When Destiny Burns, Ep. 1: A Halo and Inheritance Cycle Crossover

Chapter 1. 2 Faith

UNSC Destroyer When Duty Ends

Unknown planet

"This is the Captain speaking, all hands on deck and brace for impact!"

The Captain in command of the UNSC Destroyer When Duty Ends braced himself against the railing, narrowly avoiding falling to the floor again.

Their ride had been everything but pleasant. It was a fair assumption that the end of said ride would be even less than pleasant. From the moment they had arrived at a world with so many life-signs, he had known that something was wrong. In fact, the entire operation to recover a missing Two-Sierra was just wrong –and not in the usual ONI wrong. The Spartan had been missing for more than four months –the chances of him being still sane after that were less than slim.

But they had exited Slipspace nonetheless, to safe him from his isolation and possibly investigate the source of the signal that had allowed the UNSC to find him.

And the very second they had appeared in-atmosphere to orient themselves and get a bead on the signal, these...drones...had appeared alongside the dorsal side of the When Duty Ends, illuminated themselves with a bright blue light, consuming the front, aft and dorsal in an overwhelming glare and...the rest was a bit fuzzy. Even the bridge had been lit too brightly for anyone to see what was going on.

And then his navigational officer had told him that the Destroyer had entered Slipspace once again, even though their engines were still recharging.

Which was impossible.

Yet the data checked out. The most recent fights in the war especially those at the climax of the conflict, had proven that Slipspace was even stranger than they thought. The aliens that the Covenant worshipped, called Forerunners, had been capable of feats like astro-engineering and repopulating entire planets. They had built the Halos and the Ark, and they had been capable of purging the entire galaxy of life –not that anyone outside of ONI would find out about that.

It would be easy for those aliens to force ships into the even non-visible space called Slipspace. But why?

"Sir, our radar disk has been destroyed! Our shielding was breached near the aft section by an unknown impact and we have multiple hull-breaches!"

"Seal those blast doors! Evacuate all personnel to the front of the ship and prepare for a possible combat-landing!"

Their destroyer was seriously understaffed. They had a crew of fifteen men and women in the bridge and about a hundred marines and ODST's standing at the ready. A skeleton crew. Just before they had made the final jump to 011's coordinates, they had transferred some personnel to the Wayfarer. That maneuver had left the sister Destroyer with plenty of hands aiding in a possible defense against boarding parties, but it had left them with a severe lack of able-handed men and women. .

The ship suddenly lurched backwards, sending some personnel tumbling into their consoles and screens. One unlucky individual was thrown halfway across the bridge when he couldn't grab something in time.

Stars and the black vacuum of space exploded into view, together with a planet covered in green, brown and blue.

"Status report!" The captain cried out.

"Sir, the systems are dead. Whatever that Slipspace jump did to us, it fragged the networking!"

"What do we still have?" He asked, pinching the bridge of his nose in frustration.

"We still got access to our thruster-system, manual opening of hangar bays and the Public Announcement systems, sir! If we want to, we can drift closer to the planet and enter in a synchronous orbit."