1900 Hours, July 12th, 2536 / UNSC Resolute Fury, In Orbit of Planet New Constantinople, Byzantine System
Vice Admiral Danforth Whitcomb POV
It was always quiet before the storm.
My boots echoed faintly on the titanium deck plating as I stepped toward the holotank, the swirling blue-green projection of the Byzantine System painting the war room in cold light. The orbital path of New Constantinople was steady, even serene.
Shame what was coming to tear it apart.
Seventy-six Covenant ships had just exited slipspace. No buildup. No probing force. Just a hammer-fist of plasma and arrogance slamming into one of our core colony systems.
The enemy was here in force: CCS-class battlecruisers, CAR-class frigates, a DDS-class carrier, and even a few RCS stealth corvettes blinking on our edge scanners.
Against them?
One hundred twenty-six UNSC ships. Half with the new upgrades, the rest still operating on what we'd now call standard-issue scrap tech.
The numbers weren't the problem.
The unknowns were.
This would be the first full-scale test of Spartan Command's revised space warfare doctrine—and the first time we'd fire those beautiful new toys in live combat.
I exhaled through my nose and scanned the incoming orbital reports. Behind me, the bridge crew worked in silence. Not fear. Not quite. Just focus. Real military composure.
It helped that we had hope, this time.
The Cole Protocol had given us time. Leonidas's designs had given us steel. But none of that would mean a damn thing if this line broke.
I tapped my command datapad and issued the order:
"Deploy all GMR-217 Aegis Frames. Prioritize orbital defense of platforms Constantine Red and Basilica Blue. Booster Platforms Epsilon through Mu are cleared for full vertical axis deployment."
The Aegis Frames—UNSC's first full-scale space mechs—launched like thunder from below the carrier's belly. Titan-sized war machines, gundam-esque in silhouette but wholly UNSC in design philosophy: armored like a tank, thruster-heavy like a fighter, loaded with magnetic repulsor rifles and scaled-down MAC shoulder cannons.
Piloted by ODSTs, trained under Spartan doctrine, and with Spartan-IV conversion eligibility dangling like a prize carrot on a stick.
These weren't just exo-suits.
They were mobile dreadnoughts—the steel fists of humanity punching back.
I looked up at the burning edge of the holotank as the enemy fleet adjusted formation, spreading their arcs, prepping to envelop the planet's defense grid.
"This is it," I muttered.
The first real clash.
Old humanity vs. new war.
The Covenant fleet came in confident.
Arrogant bastards always did. Their wedge formation split across the upper orbital plane, gliding in like vultures preparing to feast. Their capital ships glowed with shield auras, shimmering violet domes wrapping hulls of bulbous, alien perfection. Elegant. Efficient.
But today?
Today they were going to bleed.
"Fleet-wide broadcast," I said, stepping to the central holotank. "Authentication: Whitcomb, Danforth. Priority Omega."
A moment's pause, then the comms officer nodded. "Live, sir."
I didn't need to shout.
"Fire all Casaba-Howitzers."
A dozen stars flared across the holotank's battlespace projection as our newly armed cruisers and destroyers let loose with their directed nuclear lances—focused cones of plasma-shredding hellfire erupting from specialized magnetic rails. Where traditional nukes bloomed in bright, wasteful spheres, these sliced forward like spears, vaporizing shielding across their impact arcs.
Dozens of Covenant vessels shimmered violently—shields flickering, collapsing, or shedding in chunks like glass under high-pressure hail.
"Now," I barked. "MAC batteries. Priority fire control to compromised targets. Full auto-cycle where possible. I want holes punched."
Across the line, the UNSC fleet roared.
MAC rounds—solid tungsten slugs accelerated to near-relativistic speed—launched in synchronized ripples. The upgraded ships had automated recoil dampeners, faster reloads, and improved predictive AI targeting overlays feeding data directly into bridge fire control.
One enemy cruiser took a round to its exposed starboard. The impact folded the hull in half, a second MAC hit igniting its reactor core in a white-hot implosion.
A corvette exploded clean through, plasma leaking out of the open midsection like purple blood in zero-G.
The Covenant formation staggered.
That was new. That wasn't supposed to happen. We weren't supposed to hit them that hard.
"Status on Aegis Frame deployment?" I asked.
"Booster platforms are fully active. All Titans are in position and maintaining three-axis rotation grids over both orbital platforms," came the reply. "Enemy fighters inbound, ETA twenty seconds."
"Then get ours up there. Deploy Longswords. And get those new Peregrine-class interceptors out and screening the fleet. They're not here for glory. They're here to keep our ships alive."
It was a solid first volley.
But I knew better than to celebrate.
We'd dented them. Wounded the arrogance.
