Infinity

Hello, friends,

Some of you may know me and some of you don't. To those that don't: I wrote a pretty cool story called The Life I think you should read it and leave positive reviews. To those that do: I'm sure you know the drill.

Over this summer I began writing this story. I knew some of the details but not the endgame. I finally came up with what I thought was a marvelous idea and the writing process sped up a bit. Then my laptop was stolen. I didn't have backups for the second half of my writings, about 80 pages worth of Word document were gone and I had no way to recover it. I had backups of the first six chapter, but such an immense portion of the story was gone that I really didn't feel like writing all that again from heart. I was pissed that my laptop was stolen and that my work was gone, I even considered giving up on the story.

But I stayed strong. It's only fair, is what I ask my readers to do when they have to read through my shit.

That being said, I didn't stay super strong. I restarted the story form scratch, but I cheated. As you'll be able to tell soon, the first few chapters consist mostly of half timeline and half writing. It's not my best work and frankly I don't think it approaches what I consider to be acceptable, but unfortunately that's the way it is. My beta told me that the story wasn't as good and that it felt rushed compared to the past chapters that I sent him. I am inclined to agree with that conclusion. I only ask you that you try and make it through that and wait until the good stuff comes along. I am currently writing the part of the story where "everything is about to go to shit" and I believe that I have a great idea here. Hopefully I'll be able to get a nice writing pace going and achieve what I did with my previous story.

Good writing with a healthy dose of awesome.

I hope that you enjoy this piece of fanfiction, because it will be my last before I start writing for real.

Stay strong.

-casquis

Timeline of Events:

2553

-February: Human-Covenant War officially over

-March: Voi Memorial erected. Sangheili Civil War begins

2554

Jul 'Mdama and his followers find Requiem

Battle of Draetheus V

Draco III Rebellion, Rookie dies

2555

Installation 07 discovered

2556

Covenant Remnant glass Cleyell

Sangheili terrorist attack on Sedra City

2557

-February 21: UNSC Infinity is commissioned into service.

-July 21: Jul 'Mdama's forces make contact with the remains of the UNSC Forward Unto Dawn and Master Chief.

-July 24: Raid in IvanoffStation.

-July 25: New Phoenix Incident. Cortana dies.

-July 26: Battle of Installation 03, Battle of New Phoenix.

2558

-February 7: Second Battle of Requiem begins.

-March 2: Charon Incident.

-March 3: Second Battle of Requiem ends.

I: The Charon Incident

March 2, 2558 (UNSC Calendar)/

UNSC The Spark is Gone, orbiting Pluto, Sol System

"Exploring the unknown requires tolerating uncertainty." – Brian Greene

His ship had been the first one on the scene. The second one, really, but the first one that actually counted. He had watched the low-quality video feed from the freighter countless times now. They all showed the same thing. The little solo freighter had been approaching Charon for a slingshot maneuver before jumping out of Sol. The little moon had begun experiencing seismic activity of cataclysmic proportions. Something like that was certainly strange, but not impossible. It was the fact that Charon was a gigantic ball of ice that made earthquakes impossible.

Like usual, Commander Kim slowed down the video more and more as the moon lost all structural integrity. Blue light started shining through the cracks in the moon's surface and then the moon exploded in a bright blue flash.

Kim could track the larger chunks of ice easily enough, the smaller ones were already trying to settle into a tentative orbit around Pluto, giving the planetoid a nice little predecessor to a set of rings.

There were four frames in particular that interested him more than anything else in the video. They showed a grey shape emerging from the exploding moon, moving quickly and decisively. The shape became clearer in the second and third frames, revealing that it was a ship of presumably human design. Then the fourth frame showed what appeared to have been the source of the explosion before the feed ended.

"That's interesting," he said for the umpteenth time, wondering what exactly had transpired.

The aftermath didn't really do a good job of answering the question, as the gigantic object that had presumably been inside Charon remained locked in orbit with Pluto, producing no heat or other radiation of any sort. It could only be detected through visual scanners and due to the lack of any other chemical components in the space that it occupied.

Kim observed the magnified image of the unknown object, creatively named Object A, from the bridge of his ship. It was white and long, consisting of two main parts that were almost symmetrical. In the middle there were two rings spinning in seemingly random patterns around a shiny blue core of something.

The funny thing, that was only half as interesting as the next object, tentatively named Object B.

It had the exact specs and matched the IFF tag of the UNSC vessel Spirit of Fire. However, the Spirit of Fire had been lost decades ago during the war, right after the First Battle of Arcadia, if the records were anything close to correct. Ships were classified as destroyed or missing on a semi-regular basis. Especially after larger battles, but the confusion was always solved within a few days at most. For a ship to remain on the list for decades… well, let's just say that the disc jockeys never fucked up that bad.

"Alright Ensign, give me a rundown on A," he ordered.

