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CODENAME: SURGEON

OFFICE OFNAVALINTELLIGENCE(SECTION-III) OPERATOR : AA2

2200HOURS , DECEMBER31, 2552 (MILITARYCALENDAR) \ UNSC P OINT OF N O R ETURN

, SYNCHRONOUSLUNARORBIT(FAR SIDE)

/END FILE/

/SCRAMBLE-DESTRUCTION PROCESS ENABLE/

PRESSENTERTO CONTINUE

THE RETURN

KEVIN GRACE

AFTER TWOweeks roa about this shattered place, just theBut like everything else here, the memories carried pain

The Ship dock and he dropped his pack to the ground The dock had once been painted a bright blue, perhaps the same color as the water it stood above, but now the little paint left flaked off at his step and beneath was only gray

The saray of the erasses atteray as everything on this forbidding, forgotten world

It was a gray of decades-old ruin left untended and unhealed, and it would probably stay this way forever, as the planet had nothingleft here to clairay in the weeks he had walked this desolation

The first were the thin rays and glimpses of this world‘s sun, which would rarely show itself, offering no real heat when itconstantly in the sky The other was a coluhted two days prior, far to the west It was to this sh he knehere that path would eventually lead

To follow that on he had to cross this dead hole of a lake and the dae of the dock the Ship for threats, before casting a quick glance into the sky in the vain hope of seeing his vessel in orbit far above the planet‘s surface He slid his pack back over his arht-centering shrug As he turned back to find the shore and a way across the lake bed, he closed off the dry sound of his footsteps on the brittle grass and rehelios

Like this one, his lake was artificial, the river back hoy This hole had only a crude, cruible substance to use for soht, but so h this planet‘s rens of habitation had shown him how little these people knew of permanence

Not that it would have mattered here, even if they had

Stark in the late afternoon light, the battered skeletons of boats littered the lakebed and re his earliest training as a boy

The Great Journey, the path to transcendence followed by all of the species that served the Covenant, started early for all heili As soon as they could run and hold a weapon in their four-fingered hands, they were trained and evaluated for potential Each young Sangheili atched for strength and cunning and obedience to the teachings of the Covenant They were tested extraordinarily, for their iheili were the chosen ones, directly responsible for realizing the will of the gods and co the military forces of the Covenant They were the ones who enforced the words of the Prophets, the holy seers who translated and delivered the words of the Forerunners to all alked the Path This honor and obligation drove every Sangheili in all their decisions and aspirations, and the Prophets were alatching to make sure this remained so It had been this way for thousands of years since the two species first formed the Covenant, and it would be this way until the Great Journey was coht

So, on smaller, intact boats similar to the rotten hulks he now skirted, the Ship and leaping fro warriors learned balance and ti and teamwork as well as ruthlessness, as not all of the denizens in the lake considered themselves prey Those boys whose weakness allowed them to be pulled under by cold teeth served as a lesson to the rest that not all Sangheili orthy Those who survived the training water eed hardened both by loss and the determination not to suffer a similar fate in later lessons

Now here he was at the bottoth--just the cruray trees, and the occasional crunch of bone beneath theat his step days ago, and he knew the sound had been huh hu away to dust, the

Shiples of tough grass or a covering layer of dust and dirt, spendingwho these hu for the source of that sound

Usually he‘d found these bones alone, spread far from the rest of whatever body they cah he had not seen a single living creature or even tracks anywhere in his travels As intended, the death in this place had been co since torn or worn away, usually inside the few structures withor even a bit of roof left waiting for the insistent pull of ti down

He‘d found bits of armor and weapons and human vehicles of war, and even a few remnants of

Covenant soldiers, usually crackedaiant shield plate froolo, a ―Hunter," as the hued to take down one of those giant living battering rams But Covenant remains were rare This planet had not presented much of a defense when the Covenant arrived, and their losses had been light He wondered for a ht have been different had the hu the assault, but he knew that it would not have er stopped to inspect broken bone, and he did not knohether to care His path was set--head up and eventually over the dam and to wherever the smoke called hih for now

When the Shiph staircase cut into the side of the da down fros of another hu walls that remained twenty years after the humans iped clean from this place As the riverbed h miles of such ruins, s those hard, short, gray trees Scattered between these buildings and their dark square holes for as a juhts or statues or whatever they had used to decorate this place

