Battle of Laika III

This article is based on canon information, but the article's title is conjectural and/or uses descriptions as the title, as there is currently no official name for the subject.

Previous:	Skirmish on Conrad's Point Battle for Sanghelios
Concurrent:	Battle of Genesis
Next:	Created uprising
Battle of Laika III
Conflict:	Post-Covenant War conflicts Created uprising Cortana Event Insurrection (post-war resurgence)
Date:	October 28, 2558
Location:	Laika III
Outcome:	Indeterminate
Details Belligerents Unified Earth Government United Nations Space Command Office of Naval Intelligence New Colonial Alliance Created FERO's group Commanders Ilsa Zane Cortana Maya Sankar† Strength Orbital Drop Shock Troopers Wiley Ilsa Zane Several NCA forces 1 Guardian Custode Maya Sankar Bostwick Mshak Moradi Black-Box's fragment Casualties None Maya Sankar†

The Battle of Laika III was a military engagement fought on October 28, 2558 between the United Nations Space Command (UNSC) and New Colonial Alliance (NCA). The engagement came at the intersection of the resurgent Insurrection of the post-war era and the more recent Cortana Events, with the battle coinciding with the awakening of a Guardian Custode beneath the planet. Ultimately the battle was one of the final Guardian Emergences prior to Cortana's declaration of the Created uprising later in the day. The timing of the Guardian ensured that neither side was able to decisively win the engagement.

Background

A Guardian crater on Queen Anne VI.

In October 2558, Laika III became the site of one of many Cortana Events; the awakening of Guardian Custodes hidden beneath the planet's surface. This was done by Cortana, who had taken control of the domain after the New Phoenix Incident the year prior and was set on using the Guardians to enforce peace across the galaxy. Throughout the weeks leaving up to the Laika Guardian's awakening, similar events had occurred on other worlds including Ursa IV, Oban, Adelaide, Queen Anne VI, and most recently Conrad's Point. The destructive and mysterious nature of these events contributed to significant unrest throughout human space, which culminated in a battle on Conrad's Point between the UNSC and NCA as both tried to secure the site of the Guardian's awakening for study.

Commander Maya Sankar, an operative for the UNSC Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), was deployed to Conrad's Point with a Smart AI companion Black-Box with the goal of infiltrating the NCA as part of her undercover guise FERO to gain intelligence on the nature of the NCA encampment. However, while on the ground, Black-Box transmitted intelligence back to ONI that the NCA detachment there was being led by Ilsa Zane. With such a high-priority target present, the UNSC elected to strike the site in an attempt to kill her, kickstarting the fighting. This broke Sankar's cover as FERO and forced her to retreat from the planet with her friend Bostwick. The UNSC strike did not kill Ilsa Zane, and enraged the turncoat ex-Spartan. Zane promptly gathered the survivors of the battle on Conrad's Point and then began to pursue the two.

Commander Sankar, now distrustful of ONI for her near-death in the UNSC strike, retreated to a safehouse run by Mshak Moradi while she worked out what to do next. This resulted in ONI growing suspicious of her own allegiances and deployed a special operations team to capture and bring her to Midnight Facility. After escaping the ONI team and a brief detour aboard a pirate ship, the group were able to discern the suspect location of the next Guardian awakening by analysing readings taken from a data chip given to Sankar by another ONI infiltrator in the NCA who had died on Conrad's Point. Black-Box analysed the data from the chip and found a pattern of gravitational and electromagnetic anomalies on each of the affected worlds prior to their Guardian emergences, with the colony of Laika III now experiencing similar disruptions. Against Sankar's wishes, Black-Box relayed these findings back to ONI, believing that it would be best for the government to be able to act quickly - while they would not be able to save the citizens of the colony from what was to come, a hasty UNSC deployment would be able to help in containing the damage.

When the group arrived in orbit of Laika III, they were immediately attacked by Ilsa Zane, still furious about the battle on Conrad's Point to the point that she had tracked them down. She shot down their transport, which caused it to crash-land on the planet's surface. Sankar, Bostwick, and Moradi were taken into the custody of the Triad, a group of cultists led by Dasc Gevadim who were intentionally gathering at the site of the Guardian's awakening under the belief that it would lead them to divinity. As the Guardian beneath the ground began to emerge, the trio escaped the Triad in a Warthog, set on trying to evacuate the city of New Hedmark which lay directly atop the Guardian site.

