Editing Operation: RETRIBUTION

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|image=[[File:Halo Retribution cover.png|350px]]{{Ref/Note|This image is a pictorial representation of the portion of the operation that took place on Meridian but does not indicate there was a moment in time during which Veta and Castor were not hostile to one another. Such an occasion never arose.}}

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While Blue Team had been rocketing toward them, Ash had raced to find Veta and Mark within the grottoes affected by the time differential.{{Ref/Reuse|R15}} When he did find them dragging the bodies of the Tuwas near the point they had initially entered through, their chronometers told them it was still around 1524 hours, even though Olivia had told Ash it was 2035 hours only a short time ago. Ash took as little time as possible bringing his compatriots up to speed. They were shocked to hear that Blue Team could be there any minute, and when he mentioned Dark Moon Enterprises, the mysterious delivery squad finally made sense to Veta. She and the Spartans each grabbed hold of a Tuwa and began dragging them with haste away from the detention center. They emerged just as the ''Silent Claw'' careened into the ground in the distance, causing a fiery explosion which engulfed Ashveld. The sights and sounds of a battle became known to them as they left the tranquility of the contemplarium's illusions behind and rejoined reality. Blue Team was engaging the Keeper host that had piled around the ''Stolen Faith''. Before exiting the ''Claw'', Fred-104 had armed himself with a [[MA5D assault rifle]] and Kelly-087 had a [[MA5C]] with a [[M301 grenade launcher]] attachment, but Linda-058 held only a [[M6G magnum]], since she had been unable to reach for her [[BR55 battle rifle]] in the midst of the tumultuous tailspin. The four individuals from Dark Moon had not yet reached their Turaco, as they had been contending with fire from the Keepers prior to the arrival of Blue Team. One of them had been injured and was being dragged along by two others. Just as the single female in the group was felled by a shot to the head, Mark asked for permission to engage the remaining three. Veta shot down his request, stating that they needed to find out what they knew and why they were here. To this end, she had Mark and Ash take shots at the humans' limbs in order to pacify them and halt their approach. Curiously, the dorsal turret on the Turaco started shooting laser pulses in its own crew's direction at the behest of [[Argie]], who was fighting Olivia for control of the craft. Its output mirror had been damaged, so it didn't hit any of its targets before Mark put an end to it altogether. Realizing new combatants had joined, a mass of around thirty remaining Keepers (evenly divided between Jiralhanae, humans, and Kig-Yar) charged the Ferrets' position. This effort was short-lived thanks to the efficiency of the three [[Spartan-II]]s still in the fray, which allowed Mark and Ash the chance to sprint for the Dark Moon operatives.{{Ref/Reuse|R15}} Linda vanished into the ''Stolen Faith's'' hold to arm the HAVOK devices. Most of the surviving Keepers were fleeing, but [[Castor]], [[Orsun]], and two other Brutes took cover behind a pile of bodies near the Turaco. Kelly swiftly dispatched one of the cluster with a [[40mm grenade]] but the other three managed to lay down enough suppressive fire to cover their own escape. Mark and Ash, unarmored as they were had to fall back from where the Dark Moon agents were to avoid being killed by them. Another blast from Kelly's grenade launcher took out another Brute, but Orsun still was able to stomp on the head of one of Dark Moon's people and scoop up the remaining two. It was only as he and the dokab were retreating that Veta realized one of them was Castor, who she had shot almost six months prior [[Operation: JOVIAN WHISTLE|during the fighting]] on [[Gao]].{{Ref/Reuse|R15}}

===Truths revealed===

{{Quote|It's Gao. The crime scene is on Gao.|Inspector Lopis comes to a realization concerning the Tuwas' murders.}}{{Ref/Reuse|R17}}

