Preston Cole

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"Is that the best you can do? Watch what one unworthy human can do!"

- Preston Cole's last known words

Admiral Preston Jeremiah Cole was a UNSC Naval officer during the Human-Covenant War. He is best known for his role in creating the Cole Protocol, a central UNSC law of the Human-Covenant War. His service number was 00814-13094-BQ.

Early Life
Preston Jeremiah Cole was born on November 3, 2470, to Jennifer Francine Cole and Troy Henry Cole, in the rural reconstituted township of Mark Twain, Missouri. He was the third child of seven (three sisters and three brothers). Growing up he was described as a precocious child who obeyed his parents. He had wild black hair, and dark brown eyes. His father was a dairy farmer with no criminal record, no military background, and followed the Quaker faith with no particular zeal. His mother was arrested once at the age of twenty-one for protesting taxes (released on one year parole), and both her grandfathers served in the Rain Forest Wars (one surviving, Captain Oliver Franks, received the Bronze Star). Tax records show that despite living in a period of prosperity, Cole's family struggled to make ends meet.

Preston's fifth grade teacher, Dr. Lillian Bratton, noted that "a boy of high natural intellect, he tends to work to hard even when he plays." She noted his tendency to overanalyze, and stated he had a lack of imagination. That same year he achieved an unprecedented perfect test score in Mr. William Martin's pre-algebra class. Upon being accused of cheating and retested, he once again produced a perfect score. A social worker was sent to Cole's home to investigate the school's claims that Preston was being overworked at home, however they found no evidence physical or psychological abuse.

When he was fourteen Cole wrote a paper in English class entitled "The Viability of Extended Colonization." Although it was not particularly well received by his teacher, it turned out to be prophetically accurate in predicting the Insurrection. Although Cole wished to enlist in the UNSC Navy upon graduation, his low grades in high school kept him from immediately attending a prestigious military college. Instead he enlisted as a non-commissioned officer.

Early Career
On September, 21, 2488 Cole enlisted in the UNSC Navy. Upon graduation from Unified Combined Military Boot Camp (UCMB) Sierra Largo and vacuum and microgravity training (aka "barf school"), Cole was assigned to the CMA Season of Plenty. While on the ship Cole formulated a new way of calculating slipspace input parameters. This combined with his strong work ethic resulted in his being recommended to the Luna OCS Academy.

At OCS he would fall into a scandal involving the overnight disappearances of Inna Volkov, the daughter of Admiral Konrad Volkov, from family officers' quarters on base, sightings of her in the company of a young man, and a child produced by those liaisons. On June 7, 2492 six cadets, one of them Cole, were brought before a Board of Inquiry to testify. Though Cole was not found guilty of any wrongdoing, he married Inna two months later, with the admiral acting as a witness. They had a two-week honeymoon, then Cole was reassigned to the UNSC destoyer Las Vegas. Ivan Troy Cole, who was not Preston's biologically, was born December 12th.

In his report on Cole's life, Codename: SURGEON suggests two reasons why this marriage took place. The first was the admiral knew which cadet was the true father and didn't like what he saw, and thus found a suitable replacement for his daughter: Cole. A second was that the child was not the offspring of any of the cadets and thus the admiral's grandchild would have been fatherless. The third was that Cole had the liaison with Inna, though was not the father of the child. Either way, Admiral Volkov either made Cole marry his daughter or else Cole was compelled by a sense of chivalry.

The two remained married and over the next eight years had two more sons and daughter, which were Cole's biologically. However as the Insurrection flared up Cole saw very little of Inna and their children, being engaged on the frontier for months and even years at a time.

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 UNSC Callisto. In response the UNSC dispatched a battle group three light destroyers - the Jericho, Buenos Aires and 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 meteor with a nuclear weapon, destroying the Buenos Aires and severely damaging the Las Vegas and Jericho. The entire bridge crew of the Las Vegas, save Cole, were killed or incapacitated, leaving him in command of the ship. Cole signaled the Callisto, declaring their surrender. However he ordered the crewman 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 breach of protocol so severe that UNSC CENTCOM dithered over whether to award him the Legion of Honor or 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. As he stated in his personal log: "Surrender, quite literally, is no longer an option for me."

Inna filed for divorce in 2500. Cole wrote her, accepting responsibility for the failure of their marriage, stating that she never wanted a long-distance military marriage, and though he would always love her, he could not ignore his duty to humanity. He continued to write home to his children, but received no replies, leading him to believe that Inna was burning his letters.

