Prologue: War in Heaven

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For those of you that read the old version (further down in the ToC until I catch up), I want you to throw that entire story down the drain. This is a completely new storyline for this book.

AS OF SEP. 1, 2023:
OLD TL HAS BEEN REMOVED

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3rd POV

The Human-Coveneant War has raged for twenty-seven years. Twenty-seven years of defeat after defeat, planet after planet, and sector after sector. Humanity is at the forefront of a galactic beat down by the Covenant.

It all started in 2525.

At the beginning of the war, the United Earth Government was splitting apart at the seams. Earth's outer colonies had grown restless and radical due to a lack of proper financial aid and a harsh military presence in the form of the United Nations Space Command, or the UNSC. While Humanity bickered with each other over trivial disputes, an outer colony on the frontier of human space by the name of Harvest went radio silent.

Planet after planet went silent. Their once proud voices went silent.

Then, the human-held planet of Chi Ceti received a visitor. A Covenant light cruiser by the name of Unyielding entered the system and was met by a UNSC frigate called Commonwealth. This would mark the first space engagement between the two sides as the two ships clashed, and with the help of elite supersoldiers called SPARTANs, Commonwealth would come out on top. This battle would result in Humanity's first victory against the Covenant.

Only a year later would Humanity truly experience the war. The Second Battle of Harvest was a hard-fought battle. A forty ship strong fleet arrived to take the planet back while a single Covenant ship defended it. A dragon against a flock of wyverns. The UNSC paid a high price for victory over a single ship, but at the end of the day, the first planet had been reclaimed. One year after this, the Covenant would return and drag the battle on for five cruel years.

These victories would come to mean nothing as the onslaught seemed nigh unstoppable. The UNSC would win a small battle in the corner of interstellar space while the Covenant destroyed several planets.

By 2535, virtually all of the Outer Colonies had been glassed. Glassing is a technique employed by the Covenant to reduce a habitable planet into little more than a barren rock with once-thriving cities dotting it's surface. It took the Covenant ten years to wipe out Humanity's frontier despite excellent leadership and tactical genius from those they deemed inferior.

Through all of this, humanity's marshall spirit has persisted. When their ships fell from the heavens, they grabbed a rifle and took to the hills, the streets, and their homes to continue the fight. When their ammunition ran dry, they used their guns as bats and resorted to any other blunt object. When their blunt objects broke, they used their fists and teeth to fight. Only when a human lie dead will they stop resisting the unrelenting odds.

This impressed the martial Sangheili, one of the founders of the Covenant. They requested Humanity join the Covenant because of their stalwart defense. The Sangheili are unmatched in the art of war and are natural-born warriors. They've followed the San'Shyuum's orders to raze Humanity's planets without question, but when the San'Shyuum rejected the offer, the Sangheili began to wonder. Not enough to stop the war effort, but just enough to cause tension between the two founders.

The war raged on.

By 2552, seventeen years later, Humanity was cornered. The Covenant started glassing the Inner Colonies by 2536 leaving Earth with not even a fraction of her children. This year would culminate in the end of a holy crusade or a miraculous chance of survival.

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