Halo: Worlds Uncharted
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| Halo: Worlds Uncharted | |
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 An image used to tease the story, depicting the UEG Cartographic Corps' emblem | |
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Author(s): |
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Audio book narrator(s): |
Kat Peterson[1] |
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Publication date: |
May 26, 2026 (part of Halo: Waypoint Chronicles Volume One) |
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Media type: |
Short story |
Halo: Worlds Uncharted is a short story in the Waypoint Chronicle series written by Jeff Easterling and Alex Wakeford. It is exclusively included in the print compilation Halo: Waypoint Chronicles - Volume One, released on May 26, 2026.[1] In the Volume One audiobook, the story is narrated by Kat Peterson, a Halo community cosplayer and voice actress.[1]
Official summary[edit]
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Plot synopsis[edit]
On April 9, 2557, a researcher on the Huygens-class survey ship Anjin records a message to their daughter. The researcher apologizes for being gone for three years, but wants their daughter to understand the importance of their work for humanity. For many years, humanity was at war with the Covenant who destroyed many human worlds. Now that war is over and humanity needs new places to live, so the researcher was chosen by the UEG Cartographic Corps to be a part of that mission. The rest of the crew is a sixth-generation non-volitional AI named Clavell and the Kig-Yar siblings Viks and Maks Taa who have helped tremendously with mapping regions of space unexplored by humanity using the Covenant World Registry. The researcher then begins telling their daughter about some of the things they had seen.
First is Funayūrei, a seemingly uninteresting sulfur-streaked ice giant. However, the Anjin crew discovers a lone derelict ship of archaic design on its moon Onryō. Viks tells the crew a story from the end of the War of Beginnings about how a San'Shyuum naval commander, resenting that the war had ended in peace, disappeared into uncharted space, never to be seen again. The derelict ship bears the hallmarks of a San'Shyuum design pattern from that era. The moon has a settlement that was largely eroded away by time, but no sign of the San'Shyuum such as a grave, a body, or any sign that he has left the planet.
Next is LV-221B, a world described as being a few cosmic breaths away from becoming a garden world, bearing a similarity to a primordial Earth. Within a century or two, the planet will be ready for the initial terraforming process and holds the potential to be the next Harvest or Reach for future generations, and the find reminds the researcher that their mission isn't just about adventure and seeing the galaxy, but duty. There will be a debate about settling on LV-221B as indigenous sapient life can potentially evolve there one day and they shouldn't do anything to interfere with that. For the time being, LV-221B is designated a protected world to safeguard its potential for future habitability -- whoever that ends up being for.
Next, the researcher speaks of how Anjin ended up in a weird situation due to a slipspace drive disruption. Upon being forced back to normal space, the ship encounters a small black hole that is closely orbited by a white dwarf. However, despite its proximity, the star shows no signs of being dragged into the black hole's accretion disk. Instead, the star's materials are being pulled away into a ring of matter that leave a faint white-blue trail as it orbits the black hole at an incredible speed, completing its orbit every forty-nine days. The researcher predicts that if the white dwarf isn't pulled into the black hole, it is likely that the black hole will keep eating away at the star's matter until it loses enough mass to evaporate.
Anjin makes the rediscovery of a human colony on Danaïdes which is not on the ship's standard charts for former human colony positions, so the crew initially assumes that it is a new garden world. On closer inspection, Danaïdes' oxygen-rich atmosphere that appears perfectly placid and agreeable is regularly disrupted by massive spontaneous storms. The crew find evidence of several small inland settlements, ruined farm structures and even the early construction of a city. Many of the colony's logs had been wiped, but what little data that can be recovered points to Danaïdes being a colonization candidate in 2371 before suddenly going dark less than a year later and seemingly being struck from the colonial record. The crew can't find any further indication of what happened to the colony on Danaïdes, but it feels strange to the researcher, like they have just stumbled into a crime scene.
