Okay, I am sorry for posting this, I really shouldn't have but I couldn't help myself. so read it and leave a comment. however if you start going on and on about 'inaccuracies' then i will completely ignore you unless the point is valid. seriously i don't want to read something along the lines of 'What about the shipboard A.I? that would have stopped them.' serously if i read a comment like that then... well... you're an idiot. no offence but there you go.

As i said though, if you have a valid point i will listen to you so if you see something wrong point it out, just nothing to do with the A.I, i know what i'm doing regarding that.

I don't own anything.

Alliance space, September 21, 2169, 14:34 (Earth Time)

Admiral William Jones

The Alliance fleet was a formidable sight, two of the large Carriers hung back from the main force, not far enough away to be out of the fight but not close enough to be in the thick of it either. The Flagship—a Dreadnought class vessel, a massive one kilometre long warship known as the Kilimanjaro. But even this beast of a ship was smaller than the 1.58 kilometre long and blocky wreck with the name printed in large white, if faded, letters; the UNSC Everest. Normally finding a wreck like this in space would mean the Citadel Council had to be informed and they would then take it and study it without the Alliance's say. This time however the Alliance fleet went into a complete communication blackout. Because it was, in all likely hood a human ship that not only superseded the Asari's very own Flagship, the Destiny Ascension meant the Alliance would have to answer the Council over the ships origins—which were completely unknown.

Whatever the origins of the massive ship it still scarred Admiral Jones, whatever happened to it would have destroyed his ship several times over an most probably most of his fleet as well. Huge gashes in the ridiculously thick armour revealed the outer most decks; in some parts the gashes were so deep they were dozens of meters in behind the armour. Several things caught his attention though; the blackened engine cones from extreme use and temperature along with the patchwork of what armour was left, the mixture of old and new indicated that the ship had seen a lot of action, so much so that none of the armour plate were thought to be over just a few months old and yet they all showed signs of some heavy fighting. An assortment of weaponry dotted the hull; there were eighty missile tubes, and each one containing enough space for thirty missiles, meaning it was capable of firing 2400 missiles in total, more than his entire fleet combined. It had nearly a hundred 50mm cannons acting as point defence guns with overlapping fields of fire and 105 launch pods for what is assumed to be torpedoes. But the real firepower on that ship came from the large spinal guns, three, THREE, massive guns that ran two thirds the length of the ship, they had an estimated output of 80-100 kilojoules of kinetic energy, more than twice the power of the Alliances own SSV Everest. What worried the Admiral the most was how quiet the ship was; no running lights and no… well anything at all. In fact the only little bit of power they could pick up was small and localised deep within the ship near the engines, away from the outer hull.

His XO walked up to him and saluted before speaking, "Captain Franks is ready to go sir." She spoke with the utter most respect and politeness expected of Alliance Officers.

"Good, tell him he has the green light. After that tell the Einstein and Hawking to double the amount of fighters on patrol, absolutely nothing can leave the system until we are done here." He responded.

"Aye Sir." She snapped off another salute before going off to fulfil her duties. Jones sighed as he looked at the massive ship and wondered what kind of trouble it would bring the Alliance.

Kodiak Shuttle, en route to the derelict ship, September 21, 2169, 14:45 (Earth Time)

Captain Oliver Franks

Captain Oliver Franks sat in the Kodiak shuttle with his eleven man squad. His mission; locate the bridge and download any information still in the ships databanks and return life-support to the ship. After that they were to find the source of the energy readings the Kilimanjaro had picked up. To his right sat 1st Lieutenant Kelly Martinez, 2nd Lieutenant Jimmy MacCraw and Sergeant James Benetez. On his left sat Corporal Alexi Petrov, Lance Corporals Felicia Williams and Peter Collins. Along with Privates Eddie Flinch, Steven Crawler, Dmitri Zheng and Ngoc Burgundy, on the other side of the Kodiak near the door. His men were part of the 106th Marine division—some of the most hard assed marines in the Alliance, second only to the N7's.

