It had been years since there had been any form of activity from the Rift. Nobody had successfully entered and those rumoured to inhabit the area hadn't ventured out into the galaxy since the death of Nozdormu. The Rift was isolated. After rumours of the GSU preparing for conflict, however, that was about to change.

An order had been placed by an old friend of Queen Almis. The GSU wanted allied fleets and who better to ask than the only known inhabitant of the Rift? Bethany had always helped Humanity when it was needed and this time would be no different, no matter what they were gearing up to fight.

The Candorian shipyards buzzed with activity as engineers rushed to work on their new big projects. Queen Almis, on behalf of the GSU, had commissioned construction of four large space cruisers and was expecting work to be done within six years.
The two most technologically advanced races of the planet, the Galmarians and Lumarians divided their people into four groups of six thousand people each to work on the cruisers. There was a lot of work to be done and only a short time to do it in. With no time to waste, construction began on the Rift's first starcruisers.

The first priority of the engineering corps was to create the inner skeleton of the cruisers that would serve as a foundation to work from. Once this was done, the engineers would be able to focus on installing all the technology inside the ships.

The process of experimenting with and perfecting the first cruiser's skeleton took almost eight months, though the primary reason for this was that the engineering corps were creating the initial template, rather than working from one that already existed. With the first cruiser's skeleton finally complete, the other construction teams could be sent the template and work could commence on the other three cruisers.

"Queen Almis" the Lumarian overseer for the project walked into Bethany's private quarters to speak with her. Not only was he tasked with overseeing the starcruiser project, he was also one of the queen's trusted advisors, a clear reason for his placement on the project.
"The initial framework for the first cruiser has finally been completed and we've sent the template out to the other construction teams, by our calculations, the construction of each cruiser should take around a year and a half" he informed her, a warm smile growing on the queen's face.

"How big are our cruisers expected to be, general?" She asked. The general wasted no time in bringing her up to speed. "Well, it's estimated that these first cruisers will be around 1250 meters in length and able to hold a crew of 600 people. Once finished, they'll be able to pack a serious punch when they're needed in battle." The queen stopped for a moment, clearly impressed by the potential of her forces.

The third stage of creating the Rift's cruisers had to be done by the queen herself. Rift energy was essentially a limitless source of power and Bethany knew this. Instead of using conventional power and relying on fuel, the plan was for Bethany to create a stable generator made of pure Rift energy which would power the cruiser's engines, shields and weaponry.

Initially, Bethany wanted the generator to be powerful enough to give the cruisers impenetrable shielding and firepower on par with a superweapon. This was initially planned so that they would only need these four cruisers for their entire arsenal and in order to do this, the cruisers would need three generators each, one for each primary system (engines, weaponry, shielding). However, in every attempt, each generator would make the other two unstable, causing all three to short out and stop working.

after many unsuccessful attempts to stabilise the three generators, Beth and the engineering corps tried something else. Instead of using three generators, Beth created a single generator that would power everything in the ship. While she was successful in stabilising this generator, it meant that the energy would be spread evenly to produce a slightly above average cruiser, rather than focused from three points to create an unstoppable one.

The next stage of production for the cruisers was installing and activating all the consoles that would eventually allow the crew to run the ship. The first priority, also the most dangerous, was installing all of the consoles systems in engineering. While the drive cores powering the cruisers were stable on their own, configuring the engineering consoles in the wrong way meant that overloading systems was a common problem, which set back production almost two months behind schedule.

After a little over a year of work, engineers had managed to get construction of the cruisers back on schedule. It was a big ask to have the first four cruisers created in time it was expected to take in order to build one so delays were expected, however, the engineering corps were confident that they would be finished on time.
With the cooling and life support systems now operational, work started on the rest of the ship, with other decks such as the crew and combat decks becoming operational in the weeks following the engineering decks. It would not be long until the cruisers were ready for combat testing.

It had been almost a year and a half since construction on the Rift's first generation of cruisers began and, for the most part, construction of the cruisers was beginning to wrap up. Everything from life support to air conditioning had been set up properly and the cruisers were almost ready for combat testing.
The only things that still needed to be done were getting the weapons and defensive systems online and testing the ship in a full combat scenario.

In theory, getting the final systems operational was simple. Turn them on, and they'd activate. In actuality, this was much harder. For weeks, technicians worked to get everything operational at once, but every time weapons or shields were activated, another random system would lose power and need the more recent system to go offline in order to reactivate it. Eventually, it was revealed that When the engine cores of the cruisers were initially created, nobody took into account how many different subsystems would end up being powered, thus, there was a little less power than needed for the entire cruiser. With the problem now clear, Queen Almis stepped in personally, pumping more pure energy into each core so that the cruisers had enough energy to be completely operational.

With everything operational and ready, it was time to combat test the cruisers.

It was late evening and work on the cruisers had been relatively quiet for almost two weeks. It was almost time to test them out and everyone was eagerly anticipating the results of the combat test.
BLEEP BLEEP. BLEEP BLEEP. A communicator echoed throughout Bethany's room, distracting her from meditation. Quickly, she got to her feet, accepting the incoming call to find out that it was General Korris.