Veta and the Spartans were ordered to the infirmary for a full evaluation after stepping foot on the ''Silent Joe''.{{Ref/Reuse|R17}} Following that, they all were permitted to change into appropriate outfits for a debriefing with Captain Ewen in the ship's wardroom. In attendance were a smattering of other naval personnel as well as analysts, technicians, and others from the UNSC's [[Covert Services]] branch. Veta was angry with herself for having not considered doing anything to rescue the Keepers' prisoners until it had been too late. She surmised that Fred and the captain had engaged in a heated exchange concerning her last-minute protestations on Taram, and she was certain that Osman would have been informed. Veta was roused from her thoughts in the midst of the briefing by the captain, who had noticed she hadn't been paying attention to what the surgeon, Doctor [[Krosbi]], had been saying. Reorienting herself, Veta said she agreed with his assessment that the Tuwas had only been killed within the last day or two. This meant that the murder scene had to be somewhere within that range from Taram, in terms of the time it would take to travel there. Unfortunately, Olivia had been unable to get a proper navigation history from the Turaco before Argie had erased herself and the nav logs with her.  Having only the physical evidence to build a case around, Veta was able to determine that the Tuwas had been killed while lying on their backs, that their organs had been harvested soon after, and that they had already been dead by the time they were put on a ship for at least interplanetary travel. The cargo hold of the Turaco showed signs of having been used for just such a purpose, but the confirmatory DNA analysis had not yet been completed.{{Ref/Reuse|R17}} The bodies were still in full rigor mortis and had evidently been left long enough to develop fixed lividity before accelerating during interstellar travel, so Lopis was able to narrow the list of potential kill sites to under fifty. It was the fact that they would have needed to be killed in a sterile environment to have had their organs harvested and still lack any insectoid colonization that made Veta conclude her home world, [[Gao]], was the answer they were looking for. The planet boasted plenty of large [[Drugs|pharmacology]] laboratories where the Tuwas could have been kept alive for weeks before their harvesting.{{Ref/Reuse|R17}}

When an internal investigation was done within [[ONI]], the evidence pointed to Craddog having acted alone to weaponize [[asteroidea]]. He was judged to have been a brilliant yet unstable individual who may have been seeking to initiate [[Project SLEEPING STAR]] under his own authority.{{Ref/Reuse|R27}} The only sufficient conclusion for his motivation was that he had sought to aggrandize himself through creating such a perilous weapon. Craddog's complete file was forwarded to [[ONI#Section Two|Section Two]] for further evaluation. Blue Team, Lopis' Ferret team, and the crew of the ''Silent Joe'' all recieved congratulations and notes of commendation for their part in exposing and stopping SLEEPING STAR. Veta herself was awarded a [[Military Star]] in recognition of her leadership in defeating an existential danger to humanity, but she was not made aware of the award due to her civilian status. Admiral Osman completed a directive on [[2554#January|January 19, 2554]] that officially abolished Project: SLEEPING STAR. [[Intrepid Eye]] deemed asteroidea to be too effective of a culling agent for her plans to plan to make humanity worth of the [[Mantle]], however. She secretly altered the directive so that instead of being outright ended, the project was made into a Top Secret Level Zero asset and placed on a black-ops list with an unlimited [[Wikipedia:Black budget|black budget]].[[File:KY-victim.png|thumb|250px|When Blue Team [[Operation: BIRD IN HAND|boarded]] ''Argent Moon'' in [[2558]], it came upon the infected corpses of [[Kig-Yar]] test subjects.{{Ref/Reuse|blue}}]] Instead of being terminated with prejudice, [[Ensign]]s [[Jess Wallace]] and [[Kris Gaston]] were also promoted through Intrepid Eye's manipulation to Lieutenant Commanders and were given authorization to seek out new donor specimens with asteroidea antibodies. In addition, they were given authorization to test the weaponized form of the organism on all "enemy species" of the [[UNSC]]. In the midst of making these changes, Intrepid Eye was accosted by [[Rooker]], ''[[Argent Moon]]'s'' shipboard A.I. He was no match for the [[archeon-class ancilla]], who easily used a control worm, a deception routine, a logic trap, and a memory leech to make him passively deliver the altered directive to Admiral [[Friedel]] without any recollection of ever catching her in the act.{{Ref/Reuse|R27}}

By the time of ''Argent Moon's'' destruction, Intrepid Eye's network had been discovered and destroyed by millions of dumb AI hunter-killer teams dispatched by ONI. Completely isolated aboard ''Argent Moon'', Intrepid Eye was unaware of the accident that her continuing bioweapons research had caused until Blue Team engaged the Covenant forces on the station. Intrepid Eye barely managed to escape by attaching herself to the ''Acrisius'' while ONI believed her to have been destroyed in the scuttling.{{Ref/Novel|DW|Chapter=5}}{{Ref/Novel|DW|Chapter=6}}

==Production notes==

{{Quote|Halo: Retribution details maverick detective Veta Lopis' first assignment as a reluctant ONI agent, and it's a direct outgrowth of my first Halo novel, Halo: Last Light.|Troy Denning}}{{Ref/Reuse|interview}}

==List of appearances==