Looking at one of the displays that were dotted around the troop bay of the shuttle he could see the massive ship getting even bigger, they were heading to one of the only hanger bays still open. As they got closer he took note of the point defence cannons dotted around the hull, each turret would be more than capable of taking out the small shuttle with ease.

"She's been out here awhile, she's colder than Noveria in the winter, hell there aint even a hint of eezo on the ship anymore." The pilot said from his seat at the front.

"Great, a ghost ship, just what I always wanted to search through. Any idea how long she's been out here?" Franks asked.

"None, but here engines are as cold as space and have been for some time, months at least." The pilot replied. "Anyway's, better get ready, we're coming in now. Have fun in there with all the ghosts!" the pilot cracked up before sealing the cockpit shut. Sighing Oliver sealed his helmet shut and turned to his team.

"You heard the man, ready up marines!" Oliver ordered and watched as the team went through one final check before standing up at the ready. Oliver watched as the shuttled entered the hanger bay, it was fairly large, bigger than the one on the Kilimanjaro, but not as big as one on a carrier. The shuttle touched down and the troop bay pressurised before the door opened. The squad pilled out, rifles held high and flashlights on, securing the hanger was quickly done simply because it was empty; there was absolutely nothing in there apart from them and the shuttle.

"MacCraw, Williams, Zheng and Burgundy you stay here and keep the shuttle secure, the rest of you are with me, we're going for the bridge. Petrov, you got the schematics?" Oliver said.

"They're rough but da, I have them." The Russian native replied.

"Good, you're on point."

UNSC Everst, Deck 27, hallway Alpha-7, September 21, 2169, 14:52(Earth Time)

Corporal Alexi Petrov

Alexi took point through the ship, something he didn't like very much, mainly because it was up to him to get the doors open, large, heavy bulkheads that were sealed electronically and physically. Simply put; they were a pain in his ass to open. That combined with the expansive darkness of the halls and groaning of the ships superstructure made him nervous, more so than a squad of angry Batarian slavers. Finding their way was easier than they thought, there were schematics of the ship throughout the deck they were currently on. There was no sign of the ship's crew, the halls were empty, dark, cold and foreboding, something that to Alexi spelt trouble, nothing good ever came out of something like this. Or maybe he had just watched one too many horror vids. Either way he was breathing hard and fast, a consequence of his less than steel nerves.

With the help from the Captain and Martinez they forced the final bulkhead open, revealing the massive bridge of the ship. Inside were two dozen workstations, large tactical displays and massive floor to ceiling monitors. At the centre of it all was a single command chair surrounded by a half dozen monitors. Floating about in the zero gravity were several data pads that were quickly snatched up by the team.

"Alexi, see if you can get the life-support working on this wreck, Flinch, Crawler, cover the hall way, we can't be too careful here. The rest of you see if you can't do something useful." The Captain ordered, the team filtered out amongst various stations, seeing what they could do.

Alexi took one of the primary station near the command chair and booted up his Omni-tool, it took him a while but he managed to interface with the ship board systems and boot up the computers, what he found was a treasure trove of information, the only problem was it was so heavily encrypted he wouldn't be able to get past the encryption for days, maybe even weeks. He left the data banks alone and started booting up the primary generators on the ship, when the readouts came up on the screen in front of him, he was shocked, they were readouts for a powerful Deuterium Core rector, one more powerful than anything in Alliance space.

"Captain!" Alexi called Captain Franks over, when the officer loomed over his shoulder Alexi pointed to the screen.

"Readouts for a Deuterium Core Reactor, one more powerful than anything in Alliance space, and the design is not one I recognise, it's far more advanced than anything we have like this."

"Understood, make a note of it; we'll pass it on when we're done. What about life support?"

"Bringing it online now Captain." Alexi replied, stabbing at the interface to bring it online.

Once there was air on the bridge the team took off their helmets but kept them close, just in case. Martinez was at one of the other primary stations when she called out.