Menoetius is a large barren moon that has two massive craters that are hundreds of kilometers in circumference. The craters appear to be the result of impacts from Magnetic Accelerator Cannons and the crew are studying the data to determine whether they were caused by misfires from a UNSC vessel or possibly some other civilization in the distant past.
While attempting a slipspace jump after brief drive maintenance, the ship encounters a dark nebula which turns the viewports pitch black and make many of their instruments stop working. Maks in particular gets jumpy, reporting shadows moving on the walls and locks himself in his quarters. Viks refuses to explain her brother's behavior and the researcher is frustrated when, after nine hours and thirteen minutes, they emerge from the dark nebula, only to find no evidence of any kind of stellar formation when they attempt to scan the area.
Needing a few unconventional parts to modify Anjin, the Kig-Yar take the ship to a trading outpost hidden within a gas giant's massive circumplanetary ring system that holds dozens and dozens of moons. After the ship departs, Viks wakes the researcher at 0400 to give them a "friendly warning" with a plasma pistol that the Kig-Yar have removed all information pertaining to the location from Anjin's navigation database. While the Kig-Yar are often thought of as merchants and pirates, the researcher realizes in that moment that the Kig-Yar are also explorers and wonders what other incredible places they have seen that no one else knows about.
After three years together, the researcher finally earns the favor of their Kig-Yar crewmembers. As such, Viks wishes to share an incredibly rare stellar phenomenon with them. The Kig-Yar takes the ship to a trinary star system where they encounter what roughly translates from the Kig-Yar language as a "cosmic vampire": a white dwarf devouring stellar material from its two neighbors until it reaches critical mass which causes something approximating a type one-A supernova. Viks reveals that this is something that has lived in Kig-Yar mythology for many millennia and her sharing it with the researcher is a symbol of their friendship.
The researcher last describes an encounter with strange space debris. While performing a series of scans, the ship is hit by something. When the researcher puts on a spacesuit to investigate, they find a strange sight: a cryo chamber just drifting through the void containing a man and a three-legged dog. While the researcher wants to know the story behind this, the chamber was damaged in the collision, and the Anjin crew can't risk opening it themselves. They need to take it to professionals who can safely repair the chamber so that the man and his dog can be revived. As such, the crew is going to finish off their last assigned system scan and return to Earth.
While that is all that the researcher has to tell their daughter, the researcher is sure that they will have more stories to tell when they are back on Earth for a little while in just a few months. After debriefing with their superiors for a day or two, the researcher will be heading straight to the New Phoenix Spaceport afterwards with the estimated date being August 3, 2557. The researcher says goodbye to their daughter to speak to their husband instead.
The researcher apologizes for how difficult things have been and for not parting on good terms which they own. However, the researcher isn't coming home and this return to Earth will probably be their last visit for a very, very long time. The researcher wishes that their husband could see the wonders of the galaxy the way that they have and humanity finally has the chance to explore it. The war is over and a new age of discovery is dawning. After being on the brink of extinction for so long, humans are citizens of the universe in so many new and exciting ways and the researcher needs to be a part of this new chapter of history. Their husband wanted to settle, and the researcher had gone along with it to make him happy, but they both know that it isn't for the researcher. A child didn't fix that, and their decisions just make the researcher an asshole to a whole other human being. While it is incredibly selfish, the researcher can't give up the opportunity to explore the galaxy on the Anjin. The researcher tells their husband that he doesn't have to forgive them and to move on with his life if he hasn't already. The researcher intends to continue sending messages to their daughter unless their husband thinks that it will hurt the girl too much.
The researcher closes out their message by admitting that while they weren't good at it, they have always loved their husband and always will. The researcher apologizes that there can't be an easier way for them and promises to see their husband soon, unaware of what is to come for New Phoenix before Anjin's estimated return date.
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Sources[edit]
- ^ a b c Halo Waypoint, Canon Fodder - Casting Chronicles (Retrieved on Mar 27, 2026) [archive]
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