Farther away fro remained even remotely whole Even the landscape itself appeared to have been worn down draht rise that cut off his view of the road far below

He knehat lay past that rise, and he wished that his path did not have to take hi beyond it was a black mark that had been burnt into the surface of this planet as proof of the power of the Covenant Twenty years ago, this blackthat once lived here

The setting sun glinted briefly fro as if bouncing off water in the distance The Shiprowled, th of that gigantic scar in the land ahead There was no end to it visible fro around

His path would eventually draw him directly across that dark line, and it would lie there, patient, until he reached it He knew h the hills and mountains and shattered towns that had once stood on this planet the humans had called Kholo

But this line had preceded all the others It had initiated the iiant circle, many days‘ travel across, and at its center were the ruins of what had once been a large human city This circle, and the millions who had once lived in that city, had been split by a crowning semicircle arc The ends of this arc had thrust toward the planet‘s northern pole, and at the tips of that crown and at the center of the giant circle were three deep, deep holes, burnt into the ground with excruciating precision

When taken in froiant blackFaith He knew that the successful coered the planetwide plas on Kholo dead for daring to challenge the Path of the Covenant and the words of their Prophets

He knew all of these things because it had been his hand that had put that mark there He had killed this planet so that the Great Journey ht come more quickly That Journey had never coreatest victory and now his greatest shame, to seek inspiration for what he and his people were to do with theht and lived for was as thoroughly destroyed as the forsaken land he stood on

Rising fro would make it difficult to push onward safely

The Shipmaster found what looked like a sear down in preparation for passing another night alone

As the Ship, he listened again for any sounds of life around hih to scrape leaves across the dust, and as he dropped into sleep his mind spun from the silence of death on the planet‘s surface to the silence of space above twenty years prior, when his ship hung in orbit around this world

THE MOMENT was almost upon hihteous Vigilance had arrived, and already the ground forces had broken the bulk of the hu the humans, the Shipmaster had rarely seen a planet fall so quickly The huainst the power of the Covenant, but this tiht back a sense of disappointment that they had not mounted more of an opposition

The Shiplory of its destruction would reflect directly on him It had been his ship that found the huation that uncovered the location of this "Kholo," a blight of a colony world on the outer fringes of what the humans blasphemously considered their space

Even after ten years of destroying the nests of these hu ods, and they burned each of these out as quickly as they were found They had still not located the hued to destroy the key navigational charts before being captured The discipline this consistency took was adiven the clainorant rabble"

The Shipmaster had personally broken the lone survivor on that little ship and pulled the location of this planet from the ship’s incomplete databanks, and per the commandments of the Prophets he took that data directly to the holy seat of the High Prophets so that they ht tell theuided every aspect of life in the Covenant, would have them do

And as he had hoped, the Prophets announced that the Great Journey demanded that this world and the sins of its inhabitants burn--completely

The Covenant used smaller plasma bombardments frequently to easily destroy human cities and ar their ships’ automation to handle all of the intricate functions involved in focusing plasnetic envelope acrossa perfectly stationary orbital firing position In almost all cases plasma bombardments were used purely as weapons, tools to speed the destruction of the huh Council would order a world’s absolute annihilation This only happened in tinificance, as the effort involved in covering an entire planet’s surface in such a powerful assault was enorymassive even for the Covenant

And so the fleet was suht swiftly to the heretical stain of this world As expected, resistance in the space around Kholo was brief and ineffectual, with only a few s ineffective weaponry and poor tactics These fell easily even to his earliest scouting ships Since the High Council had granted the Ship the fleet was under his command, and he followed the decreed invasion plan to the letter Nothing about the destruction of Kholo would displease their gods He had many reasons to be certain of that

After two days of huhter in their cities and homes, he waited for the prescribed hour and looked over to the Prophet next to him, the Prophet of Conviction, as there to witness the event on behalf of the High Council That Council, which was made up of the heroes of his people and the three ned the holy destruction of Kholo to him, but the Prophet of Conviction would be the one to declare whether his actions pleased the gods and advanced the Journey Not a single warrior in the history of his clan had ever been offered such an opportunity, and if the Shipreatly elevate his status and the status of his kin within the Covenant All was riding on his perforesture to his Second to alert all ground forces that the Beginning had come, the Shipmaster knelt before the Prophet to start the ritual