He would become an officer and spend several years fighting Insurrectionists across the Outer Colonies. He would score victories in nearly all his battles, though he suffered psychological problems to due his divorce.

Preston took a leave from duty in 2502 and would marry his second wife, Lyra. Unfortunately for Cole, she turned out to be a high-ranked Insurrectionist and captain of the formerly-, now renamed the Bellicose, and Preston's talents were put to waste as the Navy reassigned him to a desk duty, his integrity in question. Only the efforts of Admiral Harold Stanforth kept him from facing a court martial.

By 2525, he was living alone in his apartment. He had gone through three divorces, and his health was worse for the wear: he had two heart attacks and had a cloned liver implanted.

Battles Against The Covenant
Despite his poor health, Cole returned to the military in 2525. After the returned to Reach, badly damaged from first contact with the Covenant, the Office of Naval Intelligence requested that Cole return to service to lead the largest battle group in human history (including at least three Frigates and ten Cruisers) to Harvest in hopes of defeating the extraterrestrial threat. He reluctantly accepted their request, and his old rank of Vice Admiral was restored.

Cole fought the Second Battle of Harvest in 2526, due to Cole's use of intelligence gathered during the Battle of Chi Ceti. Although his fleet defeated the vessel, thirteen UNSC ships were destroyed during the fight.

The news of his promotion to full Admiral was announced on UNSC-controlled television. However, ONI had removed information of the Covenant and replaced the battle information with that of a communications satellite captured by Insurrectionists, in which Cole was "ordered" to destroy. The worlds of Second Base and Green Hills were initially reported as attacked by Insurrectionists, but were in fact glassed, and their combined population of two million killed. The abandoning of Chi Ceti IV was kept secret.

Due to the impossibility of keeping the war a secret, ONI's Section II went public and gave Cole command of the majority of their warships. Cole continued the fight throughout the Outer Colonies for five more years.

The Battle of Alpha Aurigae in the Origami Asteroid Field in October 2526 had a total of 107 UNSC vessels defeated the Covenant's 12 (at least three were Assault Carriers), thirty-seven UNSC ships were lost.

Xi Boötis A in 2528 saw the loss of thirty out of the UNSC's seventy to the Covenant. The Battle of the Great Bear at Groombridge-1830 in 2530 saw eleven destroyers out of the fleet of seventeen destroyed by three enemy ships.

Upon the recovering of a Sangheili survivor, Admiral Cole began writing the Cole Protocol. Knowing now that the Covenant had little knowledge of Humanity, he realized that secrecy would be advantageous against the Covenant.

Cole would return to Harvest in 2531, removing the Covenant forces that had again encroached on the Epsilon Indi System.

The Cole Protocol


United Nations Space Command Emergency Priority Order 098831A-1, better known as the Cole Protocol, was a law to prevent the Covenant from finding the location of Earth. Essentially, it is 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 are able to track Slipspace vectors and use them to locate the destination.

The policy also states that to prevent capture, any UNSC or Human vessel is to self destruct, after wiping all data matrices, to prevent the advance of the Covenant, and make sure they can not find Earth.

The first use of the Cole Protocol occurred during the Battle of the Rubble in 2534, where Lieutenant Jacob Keyes used it to escort 1 million people to Falaknuma using Section 4. Though some other officers were anxious regarding Keyes' evacuation (most of the refugees were Insurrectionists), Cole stated that men like Keyes would win the war and promoted him to Commander.

Later Career
At some point after 2531, Admiral Cole was either demoted or his rank expired from full Admiral to Vice Admiral. Admiral Cole was supposedly killed on April 18, 2543 at the Battle of Psi Serpentis. There existed a painting in the HIGHCOM Security Committee Headquarters entitled Admiral Cole's Last Stand in reference to this. 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. It has also been speculated that he may have found a planet to colonize on, as he always wanted to retire to be a farmer.

Trivia

 * The Cole Protocol was an effective law of the United Nations Space Command up until October 20th, 2552, when the Covenant found Earth during the Battle of Earth, thereby rendering the Protocol useless. . It presumably continued to apply for other undiscovered UNSC colonies, though.
 * At some point in his career, Gunnery Sergeant Edward Buck fought under the command of Admiral Preston Cole.
 * Cole was featured in one of the short stories in the the Halo collection, Halo: Evolutions - Essential Tales of the Halo Universe.