Truth's fleet
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| 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. |
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In the final months of the Human-Covenant War, the High Prophet of Truth had a massive fleet under his personal command. Originally composed of over five hundred capital ships,[1] it was initially one of the largest known Covenant fleets although the fleet suffered tremendous losses when its command-and-control station, Unyielding Hierophant, exploded. After rebuilding the fleet for some time and aware of the Prophet of Regret's assault on Earth, Truth sent it to Earth,[3] where it was dispatched at Mombasa to excavate the Excession that lead the Ark and secure the area for Truth's arrival by his loyal fleet. On November 17, the fleet was joined by remnants of the Covenant forces loyal to the Prophets from the High Charity defensive fleet and Truth himself.[7] Later, the fleet journeyed through the Portal to the Ark, where it met its end.[10]
History[edit]
Formation[edit]
- Main article: Operation: FIRST STRIKE
Following the Fall of Reach, the Prophet of Truth discovered the location of the human homeworld and started assembling a massive fleet of over five hundred warships for the planned invasion of Earth. Ships scattered around the galaxy were ordered to regroup, including one group of ships that was to jump to the Lambda Serpentis system, to gather tritium gas for their reactors and then the Hawking system to meet with three dozen carriers and effect a transfer of Seraph fighters. Finally, the fleet would be summoned to the command-and-control station, Unyielding Hierophant which was holding position in Tau Ceti system in September, 2552. When a sufficient amount of ships were gathered, the fleet would then make a collective jump straight to Earth.[3]
Due to Truth's devious plans for the Covenant, this fleet was commanded exclusively by the Jiralhanae and featured only few Sangheili in its ranks; an arrangement unheard of in the Covenant before the Great Schism. For similar reasons, Truth kept the existence of this fleet, and the fact he had discovered humanity's homeworld, secret even from his fellow Hierarchs.[3] This would make it a simple matter to turn the fleet against the Sangheili once the humans were wiped out. This plan had more immediate advantages as well; leaving the Sangheili to scour Earth in search of the most sacred Forerunner artifact in existence, the mammoth structure and portal generator that served as the gateway to the Ark, would have placed Truth's plan upon the shoulders of a species he had already decided to cast aside.[3][11]
However, Truth's plan was slowed down when a small group of human survivors from Reach and Installation 04 discovered the fleet, leading to the destruction of the Unyielding Hierophant at the hands of a team of SPARTAN-IIs. Only a dozen ships survived the station's explosion, though they were left heavily damaged and limped back to High Charity.[2] For a moment the imminent assault on Earth had been postponed.[12] Following the loss of Unyielding Hierophant, in High Charity the Chieftain of the Jiralhanae Tartarus arrived at the Sanctum of the Hierarchs where Truth waited within.
Once informed on the destruction of his armada, while disturbed by the disaster, Truth otherwise regarded it as a minor setback, and told Tartarus to have the surviving ships rendezvous at their designated coordinates. He also ordered the reward and secret execution of the remaining pilots from Operation: FIRST STRIKE, so as not to cause panic in the Covenant by stories of how the Demons had obliterated an entire fleet of hundreds of warships.[13] Knowledge of the Unyielding Hierophant's ultimate goal, and its eventual destruction, were eliminated by the Prophet of Truth to keep his plans as a secret to the rest of the Covenant.[3]
After the Unyielding Hierophant was destroyed, the Prophet of Regret, completely oblivious of Truth's plan, discovered the location of the gateway to the Ark by via a Forerunner Luminary that was found on Meridian at the end of 3-years-long siege on the planet in 2551; coincidentally, this structure was located on a planet known as "Erde-Tyrenne" by the Forerunner, which was in fact the human's homeworld, Earth. Unaware of the human presence, Regret led a detachment of fifteen ships to Earth. While he learned of the human presence upon arrival on October 20, he was so blinded by his religious fervor he ignored Earth's orbital defenses and jumped to the planet's surface, immediately deploying troops to the African city of Mombasa in search of the Forer