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The Eye of the Storm: Prologue
Posted By: LordofDestruction<Exwing4123@aol.com>
Date: 27 March 2004, 5:40 AM


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The Eye of the Storm: Prologue
Date: May 6th, 2625 Military Calendar

      After the Covenant invasion of Vega Prime was repulsed in 2578, the UNSC and Covenant Liberation Forces continued their push into the worlds controlled by the Prophets. By 2600, hundreds of worlds had fallen to either civilian rebellions or the UNSC and CLF combined forces. In order to quell the rebellions be started left and right, the Prophets ordered any rebelling planet to be glassed. This, however, only further inflamed the trillions of people under control of the Prophets, forcing them to abandon this idea.

      By that time, Covenant Templar caste morale had sunk to its lowest point ever. Nearly all of them knew they were fighting and dying on a false jihad, and few had much loyalty left to the Prophets, but they all feared what would happen if the were captured. Would their misplaced loyalties bring them pain and death? Few could stomach the thought of giving up, of dishonoring their noble heritage by surrendering to the still blasphemous humans, so they continued to fight. They watched as world after world fell, as the tides of an un-winnable war washed over them. In 2609, a massive rebellion began sweeping through the Covenant Empire, forcing them to pull ships and soldiers away from the conflict with the UNSC and CLF military, in an effort to quell the insurrections at home, and to prevent any more from occurring. They, once again, underestimated the measure of their enemy's resolve. In over two hundred star systems, massive rebellions were organized by the CLF, resulting in bloody urban warfare, killing billions of innocent civilians in its wake, and destroying what little will to fight was left in the Templar caste. Like falling dominoes, any star system that could pull away from the Prophets yoke did so, pulling the Covenant Empire's platform right out from under them.

      In these rebellions, millions of rebels were killed, along with billions of civilians as city after city was torn down by the battles taking place in them. Now the Prophets had to fight a two front war, one front against the brutal, and ravaging blows made by freedom fighters in their quest for liberty, and another trying to desperately fend off the cold and calculated blows delivered by the UNSC. Entire generations of young Covenant went off to die needlessly. Factory production slowed, then almost completely stopped. The more they tried to quell rebellions, the worse the situation got. The Covenant simply could not fight what they were facing.

      The UNSC, however, wasn't in terribly good shape either. It still had not fully recovered all of the planets it lost to the Covenant, and manpower was in terribly short supply. They couldn't afford to let the war drag on either, the logistics of fighting a war against a much larger and developed power hundreds of light-years from home was simply crushing. Morale, however, grew higher with each new victory, leaving them in a whole lot better shape then their adversary.

      FLEETCOM had moved its headquarters in the summer of 2589 to the Theta Omicron system. Theta Omicron was an exceptionally fertile system only fifty light-years from the main theatres of operations in Covenant space. It had twelve planets. Theta Omicron II was a gigantic temperate planet twice the size of Earth, with two Earth sized moons, also capable of supporting human life. Theta Omicron III sat on an orbital plane not much further out than Theta Omicron II. It was another Earth-sized planet, though was ninety percent covered by a freshwater ocean. Theta Omicron IV was a gas giant three times larger than Jupiter, which contained three habitable moons, all about the size of Theta Omicron II. This system was a great mystery to UNSC and CLF scientists. What were the odds of a star system containing seven celestial bodies capable of sustaining human life?

      By 2620, the star system had over six billion citizens, and had the UNSC primary naval yards as well as a great deal of manufacturing capability. To make sure it wouldn't become another Reach, each of the habitable planets had a battery of one hundred Mark 62 "Super" Magnetic Accelerator Cannons, each capable of accelerating a ten thousand ton projectile at ten percent the speed of light. Added to that, each of the main planets had a fleet of over seven hundred combat ready ships, with several hundred more that could be activated in emergency.

      In April, 2622, FLEETCOM HQ began planning possible scenarios to end the war quickly. The one accepted was an all out, complete invasion of the Prophet homeworld, where they had moved to following the fall of their administrative capital in 2571. If it could be taken, the Prophets would have no choice but to surrender to the UNSC, if it failed, most of the UNSC military would be destroyed, and they might have to discuss peace on more even terms. The planning committee consisted of fifteen individuals, six of them Marine Field Marshals, six Naval Fleet Admirals, the Secretary of Defense, the Chancellor of the Covenant Liberation Force, and the Commander-in-Chief of the UNSC. In all, the invasion would consist of five thousand warships, three thousand of them state-of-the-art UNSC ships, the remaining two thousand of them CLF ships. There were fifty Warbringer-class super dreadnoughts, five hundred Athena-class battleships, nine hundred Lexington-class planetary assault carriers, five hundred Lambda Serpentis-class armored cruisers, one thousand Heracles-class destroyers, and one thousand Manchuria-class frigates. They would be the largest fleet ever assembled to invade a planet, and would face ten thousand Covenant Capital ships in the largest battle in the known history of the galaxy. This is the story of the battle that would change the universe forever.

[author's note]Cue drum roll. This will hopefully be my best fanfic I've made. You won't see part one for a while, though.





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