"Perhaps I could offer a more convenient variant of the professors plan" Serina spoke out.

The elderly captain Cutter and the younger Professor Ellen Anders snapped their heads around to face the A.I which had been uncharacteristically quiet during the Professors briefing.

Ellen Anders narrowed her eyes at the A.I, Serina's sarcastic attitude had more than once gotten on the Professor's nerves. Before the two could enter another argument the Captain spoke up.

"What do you propose Serina?"

"During the rescheduling before we left harvest, all shipboard A.I in the fleet exchanged information early. The A.I on board the Everest had a surprising amount of notes on Solar nuclear fusion. It appears Vice Admiral Cole had a few new innovative stratagems…"

Cutter rolled his eyes "Serina, please, your proposal".

"Oh yes sorry" The A.I did its best to appear somewhat embarrassed. "The detonation of several SHIVA class nuclear warheads on that star would cause a similar effect to what our reactor would do….. The collapsing of the artificial sun and the destruction of this Dyson sphere."

Anders who had been ready to dismiss the A.I suggestion took one step forward. "I've already considered the use of nukes, their effects on the nuclear fusion a star generates is too unpredictable, the margin for error too high. If there was another way to destroy this world and get us home I would have suggested it."

Serina responded by displaying a series of graphs, models and charts onto the holotable. Given an hour the Captain would have been able to at least understand what the A.I was showing but the student of the famous/infamous Dr. Halsey managed to read and process the vast amount of information within a minute.

"Alright" Anders finally said with a small smile "that would work".

A sudden sharp stab of pain coming from his ribs caused First Sergeant John Forge to keel over once again. His fight with the Elite commander had given him more than his fair share of cracked and broken ribs. Still he was alive and the split jaw was dead so he couldn't complain too much. Looking over to his side he saw the spartan Alice-130 haphazardly roll the massive alien over the edge of the platform without much ceremony.

"Sergeant!" a familiar female voice came from behind him. The NCO turned around and found much to his surprise the professor behind him.

"Are you alright?" Anders said rushing up to the badly beaten man side in a quieter tone.

"About as good as I look I think, what are you doing here?"

"I'm disabling the security protocols around the star using that terminal over there" she said, gesturing to the blue spherical interface behind them.

"That job could have been done by anyone, why are you here?"

"Not for something so complicated, somebody else could of mess up".

Forge wasn't too sure whether he wanted to laugh or roll his eyes at what he had discovered was typical behaviour for her. "You do know we literally just had a massive security breach just a minute ago, this place isn't exactly the safest place at the moment"

Anders merely gave a snort at the sergeants comment "I've told you before I could handle myself"

"Like when the covenant captured you?"

"That won't happen again, in fact i'm sure of it"

"What makes you say that?"

Anders tilted her head and gave a small smile, "because I'll have a big strong protector now….. Those Spartans" Her smile turned from a sweet one to a cheeky one at the end of her sentence.

Forge chose to roll his eyes at her cheeky response, he looked down at the 'surface' of the 'planet' picturing all the carnage raging down there. UNSC forces were currently desperately holding a access tunnel trying to open the gate so that the Spirit of Fire didn't end up sharing the same fate as the 'planet' or the rapidly growing covenant fleet that was building up inside it.

Inside the planet. This entire expedition had lead to discovery's that he could of never imagined. The fact that he was inside a planet that was created by some incredibly powerful ancient alien race or the parasite that consumed both recon teams 'Echo' and 'India'.

John and seen a lot of horrors in his career in the marine corps. He had fought in numerous insurrectionist campaigns and in the battle for Harvest against the covenant but all that had paled in comparison to what he had witnessed when fighting the parasite. It was a testament to the discipline of the marines that nobody had just broke and ran when they saw what had become of their comrades. How their bodies had been twisted and mutated before their eyes into nightmarish monsters.

Still it was of some comfort that at least the parasite found the covenant equally tasty. In fact it was because of the parasite that the covenant had failed to mobilise their overwhelming numerical advantage against the Spirit of Fire.

"Sir" Spartan Jerome-092, the leader of the spartan Red team came up from behind him. "its time to get back into the fight" gesturing to the teleport device.

Forge nodded in agreement. He was glad that Jerome hadn't told him to go back to the ship for medical treatment and instead gave him the option to go back into the fight. It was something that both he and the Spartan both had in common, they had a duty to those under their command. In the short time he had known the spartan, they had developed a healthy respect for one another, at least he thought he did. Jerome didn't talk much, in fact none of the Spartans did.

"Lets get out of here". Forge said with a small grin, he could see the light at the end of the tunnel, pun not intended.

The Spirit of Fire dropped out of slipspace over Harvest. Captain Cutter let out a sigh of relief as he reunited with the rest of the UNSC fleet and was now able to resupply the ship. After unleashing the entire SHIVA nuclear missile payload the artificial star while simultaneously slingshotting around it to eject the Spirit of fire out of the planet at speed, the ship had entered slipspace on a course to Harvest. The two week voyage from what Anders had identified as a sort of Dyson sphere had been tense after the First Sergeant discovered a parasite creature in Cryo-bay Foxtrot 7 which he quickly eliminated before an outbreak erupted. Still he the ship security on high alert after that incident.

On top of that he wasn't exactly looking forward to explaining why the Spirit of Fire had left the UNSC fleet over Harvest for over a month, he had given short reports explaining the investigation of an alien ruin and the capture of the Professor but that would do little to prepare the UNSC to what the Spirit of Fire had discovered. The debrief he and his crew would have to give the UNSC and worse ONI was going to be a painful experience. The Captain hoped that only he would be punished for the Spirit of Fires absence.

He flicked through another data dump of reports, all of which were normal and had no real importance, though he did notice a message from Professor Anders requesting access to the MAC guns for another one of her research projects. Serina also sent a message stating that there was confirmation that the Spirit of Fire was free of all Parasite lifeforms.

An ensign spoke up from one of the Bridge terminals "Sir Admiral Cole is hailing us"

"Well let's not keep him waiting any longer, patch it through."

Well that this little fan theory out of the way. Honestly this was a little theory of mine that probably does not hold any water but I did wonder why they didn't just pull off an Admiral Cole and nuke that star, It was stated in Fall of Reach that all UNSC ships had SHIVA nuclear missiles so there is that. Again a theory of mine that probably doesn't hold any water so please put refrain from sending angry reviews, this was just for fun :).

This story is going to be expanded upon. It's more of an alternate timeline where the course of the Human-Covenant War is changed dramatically rather than just a nitpick. How is the return of the Spirit of Fire going to change the intergalactic balance of power, well hopefully I will have enough time to explain in the next chapter. That chapter is probably going to have a time jump in it too, just so you know.