First Battle of Requiem

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"In service of Forerunner Shield World designate Requiem."

- Cortana to John-117 while in Requiem's Cartographer

"If you haven't mastered even these primitives, then man has not attained the Mantle. Their ascendance may yet be prevented."

- The Didact to John-117

The First Battle of Requiem was a fierce battle between the UNSC, the Storm Covenant and Promethean forces. Approximately halfway through the battle, the Covenant and the Prometheans allied themselves against the UNSC.

Introduction
After the Battle of Installation 00 the rear half of the frigate Forward Unto Dawn was lost in uncharted space with John-117 and Cortana on board. The Spartan placed himself in cryo-sleep while Cortana sent out a distress beacon. The ship drifted for over four years before it reached a Forerunner Shield World. Surrounding the installation was a massive Storm Covenant fleet that had been outside the planet for almost three years. The wreckage of the Forward Unto Dawn was picked up on the fleet's sensors and at the command of Fleetmaster Jul 'Mdama boarding parties intercepted it. Meanwhile Cortana woke the Master Chief from cryo-sleep and the pair began fighting their way to the ship's airlocks, with the intent of activating the ship's hull defenses. Emerging on the hull they found that the missile silo was blocked and had to be manually activated. After clearing the deck of several Covenant boarding companies, the Spartan activated the silo, destroying a battlecruiser. While still on the hull, the planet appeared to scan the Master Chief and then opened a large portal on the planet's surface, dragging the remains of the Forward Unto Dawn and the majority of the Covenant fleet into the planet's gravity well.

First Hours
The Master Chief woke within the wreckage of the Forward Unto Dawn on the interior surface of the planet, surrounded by destroyed battlecruisers and dead or dying Covenant. After learning that Cortana's condition had seriously deteriorated, the Spartan set out across the planet's interior surface. He came up with a plan to capture a Covenant landing pad, commandeer one of the surviving battlecruisers, and escape the planet. As they fought their way through the Covenant army, Cortana picked up a phantom signal, piquing her interest. Eventually they arrived at a Forerunner structure, within which was a local Cartographer that identified the planet as Requiem. The Cartographer also revealed that the signal was coming from the core of the planet, causing the Chief to suspect this was where the Covenant were landing troops from. After retrieving Cortana from the Cartographer he set off again, fighting through increasingly heavy Covenant resistance until reaching another Forerunner terminal. This terminal showed that the phantom signal was actually human in origin, coming from the warship Infinity. At that moment, dozens of Promethean AIs appeared, surrounding them. Just as they the Prometheans started to become hostile, a portal opened seemingly of its own accord and the pair escaped.

Battle of Haven
They emerged on the interior surface yet another installation within Requiem, called Haven, to find the Covenant and Prometheans engaged in a fierce battle. After crossing the rocky terrain and fighting through hundreds of enemies on both sides, the pair reached a vantage point from which they could observe the core of the planet. They discovered that while it was the source of Infinity's signal, the ship was not there. What was there was a relay structure that was transmitting and amplifying the ship's signal. Hoping to use the relay to contact the ship, the Spartan then disabled two facilities on opposite poles of Haven that were jamming the relay's signal. Cortana then used Requiem's portal system to teleport them directly into the relay structure.

Didact's Return
They arrived at the structure in the midst of an intense battle between Elite Warriors and Promethean Battlewagons. After clearing an area around what he believed to be the relay, the Master Chief attempted to send a message to Infinity, warning them not to approach the planet's gravity well. However he instead unwittingly activated a Cryptum, waking its inhabitant, a living Forerunner called the Didact. With a wave of his hand he converted the all of the present Prometheans' allegiances, changing the hue of their hard-light from blue to orange. He then ensnared the Master Chief using the advanced levitation capabilities of his Combat Skin. The Didact expressed his disgust of humanity, and his belief that their inability to completely defeat the Sangheili, whom he referred to as "primitives", meant that humanity had not yet earned the Mantle of Responsibility. He then threw the Chief against the wall, stunning him, before returning to his Cryptum and making a Slipspace jump. The Didact's escape from Haven caused the entire installation to begin collapsing in on itself. The Chief stole a Ghost and, at the cost of the MJOLNIR's shields Cortana was able to give the vehicle extra boost. Just as the entire installation was about to fully implode, Cortana used the collapsing portal system and they escaped as Haven collapsed.

