Epilogue

"What is it?"

"I'm not sure Captain."

"Did you pick up something?" the Captain asked as he sipped his hot coffee while noticing his artificial intelligence's face dance with lights.

"I'm picking up a lot of debris from the scanner," the A.I. replied as she tried to concentrate on her scan results.

"Point me," the Captain said as he moved closer to the monitors.

"Roughly here," the A.I pointed near a star system.

"Is that where the signal originated?" the Captain asked as he placed his coffee cup down and walked closer to the monitor.

"It's been 36 hours since the signal disappeared, but if I had to guess then yes, this is where the signal should have originated."

"Interesting," the Captain replied as he studied this system. There were two suns surrounded by five gas planets and each gas planets had varying number of moons around them.

"Is any of these planets viable?" the Captain asked as he tried to study the each planet using the ship's scanner.

"Give me a moment," the A.I whispered as she ran some additional scans after the Captain's request.

After few minutes, "None," she replied.

"Alright then, takes us near the planet from which the signal originated."

"Signal we 'Presume' as the origin place," A.I corrected as she maneuvered the ship near the second planet from the major sun.

"There," A.I pointed at the debris surrounding the planet's moon which were orbiting around in a very haphazard fashion. "Running a scan on them," she said as she parked the ship between the planet and its moon. "I'm picking a lot of residual radioactivity from this area."

After a few seconds of silence, "Interesting, based on these debris sizes, composure and design it looks like covenant in origin," A.I reported.

"Covenant?" the Captain visibly tensed. "Have you searched this system…"

"There are no Covenants around here at the moment Captain, the scans are clean," A.I reassured as she try to reassemble all the pieces together.

"But, the signal was UNSC in origin not the covenant," the Captain said as he was clearly confused.

"Maybe they got here before us," A.I speculated.

"Probably but I'm glad they gave one hell of a fight before they went out," Captain said as he lowered his cap from his head.

"Here," the A.I projected a three dimensional holographic picture before the captain. "After reassembling all the pieces together with my knowledge of the entire known Covenant space carriers, this looks like the remaining of a Covenant battle cruiser. To be more specific, this is the tip of the cruiser."

"Looks oddly intact; what do you think could have happened to it?"

"Looks like an explosion from within, probably from the back, inner part of the cruiser. The explosion must have engulfed three fourth of the ship," A.I said.

"How come you are so sure about it?"

A.I recreated a visual explosion with a presumed blast radius as she tried to explain it to the Captain, "The length of this cruiser is 1782.2 m, width is 861.7 m and the height is 230.8 m. If this nose had to escape from an explosion fairly untouched the explosion should have originated here with this blast radius," she marked the lower decks of the hangar bay which was located in the back with a big circle representing the blast radius. "This blast radius is equivalent to a HAVOK nuke, coincides with the amount of radioactivity here."

"Interesting," the Captain wondered as he studied the 'assumed' theory presented before him. "Big chunk of nose is still intact, maybe someone could have survived in it."

"I'm fairly sure that part of the ship should have lost its atmosphere. Only way someone could have survived it is if they had an atmosphere ventilator suit," the A.I said.

"It's been 36 hours. It's highly unlikely someone's suit would hold up that long, however I want this to be cleaned up ASAP. Send in a recon pelican with ODSTs. I want a clean sweep of that ship."

"Aye aye Captain," A.I said as she gave out the orders. "A pelican is prepped and ready to launch in five."

"Excellent," the Captain said as he eased back on to his chair. "Keep scanning, I don't want any surprise."

"Will do Captain."

"And also search for our USNC ship."

8 minutes later…

"Captain, the ODSTs have landed into the remaining part of the ship," A.I announced.

"Good, keep me updated."

After ten long minutes one of the ODSTs called back, "This is O-88 to the Kingfisher."

"Go for Kingfisher," the Captain replied back.

"Sir, you are not going believe what we just found here," the ODST voice broke through.

"What is it soldier?"

"We have a live Spartan here!"

Author's Note: I want to sincerely thank my readers for taking their time to read my story. If you have any questions about the ending please do let me know, I will answer them. I know its a cliff hanger and everyone hates one, but I do have my reasons for it :)

If you like my writing please do check out my other story "The Composer"

I had to put that story on hold due to this one. If you like that story's premise please do let me know so I will continue it. Thank you once again!