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[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLrAR1jQg6E][b]July 17th, 2552
2100 hrs
In orbit around Sigma Octanus IV...[/b][/url]

Eerily, silently, streaks of yellow light and flame streaked across the battlefield like bolts of lightning, the three-hundred-sixty degree camera monitors showing a fleet enraged, firing off all at once, towards an enemy so unfathomably far away, a fleet which had scarce noticed them until the heat of forty-eight vessels charging weapons had alerted them.

"Green light. Fire it, Lieutenant." The cool voice broke the tension in the Combat Information Center (CIC) of the [i]Kearsarge[/i]. All eyes were on the Captain as his order echoed in complete silence. The fire control officer, one Lieutenant Atkins, murmured an acknowledgement, and flipped the cover to the ignition button, before depressing a thumb to it. Every circuit and wire in the ship seemed to whine, the electricity giving an awful din, its own battlecry, drawing and building towards something. And the ship shook, violently, a motion counteracted quickly by an inertial dampener and maneuver thrusters, but not unfelt by the crew. And suddenly, a twisting arc of electricity spun around their bow, and the MACs at the fore shot yellow, first one and then the other.

The Captain's eyes traced the screens above, assessing the impact of the combined assault. Far off, plumes of purple and thick black gas gave a characteristic thermal signature. Hit.

"Get us mobile, prepare to evade incoming." The helmsman complied, bringing the stick around, as the thrusters spun to compensate and the hull groaned. "Klein." The Captain spoke to a screen showing a separate section of the [i]Kearsarge[/i], showing none other than Lieutenant Commander Klein at a station similar to the Captain's own chair. "Bring the Archers online, counterfire as soon as they're up." Klein nodded, acknowledging with a murmur. [i]"Jawohl, Kapitan."[/i] It came back with static. Plasma interference.

"Plasma torps fore-starboard, turning to evade!" The helmsman cried, bringing the stick back around again, the vessel stressing with the sudden change of heading. Suddenly, a shadow began to creep in the path of closing plasma as hot as miniature suns. The [url=https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/sotp/images/9/9c/001_Cradle.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20130914145754][i]Cradle[/i][/url].

At the moment when the fleet was at its most vulnerable, scrambling to leave its packed-tight checkerboard formation into a spread out battle line, the [i]Cradle[/i], the massing hulk of a mobile repair station had thrown itself to the front, acting as a shield to the UNSC fleet. It did not fare well. The shadow was broken by purple explosions and jets of fire and debris. The [i]Cradle[/i] snapped at three different points, before shattering into a million shards of space trash.

It had bought time, that was what mattered. The fleet had spread out, and began to recharge its MACs, now releasing swarms of Archer missiles. As the [i]Cradle's[/i] husk drifted away, the [i]Kearsarge[/i] had both main guns back online and had sent thirty-two Archer missiles out, simple thermal seekers. The Covenant fleet was in rags and ruin. The first salvo had brought most of the enemy shields offline, and the second equally strong salvo sent at least a dozen of the foe to Hell.

The enemy now were free to retaliate, and the sensors on the [i]Kearsarge[/i] lit up with two-dozen new contacts. Seraphs, the small, maneuverable fighter-bombers which could scarce be dispatched by point-defense. They'd picked their target, and the [i]Kearsarge[/i] lit up, spinning out a grid of point-defense fire along all sides, a wall of flak. But perhaps it was not enough, or the Seraphs simply outranged the turrets, as forty-eight plasma torpedoes flew true. Commander Jefferson was sure this was the end, as it had been for dozens, even hundreds of other UNSC ships, swarmed by fighters with which they could not contend.

By all means, the blinding light and burning heat should have cleaved the [i]Kearsarge[/i] in threes as it had the [i]Cradle[/i]. But this light was different. The ship had not melted to a pulp, nor split at its keel. No, before them laid vast, empty darkness, planets and a sun some distance away. Not Sigma Octanus. The crew was silent for what felt like an eternity. The Captain sat, jaw hanging open.

"What the hell just happened?"