"Sir, I found something you might like to hear; it's the last outbound transmission from the ship." She said.

"Play it." Franks ordered from the command chair, which he had taken a particular fancy to. She pressed a few buttons and fiddled with her Omni-tool before the message began to play. It was a man with a deep authoritive voice that put Admirals and Generals to shame.

"Listen to me, Covenant. I am Vice Admiral Preston J. Cole commanding the human flagship, Everest. You claim to be the holy and glorious inheritors of the universe? I spit on your so-called holiness. You dare judge us unfit? After I have personally sent more than three hundred of your vainglorious ships to hell? After kicking your collective butts off Harvest - not once - but twice? From where I sit, we are the worthy inheritors. You think otherwise, you can come and try to prove me wrong." After a slight pause the voice of Vice Admiral Preston Cole spoke again.

"Is that the best you can do? Watch what one unworthy human can do!"

The transmission raised more questions; who were the Covenant? Who was Admiral Cole? And what happened? As far as anyone knew there were no Covenant, and certainly not a war with them in which over three hundred enemy ships had been destroyed, that was more than triple the amount of casualties taken during the First Contact War on both sides. Other questions circled through the group such as who was Admiral Cole? What was Harvest?

"All right, enough of that," Captain Franks interrupted, "See if you can't raise the Kilimanjaro, use the damn Comm system on this ship if you have to."

Alexi moved over to what he assumed was the Comm station and tried to activate it, only to get an error message pop up. Access denied, neural uplink not established. He tried working round it but nothing he did allowed him access to the station. Thankfully Martinez managed to get through to the Dreadnought via her Omni-tool.

"Captain, what's your status? We're picking up a massive build-up in energy on the ship." Admiral Jones said.

"We're fine sir; we just turned the life support on along with other basic systems. The data banks are full of info but they're so heavily encrypted it'd take the best hackers in the galaxy weeks, maybe months to crack it." Franks replied.

"Understood, I'll send over some more men to help secure the wreck and to start on those encryptions." Jones replied from the other end of the radio.

"Aye sir, we're about to go check out the mysterious energy readings near the engines."

"Copy that Captain, good luck." And with that the Admiral disconnected the conversation. As Franks got up to move Alexi found something.

"Sir, no need to go looking, I know what it is." He said, the rest of the group looked at him expectantly. He flicked the monitor that showed what he was looking at, causing Franks to look at it.

"Cryo pods, thousands of them, nearly all of them are active." He said slowly.

"The crew are alive? That'd explain the lack of bodies." Martinez said from the station she was looking through.

"Yeah, it would. Tell the Admiral to send over medical teams and a hell of a lot more marines." Franks ordered. After doing so the team moved back towards the hanger to wait for the reinforcements.

UNSC Everest, Cryo Bay Alpha-4, September 21, 2169, 15:21,

Captain Oliver Franks

There were hundreds of pods in each bay, each one labelled with a number and a name, Oliver had spent his time looking for one man in particular, one Admiral Preston J. Cole. And when he found him Oliver was less than impressed; the man was completely stark naked and looked almost dead. Not a very impressive look. Inside the bay a medical team was standing by ready for him, he decided to thaw out the Admiral first and then the rest of the crew. Other medical teams stood by for the revival of the other crew. Two dozen marines stood guard around the pod, waiting nervously for him to open it.

He gave the order and two tech experts stepped up to the pod, they spent five or so minutes accessing the pod controls before they gave the thumbs up and stepped back. It took some time for the pod to open and wake the man inside. Whatever Oliver was expecting when the man woke up it was not having his boots covered in the most disgusting looking white slime the man coughed up as he fell to the floor, barely able to support himself but when a medical technician went to help the older man simply waved him off without a look.

"Where are my clothes soldiers?" the man wheezed out in between coughs.

"Excuse me?" Oliver couldn't stop the indignant remark. Years later when questioned about this day he would say he regretted the comment.