AN: Hey guys! I'm really sorry about the long time since the last Changing Universes update. I haven't had time to work on it in awhile due to work and school, but plan on having another chapter out by December. As for this new story, I've had the idea for awhile, but not had the time to work on it until now. So, here is "To Infinity with Courage"

Deep Space: 1740 hours; February 10th 2558

Captain Thomas Lasky stumbled as he made his way to his seat. "Roland, I need to know what's going on!"

"Jul M'dama, sir. His fleet's back. They dropped out of slipspace right in front of us. Covenant boarding craft are inbound towards our hangars."

Lasky activated his chair's crash webbing as the ship rocked again. "Lieutenant Austen, return fire, all weapons. Roland, take those boarding craft down." Lasky tapped in a series of commands, the Infinity appearing on the secondary holotank along with the status of the ship's numerous combat systems while an overview of the battle appeared on the primary holotank. "Status on shields?"

"Shields are at 78% and rapidly falling." Roland shook his head. "Captain, the shields can't take this much strain for long."

The ship shuddered, the shields dropping another 8% from the volley of torpedoes. Then, the Infinity responded. The Infinity's MACs were the first to fire, with each round shearing an enemy ship in two. Four red dots blinked off the map. Hundreds or perhaps thousands of Archer and Howler missiles launched from hundreds of missile pods littered around the Infinity's hull, overwhelming the point defenses of several enemy ships and consuming them in fire. Another 3 dots blinked off the map as the secondary guns opened fire, pounding away at the shields of the Covenant armada that had surrounded the UNSC flagship. The shields fell another 13% under the impacts of multiple torpedoes and rapid firing pulse lasers, with the MACs firing again and shredding another four enemy ships off the field.

Lasky leaned forward, watching the shields rapidly fall. "Hold on, Infinity. Just for a few more minutes."

Several minutes later, the Covenant fleet was orbital debris and dust. Lasky let out a sigh of relief, disengaging his seat's restraints as he stood. "Roland, what's our status?"

"Shields are at 8%, but regenerating. Other than that, only a few casualties." Roland pressed his fingers to the side of his World War II avatar's headset. "Hold on. Marines are still repelling boarding parties in most of hangars. Marines in hangar eleven aren't responding. Spartan fireteams are enroute to secure it."

"Another slipspace rupture!" Lieutenant James shouted, causing Lasky to turn to the viewports. The slipspace rupture was massive, and the vessel that emerged caused Lasky to blanch. "It's a supercruiser!"

"How did M'dama get a supercruiser?" Lasky quickly made his way back to his seat. "Fire MACs one through four." Lasky glanced at the shield status, noting the measly 23% power left before the number promptly dropped to 13% as the supercruiser fired a pair of energy projectors at the human flagship. "Lock Onagers on that ships and fire Rapier pods A1 through C20."

The first of the Infinity's MAC rounds impacted against the supercruiser's shields, but bounced off while the other three missed due to the ship's sudden rotation. The missiles hit a moment later, barely putting a dent in the supercruiser's powerful shields. Lasky's eyes narrowed. "They shouldn't have been able to dodge those MAC rounds."

"Sir, that supercruiser is using Forerunner engines, same as us. They've basically been strapped onto the back of it." Roland gestured, displaying the rear of the supercruiser which was much larger than normal and also had the sleek lines associated with Forerunner technology rather than Covenant technology.

"Can we beat them?" Lasky asked, leaning forward.

"Maybe, but we'd take a hell of a beating, sir," Roland said as the Covenant warship rotated back into position. The sides began glowing an angry red: a clear indicator that it was preparing to fire plasma torpedoes.

"Lieutenant Jet, prep for an emergency slipspace jump. Put us 500 kilometers off their starboard bow as soon as they fire those torpedoes." The man affirmed Lasky's order, rapidly tapping the specifications into his console.

The torpedoes fired, releasing themselves into the void and guiding themselves to their target. They'd never reach it, however, as a hole in normal space was torn open in front of the Infinity and the massive vessel's engines activated to propel it through.