His creatched as closely as they could while coordinating the evacuation of all troops on the surface of the planet For a full hour the Prophet and the Ship the history of the Covenant Passages fro of martial triumphs as the Prophet made the Shipmaster ready to assume his imminent, if brief, divinity

When all the words had been spoken and the Beginning was completed, his Second quietly confirmed that the fleet was ready At this, the Shipmaster turned to the Prophet and spoke his final line in the ceremony:

"Speak, my Prophet, and let the word destroy all those who stand in the way of the Great Journey"

And rising in his chair to better fill the dark purple robes puddled around his frail body, the Prophet’s raspy voice replied

"Faith Destroy the down to the hel fields away fronite the ventral plas he was into the flahts and sounds around hi and worship and anticipation poured into controlling the ship and the long, wavering strealyph of Faith around and through the great city of the hu his work, waiting to see how he performed this sacred task Thousands of his own people watched, their breath quickening and their bodies shaking with the pride of watching a Sangheili manifest the power of the Great Journey And,

And then it was finished The Ship, away from the console and dropped to his knees as the rites required He couldn’t breathe as he waited there on the floor for the Prophet’s judglyph meant death, and if he had failed he wanted the life out of his body as quickly as possible

And then he felt the touch of the Prophet’s hand on his neck Triue crew shook the air and he finally looked up to the il his hands had carved into the planet below Clouds of ash and fire continued to spread hundreds of lyph of Faith as the once-an to cool

He rose and turned to face the Prophet The Shipmaster was now bound to this Prophet for the rest of his life and his service to the Covenant He, his ship, and his creould now represent the Prophet’s interests and authority in this war, and the enoruarantee hiainst the huined the power his faith would bring hilyph finally cool coan the intricate weave of lines of bombardment that would render the rest of this world barren and forbidden for any member of the Covenant to touch for the rest of time

THE SHIPMASTER aith a thin layer of ash and dust covering his body, the triu in his ears Soht noaiting for him to find an answer in this haunted land But too many of that creere dead now, victims of the Great Betrayal and the battles that followed They had all died honorably, fighting to save their race in the afterht him back to Kholo

He looked down froht saw a clearer view of the wide road that ran straight down to the valley below and perhaps all the way to the scar itself The road cut through what ht have been sos in the area nearby stood largely intact, minus the years of abandonment and decay As his eyes scanned farther down the valley, the Shiprewjust before the land dipped down and out of his gaze He had seen this before, near earlier bombardment lines he had skirted in his journey across this place The explosive power of the plasma lines created a terrible wall of heat and wind and debris when they cut into the surface of the planet, and the rushing force of these walls had scraped everything on the surface clean near the focus of the blasts Structures farther away had suffered less, but everything suffered

That was the point of it Suffering was the correct journey for the nonbelievers

As he climbed down the other side of the dam he cut a path parallel to the empty riverbed, toward the road and the scar below He could still see the coluly blacker than it had been the day before The s for three days since he first saw it rising thinly on the horizon Each day he was more afraid that it would disappear before he could find its source It could not be natural, the fires of this world went out decades ago This fire, and its creators, did not belong here, just as he did not belong here But perhaps they could help hi

He passed rows and rows of shattered buildings as he rass and scrub trees all around hin of their forlyph he alking toas closer to the start or the end of his deeds those years back, but the details eluded hi around his, all of them done with such an absolute certainty All his life he had had no reason to question his path, and the focus this afforded had allowed hi with the Prophet of Conviction, the Shipmaster had followed his holy orders He and his ship had been above Reach when they finally found a real fight from the humans It was his command that destroyed three of the massive orbital cannons that had annihilated so h Council believed that after Reach the huht, but the opposite was true In the following months, desperation drove the huerous foes the Covenant had ever faced It was a glorious tionizing loss of the Halos had shaken the Covenant‘s faith, and suddenly their clarity began to falter For thousands of years the entire Covenant had operated with a single purpose born of absolutely certainty in the Great Journey They were a folk ill-equipped for doubt

The Shipmaster paused briefly to wonder where the fully intact roof lying directly across this road had co by the winds of the blast that day He had put this roof here, and he had destroyed whatever building it came from closer down to the scar

All of it He had done all of this to follow a proivable lie, ithe had done in its prosecution a lie as well