chapter 34 Cortana Arrives and Preparing for a Battle

Dark Pov

With the battle in space over for now I give the order to scavenge what we could from the battlefield as well as calculate the loss it but as I was " sir the Infiltration team sent a communication the mission is complete" hearing this I nod " tell them to return and that Master Chief will handle the rest no need to stay their we will need to prepare for the flood to arrive" I say this because in the third game the flood comes to earth and follows the key ship to the ark but since thats not possible now then we need to be ready to finish this.

As if to confirm my thoughts as I get the completion notification I also get another mission notification from the system

SYSTEM DISPLAY MISSION COMPLETE

Mission 2

Ensure that the Prophet of Truth dies to Destroy the Covenants leadership allowing the UNSC and Sangheili to win the war

Reward:

2000 Divine Points and Cortana will be repaired preventing rampancy thus stopping her death and will arrive at earth before the flood in an unifested UNSC ship

Distributing rewards

SYSTEM DISPLAY NEW MISSION

Mission 3

The flood will arrive at earth and thanks to your intervention of stopping the covenant from getting to the ark the flood ship can not follow through the portal so it's your responsibility to stop them from getting to earth.

Rewards:

3000 Divine Points and the remaining ships of your fleet will be transported back to the Harvest system

Failure reprocussons

The earth is infested by the flood making it impossible to stop the second flood war

Seeing this I can not help but think of all the media from my old life that goes into how bad the forerunner flood war was they showed that the forerunners were left no choice but to use the rings I can not let that happen once they have an entire planet they would be difficult to stop once this happens.

As I was in my thoughts a member of the bridge crew tells the captain that a slipspace energy signal has been detected after hearing this I come out of my thoughts to see a ship has existed slipspace and i recognise it it's a UNSC frigate.

Before we can decide what to do the ship sends a communication request " sir should we accept it or just shoot it" while he was asking I remember the rewards I just got " answer I think I know who it is" with my response he actives the communication and through it comes a voice I am familiar with " Hello this is Cortana who am I speaking to" I smile at that before I reply " welcome back Cortana Master chief is still on the key ship but I am sure he would be glad to hear you made it back" the rest of the conversation just goes over the events of what happened while she was gone and how she was lucky to find a ship that was yet to be infested by the flood so she decided to use the ship to get back to earth.

After filling each other in she remembers " we have to prepare the flood is coming here" I am aware that they are coming already but I can not exactly say that because she would ask how I know so I ask my communication officer to add the defense station to the communication and it did not take the officer long" what is it has something happened" before I can say anything Cortana beats me to it " sir theres a very dangers parasite lifeform heading towards earth we need to prepare" after she finishes speaking there's a bit of time where it was extremely quiet before the general at the Defense station breaks the silence " Cortana how come your not with Master Chief and what do you mean by parasite lifeform" i know Cortana said it like this because whe was unsure if the general had personel that were not suppose to know about that flood but now he asked she has to say it directly "the flood is heading to earth" as soon as she says this you can image the response the general is going to give" are you sure Cortana if you are it important that we stop them from getting close to earth speaking of which Dark are you staying to help stop the flood or are you planning on leaving" i figured he would ask me this i already have my response " i already said i would protect my birth place but once this is over that's it I have no connection to earth or that woman" it did not take long for the general to know who I was talking about" ok I understand I will not stop you from leaving after this you have my word" after that we talked about the battle plan.

During the confiscation Destiny decides to inform us of a weapon on the victory that can harness the powers of oblivion team and fire it at a target however due to the size of the ship it can not use too much of our powers as it was originally designed to be on a cruiser class ship not a Destroyer but it should be enough to destroy the flood ships or destroy high charity killing the Gravemind causing the flood to lose its intelligence.

With this idea the battle plan had been made and everyone began making the preparation needed according to Cortana we have a few days before the flood arrives and we had to make use of every second the general had informed the command they were not happy that I was alive and had a fleet that was not under their control but they new they could not do anything about it not only that Master Chief got Cortana back and the ship she came in was taken by the UNSC and fully staffed in preparation for the battle with the flood.

This was not all that was done the UNSC called all fleets that were in the sol system to congregate at earth making sure that they had as many ships they could to ensure that the plan was successful but it's expected that there will be heavy losses for everyone not only that but the Arbiters fleet also decided to stay and help defend which suprised many but it might be due to his need for allies since the Sangheili are now independent from the covenant and they may be attacked by those who had despised them for their involvement with the covenant like the Banished which are also at war with the covenant.

The preparation I made involved making repairs to any damaged ship and if it can not be repaired move the crew and troops and distribute them to the rest of the fleet than sent some construction sentinels that I brought with me to salvage the ship into materials for repairs with all this it took 2 days to get everything ready leaving only a few hours before we face the flood.