The battle

When planning to try and warn New Hedmark of the imminent danger they were in, Sankar and Black-Box came up with a plan - to interface with the colony's AI and trigger the city's Covenant attack alarm from the older Human-Covenant War days. However, this attempt was halted when the group were stopped in the road by a Pelican dropship and a team of Orbital Drop Shock Troopers led by Wiley, who had been sent to arrest the group. During the argument, the Pelican was shout down by Ilsa Zane, who had arrived with some NCA troops and her own modified M12R Rocket Warthog and fired a 65mm Argent V missile at the craft. While the NCA pinned down the ODSTs, Sankar and co. fled into the city to continue their original plan, now with combat breaking out around them as NCA and UNSC troops engaged one another. By this time the Guardian emergence was in full effect, causing sinkholes and large crevices to open up in the earth.

By the time the group arrived at the city spaceport to initiate the evacuation override, Black-Box revealed that he had tricked Sankar into heading there - there was no evacuation, and there was no hope of assisting the citizens of the colony. All that could be done was for Sankar to escape and return Black-Box back to ONI. Sankar and Bostwick disagreed with this notion, believing that ONI would just cover up the attack like they had the previous ones. As such, they instead elected to use the radio tower at the port to try and broadcast a message to the colonies warning them of the attacks despite the suicidal nature of the act. They hoped that, if Mshak could pilot their ship into a low enough orbit to receive the message, he could then relay it to the rest of space. They decided to continue this plan even after being warned by Black-Box that ONI would be able to easily block and discredit the broadcast. However, midway through the broadcast Bostwick shot the radio with her M6G2 magnum, before then aiming it at Sankar and firing again.

Bostwick killed Sankar as she believed that the idea of FERO as an insurgent leader was more important to the colonies than the actual Maya Sankar, and that if their broadcast from Laika III was cut off halfway through by FERO's sudden death, it would help to ensure the broadcast stayed enshrined in public consciousness. Sankar died at 15:34 Military Standard Time, as the Guardian arose from the planet and then travelled to Genesis.

As the Guardian rose into the air, the distraction provided Ilsa Zane with an ideal moment to tear through as many troops as she could, at one point losing her weapon and eventually engaging in unarmed combat.

Aftermath

Ilsa Zane as a Banished Spartan.

The battle on Laika III took place the same day as the beginning of the Created uprising. Despite this, Bostwick was able to survive the event, and went on to use "FERO"'s death for insurrectionist propaganda, with ONI undercover operatives later going on to record her rallying rebels in FERO's name. ONI attempted to dispel this by leaking her status as an ONI agent, though this did not take ahold of the public consciousness the way that FERO's martyrdom did. Sankar's body was recovered in short order by ONI, where her brain proved an ideal candidate for Cognitive Impression Modeling; becoming the basis of a new smart AI, the "Sankar AI". Black-Box then interrogated the Sankar AI's memories for her recollections of the events leading up to Laika III, before reporting this information to ONI's Commander-in-Chief, Admiral Serin Osman.

After the Guardian left Laika III, the Banished arrived into the planet and took at least 18 humans as captives, including Dasc Gevadim and Ilsa Zane alongside several UNSC and NCA soldiers. Over the ensuing days, the Banished Jiralhanae troops slowly picked off their prisoners for food, though Zane was able to gain the respect of the Brutes after killing the camp guard Amatus and eventually came to join the Banished. Over the course of the ensuing weeks and months, Zane waited for the NCA to send a ship to extract her but once it became clear this was not going to happen, she instead negotiated with the Banished War Chief Escharum to pledge the NCA to their cause. On May 8, 2559, this deal was formalised when Zane boarded the flagship NCA D'artagnan and captured Admiral Mattius Drake and presented him to Escharum, before killing him and taking over as the leader of the now-Banished-aligned NCA.

List of appearances

• Hunt the Truth
  • Hunt the Truth Season 2 (First appearance)
• Halo: The Third Life