"No visible thrusters of any kind," the ensign said. "Doesn't look like a ship to me. Not with those two spinning things in the middle."

"Those lights along the sides look like they could be windows."

"Object A is not hollow, our sensors confirmed that."

"Specs?" Kim asked.

"Fifteen kilometers long," the ensign reported, "rings are five k in diameter. We have no idea what they're made of. Material doesn't match anything in the spectrum."

Kim audibly groaned. He didn't want to deal with this shit this early.

"There appears to be some sort of shield around it."

"Covenant?" Kim asked.

"Negative, Commander. Doesn't match any UNSC or Forerunner types either."

"So we're dealing with an entirely new race here?" Kim asked.

"Looks like it, sir."

For ten seconds Kim stared at the screen. "Shane?"

"Yes, Commander?" the ship's AI responded.

"Create an exploration subroutine, will you? Install it on a probe."

"Done, sir."

"Launch it. Standard first contact passage, scan as much as you can. Ensign, I want you to contact Io and give them all our information, tell them to send reinforcements our way. Close off civilian traffic within point-two AUs. Make that point-three actually."

"Roger that, sir," the ensign replied. "What about the Spirit of Fire?"

"Shane?"

"Yes, Commander Kim?"

"Wake everybody up."

March 2, 2558 (UNSC Calendar)/

HIGHCOM Facility Bravo-6 (The Hive), Sydney, Australia, Earth, Sol System

"So let me get this straight," Fleet Admiral Lord Terrence Hood began in his intimidating voice. "There is an extraterrestrial object inside of our solar system, inside of Sol, and it has been there since at the very least 1978?"

"Yes, sir," the aide responded.

"And somehow we didn't manage to find it?" Major General Nicolas Strauss asked. "How is that even possible?"

"Tough question, sir," the aide responded diplomatically. "Charon is not a, sorry, was not, a celestial body that happened to be terribly interesting to us, but even then we had done constant deep scans of the moon. We're not sure why the latest scans didn't detect this Object A."

"And you said a probe has already been launched?" General Hogan asked. "Was that prudent?"

"We can't know for certain," Hood told the old Marine. "The probe is compiling a report even as we speak. You're dismissed."

"Admiral," the aide acknowledged, snapping a perfect salute and departing the room.

"So now what?" Dellert asked, his Air Force uniform pristine.

"There's not enough information on this object to actually decide on a course of action," Lord Hood stated, drawing the attention of all officers present. "It's not too big that it can't be towed out of the system if need be. Otherwise, we'll have to wait."

"There's also the matter of the Infinity," Strauss said. "I take it you've all read the preliminary reports, yes? The performance of the Spartan Branch was…"

"Lacking," Hogan finished. "A disappointment, they're nowhere close to their namesake."

"They were in an unfamiliar environment facing Forerunner constructs, for Christ's sake," Hood said. "Whatever losses they might've suffered are surely explained by the difficulty of their situation."

"Admiral," Hogan said, "You know I have no love for the Spartans, I think they are a bunch of uppity mavericks, but I do see the need for them. Still, it is hard to argue against the disappointments. Perhaps a change in the command structure…"

"This is not the meeting to talk about that," Lord Hood told him. "We can discuss that on another occasion. The Infinity will be in desperate need of repairs and they shall be provided. We can talk about the implications of their mission more at depth later today, for now we focus on the-"

"Lord Hood?" Dellert asked. "Something wrong?"

"No," he said, shaking his head. "It's just the presence of this object… let alone the presence of a ship that was declared lost with all hands. Hell, I knew the skipper of the Spirit of Fire."

"Cutter?" Dellert prompted with raised eyebrows.

"Yes. Brave and capable officer."

"What do we do about the ship?" Major General Strauss asked. "We've repeatedly tried to establish contact, life support is still working and we're detecting faint heat signatures in all systems. It looks like a ship that has been in hibernation for a few months, nothing terribly unusual."

"The ship's onboard AI?" Hood asked.

"Would've gone rampant years ago," Hogan said. "Where are Osman and Musa?"

"Dealing with other matters," Hood replied, "but they'll soon join us. Not in person, unfortunately."

"Better off without them," Hogan muttered. "Far too freaky for my own good."

The comment drew a smile from Dellert and a frown from Lord Hood. Strauss managed to keep his face impassive.

"Back to the matter at hand, please," Hood said irritably. "What of the Spirit of Fire?"

"Blow it up?" Hogan suggested, only half-serious.

"No," Dellert disagreed. "It might still have live personnel inside."

"Can't we tell from the outside?" Hogan asked.

"Not in this case," Hood told him. "I suggest we contact Captain Lasky, tell him to dispatch Spartan units to canvas and clear the ship, feed us live intel."

"As good idea as any," Strauss admitted. "Shall I give the word?"

"No, I got this," Hood said, contacting the young captain.

This chapter was proofread by Colonel-Commissar2468.