he had never seen destruction on this scale. Investigating the ruins, however, would have to be set aside while the search for the rest of the survivors continued.
"Any sign of the other ship?"
Rock's hologram shifted uneasily.
"There's something out there but it's... Not the Longsword..."
"What is it?" Imam impatiently inquired.
"Power surge detected!" Rock alarmingly reported.
One of the metal fragments floating in the void suddenly came to life and glowed the matter around it with two faint blue lights on both of its sides. The front of the object, however, tinged an angry red.
Imam instantly commanded his vessel to thrust away from the threatening object, but the ship's engines would not respond.
"Rock, give me power now!" The officer demanded.
"Unable to comply sir," the AI responded, "our fuel cells were depleted while escaping the gravitational pull of the gas giant."
A needle thin beam of energy sliced through the tranquility of the debris-strewn space and slammed into the titanium hull of the Longsword fighter with concentrated force. The armor, made of Humanity's strongest metallic alloy, was being purged away as if it were tissue paper. Alarms flared throughout the interior of the ship.
Rock's hologram flickered off and his voice boomed loudly over the unstoppable whine of the hull breach alarms, "Major, get yourself into a pressure suit immediately; internal atmospheric pressure is collapsing."
The Major attempted to free himself from the pilot's station of the fighter, but he couldn't unhook the safety harnesses he had quickly and inefficiently strapped together a few minutes prior.
Just as the robotic hostile floating in space was about to sever the Longsword fighter amidships, tracers of 120mm auto cannon rounds tore through the dark and slammed against the robot with explosive force. The robot fell back and reverted its frighteningly accurate laser beam towards the shells coming towards it. Several incoming shells were actually detonated while moving blindingly fast to their target, but the vast majority of the explosive rounds pierced and detonated inside the meter long machine. Tiny fires ignited within the hostile for a moment before the overwhelming hail of bullets flying towards it simply caused it to explode into a hundred small fragments.
A Longsword fighter, the one Rock had lost, materialized into view as it burst through a cloud of vaporized metal within the debris field. Fine particles of alloy and crystallized ice swirled and rippled as the jet-black warplane approached Rock and Major Imam's crippled ship.
"Good morning gentlemen!" a jovial female voice called on the naval ship-to-ship radio frequency, "might I be of assistance?"
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