The supercruiser's shipmaster snarled in rage at the possibility of his enemy escaping, and ordered that his crew transfer all power to energy projector one and fire. The lights dimmed as his crew followed his command, the lethal plasma lancing through space to impact against the human warship. It's shields buckled, ceasing to exist after less than a second of the impact, and the lance speared into the warship's stern. The warship continued despite the damage, though it's engines pulsed with less power. The slipspace portal, however, had begun to release angry jolts of lightning, and the typical black hole in space had been replaced with an angry red spiral that led… Nobody on the Infinity knew. The ship slipped into the portal.

Earth: 1760 hours; June 24th 2552

It was a normal day on Athens Station, Ensign Adam Loredo had decided, as he made his way to the command center for his duty shift. Even if there was a great deal of stress amongst… Well, everyone, due to the losses the Human-Covenant War was racking up and the relentless advance of the Covenant, everyone still completed their duties with calm efficiency.

Adam sat down at his station, logging into the station's mainframe and pulling up the Sol System monitoring array tied into each Orbital Defense Platform. He leaned back as the system loaded, taking a sip of the sludge the mess hall called coffee, and then nearly spat it out. There was a massive unknown contact above the Moon that hadn't been there a moment ago.

Adam did what his training told him to do, and hit the big red "alert" button.

Earth: 1773 hours; June 24th 2552

Several UNSC warships engaged their engines and began moving towards the Moon's orbit with several others began repositioning their bows turning to point their Magnetic Accelerator Cannons towards the unknown contact that had appeared. The orbital defence platforms began reorienting to aim their more powerful MACs at them as well.

Fleet Admiral Lord Terrence Hood stood with his hands behind his back as the general quarters claxons sounded and crew members rushed around the command center of Cairo Station and calmly shouted orders. "All ships, prepare to engage the unknown contact if necessary. Battle groups four through six are to assume formation alpha-one around Earth while one through three are to approach the unknown."

Hood was honestly worried, but he could never showed it. Everyone relied upon him being a solid rock to lean on in a fight. "Could it be the Covenant? After so long, could they have found Earth?" His thoughts were interrupted by one of the officers.

"Sir, the Iron Warhammer has a visual on the unknown."

One of large screens hanging above them changed to an image from the lead Marathon class in battle group one. The large ship was blocky and grey, covered in weapon emplacements. It was clearly not a Covenant ship based on its appearance and was much much larger than anything the UNSC had ever produced. Initial sensor scans put it at over five kilometers in length. No lights were visible on the unknown, and no signals came from it either. The ship displayed no life at all as it slowly spun, Sol's light reflecting off the hull.

"Permission to engage the... What the hell is that?" The Admiral commanding the battle groups one through three said, surprised.

The upper bow of the vessel finished rotating revealing several things. The first was the obvious plasma scoring that was associated with Covenant plasma torpedoes and energy lances. The second sight caused Hood and the rest of the fleet a large amount of surprise. Large, white, blocky text was clearly visible on the ship's bow.

"UNSC Infinity?" One of the ensigns on the bridge said, his surprise clear in his tone. The moment the ensign finished his sentence, the power readings of the vessels spiked. Several lights activated, the exterior pulsed orange-yellow for a moment, and then the power readings died down again.

Hood crossed his arms behind his back as he turned to the communications officer. "Have our vessels group up around that ship." He turned back to the view feed. "And have Blue Team prepare for a mission."

AN: I'll try to fit with the dates of Halo canon, but some things may have to be changed as is the norm in time travel stories. For example, Blue Team is probably nowhere near Earth at this time, maybe even preparing for Operation: OCEAN BREAKER, but I'd like to have them here for the start of this fanfic at the least. I do have ideas for how to mitigate the whole "future knowledge" issue, but you'll have to check back next chapter for that. I'm also going to ignore the whole paradox issue as well (goes back in time, fixes issue, never went back in time to begin with, issue not fixed, etc/goes back in time, changes time, they cease to exist entirely, etc).

Also, I'd like to say that the Infinity will still be an extremely powerful warship, but they'll also be facing the massive martial might of the actual Covenant rather than M'dama's look-alikes. I may have under-exaggerated the Infinity's power in the fights between the Infinity and M'dama's fleet and supercruiser, and if that's an issue, I apologize. That will not be the case in future chapters, but the Infinity won't be massacring fleets like the one that attacked Reach by itself or anything ridiculous like that.

I hope you guys enjoy this new story. If you have constructive criticism, I would be happy to accept it from any of you.