But this wasn't a slaughter—it was a war of attrition. Even with our tech, we still needed 2.5 hulls per Covenant ship. And we only got the jump once.
"Brace for counter-attack," I said, eyes narrowing at the holotank as the Covenant regrouped, their remaining shields burning brighter.
"Round one's over."
The holotank flared red.
Plasma torpedoes—dozens of them—streamed toward the UNSC line like comets of molten death, leaving shimmering trails of energy in their wake. Smaller pulse lasers followed, coordinated and devastatingly accurate.
The Covenant had stopped playing nice.
"Impact projection?" I snapped.
"Full strike in thirty-five seconds. Target spread across midline and flanking elements. Heavy saturation on Task Groups Delta and Gamma."
I didn't hesitate.
"Activate the gravity well satellites. Code string 214-Gamma-Null. Let's see if the eggheads were right."
The comms officer gave a nod, and a moment later, six dormant satellites—launched and positioned just days ago—came online in a burst of shimmering gravitic distortion.
Out in the void, localized gravity wells bent the fabric of space itself. The effect wasn't strong enough to redirect Covenant ships… but plasma?
That, we could nudge.
The leading edge of the Covenant salvo buckled mid-flight—arcs of energy twisting off course, some missing entirely, others slamming harmlessly into deep space or harmless debris.
"Thirty-three percent disruption rate, Admiral!" the ops officer called out. "The gravity wells worked!"
But that still left two-thirds.
The pulse lasers came in clean. No gravity trickery could stop that kind of coherence. They scythed through outer armor plating, slicing into destroyers, gutting a light cruiser that vented atmosphere and spun out of control, venting crew and fire.
"Casualty reports coming in. Moderate ship damage. One confirmed loss. Fourteen disabled or critically hit."
And then, the unexpected.
"Admiral, telemetry update—roughly one-sixth of our targeted vessels evaded the plasma entirely."
I blinked. "Say again?"
"They maneuvered out of the torpedoes' predictive arcs. Thanks to the secondary thrusters. New three-axis protocols."
I allowed a brief, grim smile.
That wasn't luck.
That was training.
That was doctrine finally evolving.
The Covenant volley had come and gone—devastating, but not crippling.
We were still here.
The next round would be ours.
"Have the fleet recalculate MAC firing solutions," I ordered, watching the holotank shift with incoming movement data. "Factor in gravity well distortions. Predict evasive patterns."
The Covenant were getting smart. Their forward elements—two CCS battlecruisers escorting a CCS-class OAS Assault Carrier and two OSS heavy assault carriers—began veering off from the main formation, engines flaring bright.
Their vector?
The planet.
"Those bastards are going to try and punch through us," I muttered.
The bridge was silent but electric with tension. Everyone knew what was at stake. They weren't just after orbital superiority. They wanted New Constantinople itself.
"MAC solution plotted," fire control confirmed. "Adjusting for satellite gravitic pull now. Rounds will curve in-flux, estimated deviation plus-minus three degrees mid-flight."
"Make them count," I replied coldly. "Fire."
The fleet lit up like a starburst.
MAC slugs thundered out, invisible save for the vapor trails and shockwaves on impact. Each shot bent—not much, just enough. To an untrained eye, the rounds missed…
…but to the Covenant, they curved like vengeful gods throwing spears.
Their evasive maneuvers placed them into our new firing lanes.
One battlecruiser cracked in half after a Casaba-Howitzer removed its shield and a mac round struck head on. The battlecruiser experienced a catastrophic reactor failure. The second lost its dorsal fins and careened off course, venting fire and shrapnel as systems failed.
But the carriers punched through anyway. Plasma lanced across our defensive wall, battering aside light destroyers and battering the edges of Orbital Defense Platform Basilica Blue.
"Get me the coordinates of those carriers as soon as they arrive over their targets," I said. "Tag them for Noble Team's next assignment."
Then the range closed.
Knife-fight distance.
Covenant cruisers and UNSC ships began passing within kilometers of one another. Too close for long-range artillery, too fast for fighter swarms to fully keep up. The holotank lit up with red and blue like a Christmas massacre.
"Deploy short-range MAC shells," I ordered. "Shotgun loadout. Let's see how they like slugs and splinters."
The new MAC cluster munitions were experimental—a canister round that burst in proximity, firing hundreds of tungsten flechettes in a cone. Devastating against lighter ships. Ruinous when fired into exposed sections.
One Covenant frigate was gutted nose to tail. Another lost half its hull as the round burst like a bomb, impaling decks and crew alike.
We were bleeding too. Don't get me wrong. Plasma burned ships like a hot knife through butter. Some of our vessels were now just fireballs in orbital drift.
But for the first time?
We weren't dying quietly.