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Culture Clash by Steven Carson (aka Ninja Steve)
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Culture Clash~001~Consider Halo
Date: 25 July 2004, 9:04 PM
Culture Clash - Chapter 1 ~ Consider Halo
The War raged. On and on, for many years, until both the Human and Covenant empires spanned much of the Galaxy. Then they met them.
The Culture and Idirans destroyed each other. The Culture - a human/machine symbiotic society with bleeding-edge technology. Idirans - a race of large tri-pedal aliens, warriors with great honor.
One day, as the Human Covenant War raged, the Culture and Idiran forces, by happenstance, warped into view above Earth. The Culture, desperately fighting a losing war, quickly identified the Humans as in a similar situation. They sided with Humans, and their gigantic warships routed the attacking Covenant invaders. The Idirans later sided with the Covenant, seeing them as brave fighters not unlike themselves. So they helped defend the Covenant Empire against the rapidly advancing Human-Culture forces in space and on land. So the Great War, huge despite covering roughly only 0.2% of the known galaxy, came to a stalemate.
But rumor grew of an ancient and terrible weapon: the Starhammer. Hidden away on a distant and secretive Planet of the Dead, both sides sought it, and the fighting persisted. We join the War now, as it reaches its climax. But more may end, than just the fighting. Sentient life its self is now at risk, as it hangs on the edge of a knife-tip.
The Great Human-Culture-Covenant-Idiran War (GHCCIW) began...
Master Chief British Paramilitary Highlander Earth Division Brutus MacBeth strode through the great destroyer. He admired the amazingly advanced technology of the Culture. Human-like, but with ships the size of large cities, or small continents. And weapons that put Human and Covenant arms to shame. He reached the Bridge, where Captain Ishmael stared out into space through the front viewscreen. Brutus went and stood beside him, silently. A Halo, Halo 007 in fact, floated before them in the celestial heavens as a bangle of the Gods. Of course, the Culture had really built it. Solid steel was on the outside of the ring world, oceans, land, and atmosphere on the inside. It was beautiful to gaze at. With a terrible secret. The Culture had a long history, and could not seem to remember who they had been fighting when the Flood were unleashed upon them. They had trapped them, and abandoned them, flinging the Orbital (for that was how Culture-people referred to them) far away into the Galaxy. Now, to stop the Covenant and Idirans winning the war, they had to be destroyed. Or so they had thought.
Of course, the Covenant had worshipped and revered the Forerunner. Any Idiran who suggested the Forerunner artifacts were Culture built...was killed on site. The Idirans did not persist. So they fought with the ignorant Covies, and both looked down on the other, in an unsteady alliance. The Covenant Prophets could not risk the mass population of their Empire find out the truth. So they destroyed the rings themselves, and claimed those were needed acts of war. For this reason, Culture-Human Forces were always invited to come battle there - it was a mutually beneficial deal (the only one in the war) since CH (Culture-Human) forces usually won, or dealed out heavy damage before retreating.
CI (Covenant-Idiran) ships in orbit (around an Orbital, in a strange coincidence) fired energy field fire around every square kilometer of the Halo, splitting the ringworld into many roughly square pieces, which floated in space. Not yet content, plasma missile barrages fired into the remaining pieces of land and sea, rapidly losing atmosphere being sucked into the vacuum of space. Huge explosions ripped them apart. The debris was then blasted away farther by sub-nuke mines from Idiran bomber/cruisers. All that was left was dust...dust and echoes. The CI forces then swiftly warped out-system, as the CH forces broke their fleet's defensive lines, and tore warships apart or used laser fire to cause them to simply cease to exist.
Aboard the ship CH Aiglos, Brutus and the Captain had a poor view, from so far distant, they would have had difficulty describing the event in a fitting way, without understating. But they had seen it all before. "Captain Ishmael" Brutus said, saluting.
"At ease, soldier" The Captain turned to him. Again we see such pointless destruction in a war with no end. But that end will come, soon enough. This will eventually mean even less-nothing." He turned away again, and tried to run his hand though the hair on his head, but remembered he didn't have any hair with which to do this too late, and looked embarrassed. "Sir, sorry, sir, but why the melodrama? What are you talking about?" Capain Ishmael turned to him. He was smiling. He relaxed his body, a feat he had found painful since his accident in battle years ago, when the Warthog he had been riding shotgun from-with, ironically, a shotgun-blew up, as it hit a plasma mine and was then shot to pieces. He had been lucky to live. "Master Chief, have you ever read a book called Starhammer?"
~So, consider Halo. A weapon of great power. Feared by some, worshipped by others. It was a home - people had settled on them a long time ago, before being equipped with deadly weaponry. Earth, this day, is this way. We have enough nuclear weaponry to destroy the planet several times. And these are supposed to be to keep the world safe? I, personally, would sleep better at night knowing i could wake up not to a peaceful, pleasant Earth, but to a burning cylinder. If that much was left. I know, in war, we may need them to protect our selves, our interests, our freedom. We cannot simply demolish every one of them, and trust everyone else to do likewise. Oh how I wish we could! Which brings me to the question - why is the West allowed weapons of mass destruction, but nowhere else? Perhaps they are less likely to use them, but that may just be rationalizing the situation.
We had to destroy Halo in the Bungie game Halo: Combat Evolved, and for good reason - saving humanity. But consider this - we had to destroy Halo 004 as it could have, alone, wiped out a lot of life in the Galaxy.
But then, so can Earth.~
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