Infinity
The Master Chief and Cortana emerged at the opposite end of the portal back on the interior surface of Requiem. Unbeknownst to them, the Infinity had picked up their distress call from the Forward Unto Dawn, but not their warning signal from the relay. They appeared back in Requiem just in time to see the Infinity fall from the sky, its shields and engines down. Right on its tail appeared the Didact's Cryptum, which followed it to its crash site. The Spartan began traveling through thick jungles in pursuit. Meanwhile the Infinity was having problems. Its captain, Andrew Del Rio, deployed Spartan and Marine fireteams into the swampy undergrowth surrounding the crash site, in an attempt to secure a perimeter. These fireteams quickly incurred heavy casualties upon encountering the Promethean AIs and became cut off from the Infinity. The fireteams tasked with defending the ship's deployment elevators were quickly overwhelmed. On the ship itself, battlecruisers swarmed past the disabled defense turrets and deployed kill teams directly onto the Infinity's hull. Captain Del Rio had believed he could give his fireteams air support and defend his ship simultaneously, however hundreds of Phantoms and Liches engaged almost all Pelicans deployed. The Chief arrived after fighting through heavy Promethean and Covenant forces and rendezvoused with an old acquaintance, Captain Thomas Lasky as well as a SPARTAN-IV fireteam under the command of Commander Sarah Palmer. The Chief then cleared an LZ for a dropship after being given tactical command of Spartan forces on the ground. After the wounded had been evacuated, the Spartans commandeered heavy and light armor from the Infinity and crushed enemy troops occupying the ship's primary deployment elevator, only to be informed that Covenant kill teams were inside the ship, attempting to gain access to the bridge. Entering the ship via its deployment elevator, the Spartans were able to destroy all Covenant forces within the ship. However, Covenant forces were still being deployed en masse on the hull, and the ship's defenses had to be manually brought online. Using state-of-the-art mechanized infantry, Spartan teams were able to hold off Phantom dropships and re-engage the Archer Missile turrets, which destroyed all nearby battlecruisers and drove the Didact's Cryptum away. Allowing the Infinity to reactivate its engines and take to the sky.

Assault
After narrowly escaping its destruction, the Infinity began moving back towards the planet's portal. However, a battery of Forerunner particle cannons stood between the Infinity and freedom. The ship's shields were still down, meaning that ground forces would need to be deployed if the ship was to escape. Lasky took point, in command of a joint Spartan and Marine detachment called Gypsy Company. Accompanied by three Pelicans a compliment of Gauss Warthogs and a Mammoth outfitted with a MAC. Gypsy Company managed to destroy two particle cannons before encountering trouble. A Lich, a rare and deadly ultra-heavy aircraft, appeared and disabled the Mammoth's MAC before deploying heavy armor and infantry. The SPARTAN-IVs, along with the Master Chief, boarded the Lich and destroyed it, but not before the Mammoth took heavy damage. Captain Del Rio deployed two more Spartan fireteams, Castle and Shadow to the surface in an attempt to keep Covenant forces away from the weakened Gypsy. Finally the Mammoth's route was to blocked off to continue and the Master Chief and Cortana carried on by foot. After fighting through a series of terraces and Forerunner walkways, the pair entered the facility which housed the particle cannons' targeting network. As soon as she disabled the cannons, Cortana disappeared.

The Librarian
When she did not reappear, the Chief headed deeper into the facility, following several benevolent Sentinels through a series of corridors until he reached a large power source. This power source contained the Durance of the great Forerunner known as the Librarian. She explained the story of the Didact and his war with the ancient humans. She also warned the Spartan that the Didact intended to leave Requiem, and obtain one of the Forerunner's most powerful weapons, the Composer. At this point she told him that although humanity's geas contained an immunity to the Composer, placed there by herself over one hundred millenia ago, it needed to be unlocked, whereupon the Chief experienced a genetic transformation and was teleported to a pedestal in another chamber of the facility. Cortana was there waiting for him, but so where dozens of Prometheans.

Didact's Escape
After fighting past the Prometheans, Cortana opened a portal and the Master Chief emerged back above ground in the midst of a massive battle between Human and Covenant armor. Overhead the Infinity battled several encroaching battlecruisers. Punching through the enemy armor and air support, the ground forces secured a vantage point from which the Chief was able to use a target designator to mark the planet's gravity well, which the Infinity destroyed, presumably with a Archer Missile. With the Covenant's air and ground forces almost completely annihilated from the area, Infinity's ground forces returned to the ship. Once aboard, the Master Chief and Cortana tried to pass on the Librarian's warning to Captain Del Rio. The Captain, however, did not believe what he believed to be the "hallucinations of an aging Spartan," even though Lasky vouched for them. His stubbornness caused one of Cortana's rampant matrices to lash out at the Captain, subsequently damaging the electronic equipment on the bridge. The Captain then insisted that Lasky remove her from the system for retiring. Lasky hesitated and the Chief did so instead, refusing to hand Cortana over to the infuriated Captain. When the Captain ordered that the Chief be arrested, the Spartan informed Lasky that he and Cortana would stay on Requiem and do what they could to stop the Didact while he should return to Earth and warn HIGHCOM. The pair then proceeded down to one of the ship's armories and deployment centers. Lasky met them and told them that he had been ordered to detain the Spartan and, just in case the Master Chief had already left, he had prepared a Pelican gunship for "combat pursuit." Lasky then wished the Chief good luck and left. Just before the Infinity exited the planet, the Spartan flew the Pelican out of the deployment center towards the Didact's Cryptum. The Cryptum was sealed in a large shield and surrounded heavy Covenant air support including battlecruisers and Phantom gunboats. After fighting their way through the fleet and disabling three of the shielding pylons, Cortana prepared to crush the Cryptum with the remaining pylons, but was overcome with a fit of rampancy, causing her to drop the pylons. The second she did, a massive spacecraft formed around the Cryptum and left the planet. As the Covenant escort began to follow, the Chief leaped off the final pylon and boarded a passing Lich, which then followed the Didact's ship into Slipspace.