The Impossible Life and the Possible Death of Preston J. Cole: Difference between revisions

In 2494, while posted on the Las Vegas, Cole was involved in what would come to be known as the [[Callisto Incident]]. That year, Insurrectionists captured the corvette {{UNSCShip|Callisto}}. In response, the UNSC dispatched a battle group consisting of three light destroyers - the {{UNSCShip|Jericho}}, the {{UNSCShip|Buenos Aires}}, and the {{UNSCShip|Las Vegas}} - to hunt down the renegade ship. Their crews and their weapons were inexperienced and untested and were caught by surprise when the Insurrectionists detonated a nuclear weapon hidden inside an asteroid, destroying the Buenos Aires and severely damaging the Las Vegas and Jericho. The entire bridge crew of the Las Vegas, save Cole, were either killed or incapacitated, leaving him in command of the ship. Cole signaled the Callisto, declaring the crew's surrender. However, Cole ordered the crew to remove the ship's last [[Ares Missile]] from its silo and transport it to Cargo Bay 5. When the Callisto docked with the Las Vegas, the missile was fired directly into the corvette, crippling it and forcing its surrender.

Cole's faked distress signal was both a stroke of genius and a breach of protocol so severe that UNSC CENTCOM dithered over whether to award him the Legion of Honor or to have him court-martialed. Ultimately they did neither, to avoid setting precedent. However, from that point on Cole could never again send a distress signal in enemy territory; no one would believe it.

Cole was quickly promoted to Commander and given a small corvette to patrol the Outer Colonies. After a dozen successful engagements in five years against insurgent forces and privateer fleets he was promoted to Captain and received the honor of commanding the first heavy destroyer-class vessel armed with a Magnetic Accelerator Cannon, the {{UNSCShip|Gorgon}}. Cole led the vessel in numerous engagements, most notably in three against the captured frigate [[UNSC Bellerophon|UNSC ''Bellerophon''/''Bellicose'']], which escaped twice and fought to a draw once. In their final encounter, Cole and the opposing captain engaged in a tête à tête through a series of text messages.

After the {{UNSCShip|Heracles}} returned to [[Reach]], badly damaged from first contact with the [[Covenant Empire]], the [[Office of Naval Intelligence]] requested that Cole returns to service to lead the largest battle group in human history, consisting of forty ships, to [[Harvest]] in hopes of defeating the extraterrestrial threat. He reluctantly accepted their request.

Cole fought the [[Second Battle of Harvest]] in [[2526]], in which [[UNSC Battle Group X-Ray|Battle Group X-Ray]], 40 vessels in total, engaged a single Covenant vessel. The aliens' superior weaponry and technology overwhelmed the fleet, and Cole was on the verge of retreating. However, Cole realized that Covenant shield technology was vulnerable to massive, concentrated fire. Cole ordered all ships to fire everything they had at the ship, with MACs first, followed by [[Archer missile]]s and [[Shiva-class nuclear missile]]. Although his fleet defeated the vessel, thirteen UNSC ships were destroyed during the fight.

After the conclusion of the [[Battle of the Great Bear]] at [[Groombridge-1830]], a [[Sangheili]] [[Subject 386|survivor]] was recovered. Admiral Cole began writing the Cole Protocol after interrogating it, now knowing that the Covenant had little knowledge of humanity; he realized that secrecy would be their best defense against them. He then created [[United Nations Space Command Emergency Priority Order 098831A-1]], better known as the Cole Protocol, which was a law to prevent the Covenant from finding the location of Earth or any other human population center. Essentially, it was an order forbidding the Covenant to gain any opportunity to retrieve data regarding the location of Earth and forbids retreating vessels from setting a direct course to Earth, as the Covenant were able to track [[Slipspace]] vectors and use them to calculate the destination. The policy also stated that if escape is impossible in order to prevent capture, any UNSC or human vessel is to self-destruct after wiping all data matrices in order to prevent the advance of the Covenant.

In the [[Battle of 18 Scorpii]], the ''Bellicose'' was revealed to have survived the engagement four decades prior and assisted UNSC forces to destroy a single Covenant vessel. The revelation pushed Cole's already deteriorating mental health to the breaking point. Codename: SURGEON noted that his personal logs stopped shortly after, and his behavior slightly altered.

Cole then fired everything the ''Everest'' had - not at the Covenant, but into Viperidae. The super pressurized hydrogen inside the gas giant's atmosphere was ignited by the 100 Shiva nuclear warheads fired at it, and Viperidae exploded into a brown dwarf. When the explosion ceased, every Covenant ship, along with Preston Cole and the UNSC ''Everest'', had been obliterated.

After his apparent death, there was speculation that Admiral Cole, after destroying two whole Covenant fleets, might have made a last-minute jump into slipspace. He apparently used the crippled {{UNSCShip|Io}} as a substitute for the ''Everest'', prematurely detonated a flock of [[Archer Missile]]s in front of his ship as a decoy to prevent anyone from seeing the slipspace rupture, and then safely escaped. According to [[Codename: SURGEON]], his AIs have analyzed footage from the Battle of Psi Serpentis, and calculated that there was an 89.7% chance that Cole survived and escaped in an emergency slipspace jump. It has also been speculated that he may have found a planet to colonize on with his lover, Lyra, as he always wanted to retire to be a farmer. After the battle, rumors of independent human forces successfully fighting the Covenant begin to emerge, but eventually died out. Preston Cole was remembered by humanity as a brilliant military tactician and a symbol of hope, now lost, and the day of his supposed death was designated a day of mourning. Codename: SURGEON recommended to [[Codename: USUAL SUSPECTS]] that the [[UNSC]] should try to find Cole and persuade him to fight for humanity again, considering the highly unstable and weakened state of humanity following the [[Human-Covenant War]]'s conclusion.

*[[Unidentified UNSC heavy destroyer class|UNSC heavy destroyer]]