A few years after the human-covenant war in a briefing somewhere.

William Cutter grandson of war hero James Cutter is in a briefing room being debrief on a top secret mission by oni.

"good morning captain and congratulations on the promotion" said the man from oni.

"thank you sir but can you tell me why you called me here, sir."willian replied.

William know that this man who he never meet before wouldn't just call him here to congratulate him on his promotion, this man is from oni so if he's being called something must be up.

Now that he thinks about it his recent promotion must also be connected to them, he's one of the youngest in unsc history to be promoted to captain even younger than Cole and he did nothing remarkable like cole did he only did a little better than those of his generation.

He thought it was fishy and it all make sence now they need something from him and he knows it.

With the realization of that he gave the man a look and the man seems to picked up on that.

"Right down to business, i like than!" the man commented before he continued "now, we translated a forunner scripture that mentions a back up plan with the reclamer symbol (meaning humans) on it and some coordinates, your mission is to investigate the location and set up a reserch outpost there from the data there should be an artifact like the one in africa that can open a portal to earth there"

"sir why did you pick me ?" william asked

"we choose you because this is along term mission that will take you years and on the other side of the galaxy and you have no family left, one to miss. the crew is also in a similar situation"the man replied

"understood sir" william replied.

"good, you will be given a maraton-class heavy cruiser on this mission"

"sir why send a cruiser?"william asked and the man quirked his eyebrow at this, thinking the deeper meaning to his qwestion.

"after the war. resorce is diverted to rebuilding, so the UNSC will have to make do with what we have, the maraton-class and halcyon-class is about to be decommissioned and replaced with the autumn-class witch the higher ups feel to valuable to send on this decade long mission and higher ups also feels that it will be to dangerus to anything less than a cruiser deep in to unkown space"

"how long will this take?" william asked

"it takes about six years to get there and it will take a few more to find the artifact and figure how to work it open a portal to earth, assuming you find nothing it will take you six more years to get back to earth, the worst case scenario is it will take 20 years but since you will be in cryo during the trip, it will only physically take you a few years at most"

"what about the AI ?"william asked, AIs have a life span of seven years until they go rampant.

"you don't have to worry about that, you will be given 4 AIs. When the seven years are up you can replace it with the other one in storage. So unless it takes you longer than 28 years to get back there should be no problem"

"alright i'll take the mission" william replied.