"General, something I can help you with?" She asked.
"The GSU cruiser is almost in position for the combat test, all that needs to be done now is send one of our cruisers into orbit." He replied.
"Ah, thank you. I'll have the cruiser prepare immediately" she pressed the communicator button, ending the call to prepare for another.

BLEEP BLEEP, BLEEP BLEEP. Another communicator sounded. This time on the bridge of the Dantius, the first of the four cruisers to be completed. An unnamed officer responded almost immediately to be greeted with orders from the queen. "Commander, it's time. Prepare your men and launch into orbit. The GSU cruiser is waiting for you at these coordinates." She ordered, sending through a selection of coordinates to the commander. "Yes ma'am, we'll prepare for take-off right away." The call ended as the commander turned on the ship's internal communicator.

"Listen up men!" His gruff voice boomed across the entire ship. "The queen is expecting a show from us and good results to go along with it. I want everyone at their stations and ready to take off immediately. The final test is about to begin." The intercom closed and the ship's large crew began rushing to get to their stations. Minutes later, the ship lifted off, beginning it's ascent into orbit. The next few hours would definitely prove interesting.

The old UNSC cruiser, for the time being, floated quietly at the point of rendezvous. The Marathon-Class cruiser had been decommissioned for almost a decade now and was progressively collecting dust in the ship-breaking yards on Reach - soon to be melted down for parts. However this particular ship's purpose had been reignited when the GSU Council demanded that any unneeded cruiser be sent for field testing against another cruiser developed by one of the inhabitants of The Rift - Bethany Almis whom hadn't been heard from since the Starforger incident. As such, the UNSC Seraphim was quickly refit and sent out for exactly that.

Admiral Yusuf led the fleet that escorted the ship to the rendezvous point. The fleet itself remained a few hundred thousand kilometers away from the point of contact and watched. The UNSC Seraphim was piloted by none other than the AI Selina's fragmented subroutines, which meant that no actual personnel were to be killed in the test.

Within a few hours of lift-off, the Dantius was arriving at the rendezvous point. Wasting no time, the commander immediately ordered that the crew target and destroy the Seraphim. Within moments, lasers and cannon fire were sent hurtling through space towards the target. The GSU may have been allies, but with no actual crew on board, there was no need to hesitate. The objective was to destroy the 'enemy' cruiser and that objective would be achieved no matter what.

Quickly, a barrage of laser fire began smashing into the Seraphim. It was only a matter of time before the shields would be wiped out entirely, allowing for the Dantius to strike the ship directly and destroy it.

The UNSC Seraphim worked quick under the guidance of Selina's subroutines. The point-defense cannons immediately opened fire upon any physical incoming projectiles they could target and shot some of them down with automatic fire when they were in-range. At the same time, Selina fired up the ship's thrusters in order to change it's position but regardless, it had no defense against the lasers. The barrage impacted against the ship's inferior shielding and weakened it down to 75%.

The Seraphim then launched a barrage of ship-to-ship archer missiles back at the Dantius with the hope of buying time, while at the same time charging up it's main MAC cannon. The ship veered around until it's front was directly facing the Dantius. The MAC round now fully charged, the cannon fired.

A 600-ton ferric tungsten projectile with a depleted uranium core, magnetically accelerated to the speed of 30'000 meters a second was shot straight at the Dantius.

"All hands, fire on that uranium core! Forget about the missiles our shields will hold!" The commander ordered right before all weapons began targetting the incoming projectile, rather than the enemy cruiser. It was a close call, but within a few minutes, the core was destroyed, preventing any serious damage to the Dantius. While the crew were distracted with a large target however, they had allowed a payload of archer missiles to get strike the ship directly, straining the cruiser's shields and lowering them down to a stable 87%.

Quickly, the crew began directly targeting the enemy cruiser again, this time focusing fire on their main MAC cannon. "If they manage to charge that thing we could lose our shields entirely!" The commander boomed, quickly running to the main flight controls of the cruiser to reposition the Dantius. Within a few minutes, the cruiser was now positioned so that if any serious damage were to be received, it would be focused on the now empty crews quarters section of the ship.

As the battle raged on, a particular subroutine onboard the Seraphim relayed tactical data and information back to Admiral Yusuf's ship.
"Intriguing," Selina commented. "They managed to shoot down the MAC round before it even reached the Dantius, despite the projectile's incredible speed. The missile barrage's effect on their shielding was also minimal."
"Right, so they were confident with taking that sacrifice in exchange for eliminating the larger threat." Yusuf added. "The Rift's technology is more powerful than we thought."
"More powerful than you thought," Selina corrected. "I am not one to underestimate, sir."

The Seraphim began to charge up another MAC round and at the same time, another missile barrage. This MAC round's charge was 30% lower than the first in order to save some energy, which was redirected to the cruiser's shielding system. Steadily, the cruiser's shielding began to recharge and within a minute, reached 80% from 75.