Chief navigation officer Preston Sterling gazed in a vicious daydream at the route panel before him. He was near retirement and glad of it as these days there was really no need for crew to monitor the journey paths the massive UNSC ships made between systems. Focussing on the screen he looked at the straight red line again, looked around at the statistics. Everything normal. Everything was always normal. These days the ships had advanced systems handling all the route planning and were according to those smarter than him, one hundred percent reliable. So all this overweight balding man with a few hairs on his head needed to do every so often was complete a safety check and press a keypad. The UNSC Culloden was travelling faster than any other ship he had been on before and was the largest. It didn’t need a detachment of fighters or an escort of destroyers to protect it from harm. This thing long jumped from one safe place and a day or two later appeared in the desirable controlled system. He had been chatting to his old navy buddy Rogers from engineering whenever he had free time, Rogers told him the ship was only carrying a small cargo, one so important that the bosses wanted zero risk in it not arriving at Enasia V. How small he had asked. Small enough to take up a tenth of just one of the ships hundred cargo halls. This was quite possibly the strangest detail of his career, all this waste of resources for something so small and him doing next to nothing. Who was he to complain though. This was a dream job compared to what people he knew were facing out in the frontier. That shit had kept him awake at times when he was in his bunk, trying to sleep.

He had fell deep into a daydream thinking about what he would have for his lunch, he rubbed his eyes and looked at the panel expecting to see the same red line. He looked at the panel, no red line. There was a green line that stopped which he would only normally see when the ship was docked. There were lights flashing on the console, he had incoming messages from various sections of the ship. Something was wrong. Sterling hit the command deck message "Officer Sterling, report, why has the ship stopped?" Sterling sat up and looked at the panels as if the answer was there to see. All that was there for him to examine was the route lanes in the system and the one the ship had taken to stop here. Something was very wrong, he quickly checked how far from Enasia V they were, a lot further than they should be. By now they should be nearly at the station and not in uncharted space, so deep in the frontier. "Sir, it appears the ship has taken us to an unknown location, sending the co-ordinates to you now." the communication screen had the face of man enraged "Officer Sterling we have been receiving reports to suggest that our journey was on route with no variation from the travel lane" ... As Preston tried to speak the whole ship shook, his head slamming of the screen in front of him. The comm screen went dead. All the panels in his navigation room were down. He got up, face bleeding and already swollen and the emergency siren went off. He never made it to the door without more massive tremors that flung him to the floor. It had been decades since he had felt something like this. Either they had long jumped into an asteroid belt or... they were under attack. Who the hell would attack a ship this big? His vision was leaving him, he passed out.

Preston woke. He could see a red line. Had he just fell asleep? No, this was different. It was a red line on a white background, the colour of the floor. He was moving too. Something was pulling him along the floor and the red line was blood pouring from his face. He tried to move but was too weak. Heavy footsteps led him along. Someone might be saving him he hoped. The ship had landed in an asteroid belt, the ship had took on damage and someone was rather unprofessionally dragging him to either a medic station or a lifeboat. He tried to speak out when he was grabbed and turned over and pushed against a wall so he was sat upright. His vision was blurry. He looked around and could see an other officer on the ground, it looked like he was outside one of the cargo halls entrance. He began to panic when he seen who was standing over him. Men in armour holding large rifles. One crouched in-front of the other officer and was pointing at him as he spoke. The officer he didn’t recognise shook his head and said something. The recipient of the shaken head looked at the man that had dragged him along to the door. "Shoot him in both knees" the dragger looked down at Preston, his armour was patchy, but bulky. Not shiny and sleak like a marine from the navy would wear. The big man aimed his rifle down and let off two rounds splitting Prestons legs in half at the knees. Preston screamed so much that he was sick, he also felt his bowels move.. he shit himself and felt his crotch becoming warm with piss. He heard one scream at the officer "Open the fuckin door or your next cunt"... More people moved into the area, looking same as one that shot him. "We don’t need the code out him, Shenzhen finally mined their system and found it." Preston looked at the man standing over the security officer that had so bravely let the man shoot his legs off. "You bastard, shoot his fucking legs off too" all of the intruders started to laugh until one shouted at them to shut the fuck up and walked up to the console. Preston was almost done for, he felt cold and sleepy. He heard the door slide open and watched some of the intruders enter the cargo hall. He looked up at the man that had shot him. "I hope this was worth all this violence." the man in the black mask replied "nothing personal.." he crouched and looked at his badge "Preston... Sterling... you were on the wrong team today old man." He stood startled, giving Preston a bit of a fright, the man looked at who came out the hall. Preston turned his head. The intruders that had went in had came out with 6 small children that looked terrified. He watched the smaller intruder take their mask off to reveal a young woman. She spoke to the children and they grouped round her and hugged her, she guided them to leave with the other intruders. When they left she turned and looked the officer. "Did you think you would get away with taking them?" she then pulled out a large blade and stabbed him deep in the head. Preston looked at the dead officer, realising for the first time he didn’t recognised the blue uniform. Why was there fucking kids in the cargo hall? He looked at them "I had no idea. No idea. I’m sorry.." he heard her say no quarter to the man standing over him and then Preston was no longer in pain, no longer cold and no longer alive.