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First Contact; Chapter 1: Harvest
Posted By: retsamolah<samesdios@yahoo.com>
Date: 20 July 2003, 7:08 PM
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Harvest, November 22, 2519
The new colony was humanity's first attempt to spread further than 4 Lightyears from Reach. The ships had arrived in the planet's system almost a year ago, and only now were the first civilians being ferried in on the new, faster colony ships.
Soon I can go home, thought Captain John Mason, as he sat on the bridge of his cruiser, the UNSC Santa Maria and watched the 3rd colony ship of the day, make it's way to the docking station to offload it's passengers for transport planetside. He had been stationed there since the first discovery of the world, and had cleared it for occupation almost immediately. The Military Scouting of new worlds was just a formality, he thought. The UNSC could just as easily send a satellite or probe to diagnose a possible colony world, but they always sent a Halcyon Cruiser of the fleet. What was the point, Mason asked himself. Humanity had no enemies. The inter-human wars were a thing of the distant past after the third world war united humanity under the United Nations alliance. John saw no reason why he should be here, sitting in his starship, exactly 5.46 lightyears from his nice warm bed on Reach.
A blue figure appeared on the holographic display next to him. "Colony ship, Lusitania, is requesting permission to dock," stated the figure matter-of-factly. Mason answered without looking up.
"Clear them," he said. "And why do you need to ask me, Athena? You know perfectly well that nothing is going to go wrong." The AI, named for the Greek god of war, answered with a knowing smile.
"I figured I had better stop your day dreaming. You depress yourself too much. And you never know, this might just be the day we lose a ship for the first time."
"Whatever," said the captain, and settled back down into his command chair. The AI image disappeared beside him. A moment later, it reappeared.
"Sir, I'm getting a transmission from an unknown source on all channels. I've been trying to determine the origin, but it is behind an encryption I've never seen before."
"Let me see it," said Mason tiredly, showing no trace of the urgency Athena was feeling. There was a pause, and a bizarre alien face covered in shining gold armor appeared on the display. It's four toothy, mandible-like jaws moved up and down as it spoke in thick, deep, English.
"Your existence is an affront to the Gods. They command your destruction!" Mason laughed as the display cleared and Athena's image appeared again.
"It's just some stupid hackers fooling around. Run the search programs and get them arrested."
"I don't know, Sir. That's the first encryption every to beat my scans," the AI persisted.
"Right," the Captain retorted sarcastically. "Like there's some fanatical religious alien out there with four chins that's gonna come kill us." He was more correct than he would ever know.
Suddenly, every alarm light on the bridge began flashing bright red. John Mason cried out with surprise as an almost beautiful, shining, silver starship materialized right in front of the bridge windows. He watched, completely awed, as a barrage of blue energy lanced from the alien ship's nose. Massive bolts of blue plasma struck the Lusitania along her entire long axis, instantly blasting her, and her 1000 innocent colonists from Reach into their constituent molecules. The ship turned slightly, and fired its devastating weapons directly at the bridge of his cruiser.
Time seemed to slow as the deadly bolts of blue plasma streaked through space towards the terrified human officer. He had time to utter a quiet: "Oh god," before they hit, blowing the lower section of his cruiser completely off the hull, and effectively depressurizing the rest of the ship.
Over 4000 Humans died without ever knowing what had happened. The people planetside saw only several bright flashes in the sky above them and could only wonder what had happened. They did not wonder for very long, however, as the rest of the Covenant expeditionary fleet exited slipspace, powered up their weapons, and opened fire on the unsuspecting colony. The atmosphere and crust of the planet were superheated to almost 100 million degrees, and instantly melted together into a massive black shell on which no life could possibly exist. In almost 15 minutes, the outlying colony world of Harvest had been reduced to nothing more than a superheated sphere of blackened glass and stirring phantoms.
The shining alien starships were already gone.
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