Anders

Although there were many star systems on the ancient holographic map, Anders specifically remembered seeing her own, and more precisely, the location of the planet Arcadia. With the Covenant presence gone from Harvest, Cutter gained clearance to follow this lead back to Ander’s homeworld. When they arrive on February 9, 2531, they immediately find that the Covenant have laid siege to the planet with a pair of CSS-class battle cruisers. Fortunately, a small constituency of UNSC ships, the Texas, the Belfast, the Armstrong and the Pillar of Autumn, have been able to eliminate one of the vessels. During the fracas, however, they sustained significant losses and could not pursue the second ship to the planet’s surface.

Meanwhile, the Arbiter met with the Prophet Regret at a location known to us only as “the Apex Site” — an Honor Guard-girded platform hanging in a fog-ridden atmosphere and surrounded by structures which are clearly of ancient Forerunner design. At the far end of the platform is a spherical console identical to the one which Anders activated on Harvest. Though the Arbiter wanted to move on with his campaign against humanity, Regret demanded that he be patient and ordered him to instead abduct Anders and bring her to the site. Regret is convinced that just as the human female activated the ancient machine on Harvest, so too can she activate this one — an act which should unlock the treasures of this unknown world.

Aboard the Spirit of Fire, Cutter has ordered his crew to assist with the resistance below, supporting the mass exodus of Arcadia’s population. There, a handful of Spartans are all that have been standing between the Covenant and their invasion of Arcadia: specifically, Spartan-042, Spartan-130 and Spartan-092. As the battle wore on, the Covenant moved from the planet’s metropolitan core to its outlands, and there constructed a massive energy shield bubble. They set up a series of bases within and began construction on an advanced “super Scarab”. The Spirit’s forces, however, punched a hole into the shield bubble, defeating the Covenant inside and allowing Anders and Forge to move in to investigate the aliens’ purpose there.

On February 10, 2531, while researching the remnants of the Covenant bases, Anders and Forge were assaulted by the Arbiter – the Elite managed to escape with Anders and quickly jumped to slipspace. Captain Cutter, under the advisement of Spartan-042, Forge and Serina, left their engagement on Arcadia and pursued the Covenant vessel into unknown space.

The Shield

On February 23, 2531, the Spirit of Fire emerged from slipspace near an undiscovered planet, its surface crawling with a violent parasitic creature we know to be the Flood. At once they began tracking Anders’ signal, which led them to a vast ocean – and no sign of the professor. Though the crew of the Spirit was unaware at the time, Anders had been brought to the Apex Site, still in the clutches of the Arbiter and Regret. After learning of the human presence, the Arbiter sent the hierarch back to High Charity and prepared their single cruiser for battle.

As the Spirit of Fire hovered over this mysterious ocean, honing in on Anders’ signal, it was suddenly drawn down to the surface by an aggressive yet unseen force — the ocean split open, engulfing the entire ship. Within moments, the Spirit’s crew found themselves in the warrens and caverns of the planet’s interior. There, a number of ancient machines known as Sentinels examined and cleaned the ship’s hull as it passed slowly through the planet’s stratum. Eventually, the Spirit of Fire emerged from these depths to what appeared to be the world’s surface – but rather than escaping back onto the planet’s exterior, they discovered that the world was, in fact, a micro-Dyson sphere and that their ship now found itself within the planet, facing an expansive, verdant and lush interior.

Instead of being a fully geological body of stone and gas, like a normal planet, this majestic and anciently manufactured world was, in actuality, a shell,which housed a small star at its exact center. And so the planetoid had an exterior surface and an interior one, both fully capable of supporting life. The Forerunners who designed this place called it a “shield world,” and the interior of the world was the location of the Apex Site, as well as its secret – a massive fleet of powerful Forerunner warships. Vessels which could only be activated via the construct found at at the Apex Site.

With Anders now captured and on location, the Arbiter intended to do just that. At the touch of Anders’ human hand, the Sangheili atop the Apex Site platform witnessed the fleet’s majestic activation. Massive and ancient vessels began to unwind and open, shifting into an active state. So awestruck were the Elites that they did not see Anders make her escape. She quickly found herself on the inner surface of the shield world and with rescue in the form of Sergeant Forge.

When the crew of the Spirit of Fire regrouped, they determined that their only worthwhile solution was to destroy the Arbiter’s Forerunner fleet. To do this, they were forced to sacrifice their Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine, or FTL (Faster Than Light) drive. Their plan was to overload the drive near the sun which hung at the center of the hollow world. The result would yield a super nova, an expenditure of energy which would completely obliterate the Covenant, the fleet of Forerunner dreadnoughts and the shield world itself. After mounting an impressive assault and pushing back the Covenant forces in a final, valiant effort, Forge and a trio of Spartans breached the Apex Site with the FTL drive in hand.

During their attempt to load the drive onto a lift which would bring it within impacting proximity of the sun, the Arbiter and the Honor Guard suddenly laid siege to the Apex Site platform. In a brief but violent battle, the Spartans dispatched the remaining Honor Guard Elites and Forge slew the Arbiter. But that act didn’t guarantee the sergeant’s safety, as they then realized that the FTL drive, separated from the Spirit, had overheated and would now require someone to manually overload it. Forge told the Spartans to return to the Spirit so that he could handle this personally — sacrificing his life in an effort to save those on the Spirit of Fire and, for that matter, all of humanity.

Moments prior to the supernova, the sun’s gravity began increasing exponentially which allowed Serina and Cutter to formulate a plan of escape. They set a course which would use the sun’s gravity to slingshot their trajectory around the gravity well, and out of the shield world and into space. The Spirit of Fire’s flight was successful and the entire planetoid shattered under the heat of the supernova. The cost of this action was their translight engine – and this FTL drive was crucial to getting back home efficiently. On March 1, 2531, as the ship moved at a sub-light speed, the Spirit’s chief engineer explained to the captain that there would be no way to replace the reactor of the drive — this resulted in the assembling of a skeleton crew which would guide the Spirit of Fire back to UNSC-controlled space… possibly taking decades to do so.

For three years, the UNSC designated the Spirit of Fire as “missing,” but on February 10, 2534, this status was changed to “lost with all hands” providing finality to the crew’s fate. Suspicion about this decision was rampant among the family members of the crew – likely due to the classified reason for the designation change in the first place; something which was never made public.

Apart from those within the inner sanctum of ONI, no one knows what the true fate of the Spirit of Fire was. Playing through the game on the Legendary difficulty hints that the Spirit of Fire’s extended trip back to UNSC-controlled space was not uneventful.

[Page Three]