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UNSC Pillar of Autumn

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UNSC Pillar of Autumn
The Pillar of Autumn.jpg
Production information

Manufacturer:

Reyes-McLees Shipyards

Class:

Halcyon-class Cruiser

Role:

Warship, Special Operations, Makeshift Halo destroyer-bomb

Specifications

Length:

1170 meters

Width:

352 meters

Height:

414 meters

Powerplant:

  • One primary fusion reactor
  • Two secondary fusion reactors

Engine:

Fusion drive

Slipspace drive:

Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine

Hull:

2 meter thick plating (likely Titanium-A)

Countermeasures:

Emergency thrusters (port/starboard)

Armament:

Complement:

Crew:

Service information

Last sighted:

September 22, 2552

Destroyed:

Battle of Installation 04

Participated battles:

Battle of Reach, Battle of Installation 04

Fleet:

Unknown

Known commanders:

Captain Jacob Keyes, Cortana

Affiliation:

United Nations Space Command

 

The UNSC Pillar of Autumn was a Halcyon-class Cruiser. Informally, she was simply referred to as "The Autumn", and informally abbreviated as the "PoA".

History

The Pillar of Autumn pushes through the Covenant blockade and escapes Reach.

Mothballed and due to be scrapped like the remainder of the Halcyon-class cruisers (said to be the toughest of all cruisers despite their poor speed and firepower), the Autumn was brought back into active duty during the Human-Covenant War. She had undergone a refit in 2550 to serve, interestingly enough, in the Zeta Doradus System. Under the command of Captain Jacob Keyes, she was to serve as an inconspicuous launch pad, for a covert offensive involving locating the Covenant homeworld and capture of Covenant leadership, the Prophets by SPARTAN-II Super soldiers and received a refit to prepare her for the upcoming mission. The refit rectified a number of deficiencies in the original design and made her a competitive re-addition to the sorely pressed UNSC Navy. At the time of her destruction in 2552 she was 43 years old.[2] The Pillar of Autumn was ultimately unable to embark on the aforementioned operation due to the UNSC defeat at the Battle of Reach and was one of the few ships to escape the disaster, albeit with moderate damage and the loss of a third of its tech staff. Although the Cole Protocol demanded a random Slipstream jump, the AI Cortana, without the knowledge of the crew, purposely guided the ship to the planet Threshold based on map coordinates extracted from a Forerunner artifact on Sigma Octanus IV.[3] The result was the discovery of Installation 04, or "Halo".

File:Pillar.jpg
The Pillar of Autumn taking plasma impacts at the Battle of Installation 04.

However, a large fleet of Covenant cruisers were located on the other side of the planet. It is believed that they were there by chance, and did not follow the Pillar of Autumn. A brief and uneven battle against a Covenant battle group of a dozen superior CCS-class Battlecruisers then occurred in near-Threshold space. The orbital battle resulted in critical damage being inflicted upon the Pillar of Autumn. Enemy boarding parties disabled the MAC's fire control with a demolition charge, but not before she made a good account of herself by destroying four enemy warships and damaging several others. The Pillar of Autumn's survival against superior forces was due in part to a Prophet's directive to disable, rather than destroy her, out of fear that her destruction might damage Halo, which had religious significance to the Covenant. Before setting an "emergency-landing," the Autumn released its cryo tubes into space, one of them containing SPARTAN-058, Linda. The ship was then crash landed onto Halo by one of Cortana's subroutines. The vessel, damaged beyond repair, tore a deep gash in the ground for several hundred meters, bounced, then came to rest upright and balanced over a cliff on a barren peninsula.[4]

Prior to the crash, much of her crew had taken to the escape pods, including Cortana who was being carried within the Master Chief's suit. Others were evacuated by Pelican dropship or even in drop pods, as was the case for a complement of ODSTs. Despite the confusion most of the crew survived, to reach Halo and engage Covenant ground forces.

Speculative internal schematic by Stephen Loftus of the Pillar of Autumn's honeycomb-like bracing structures.

Later, the surviving Pelicans were employed to retrieve munitions from the crashed ship to sustain this effort. The human forces successfully neutralized the Covenant vehicles and some of the infantry stationed at the crash site and retrieved weaponry and vehicles to use in their guerrilla war against the Covenant.

Despite the abuse sustained during the space battle and the following crash the Pillar of Autumn remained intact, and was subsequently occupied by investigating Covenant forces and later by Flood. The threat posed by the latter was deemed sufficiently great for ODST Major Silva to give SPARTAN-117 and Cortana the order to detonate the ship's still-functioning fusion power cores in a bid to destroy Halo, thus preventing the Flood from escaping.

Having manually triggered the destabilization of the power cores after subsequently destroying the casings on the cores, an intervention by the AI 343 Guilty Spark halted the remote detonation, SPARTAN-117 and Cortana commandeered a Longsword from one of the Pillar of Autumn's docking bays and achieved a safe minimum distance before the ship exploded, causing the ring-world to fall apart. According to Doctor Halsey its memory would live on for years to come.[5]

Upgraded Specifications

The refit Pillar of Autumn
POA-Full-Int-Ext.jpg
POA-Full-Int-Ext-pers2.jpg

Power Plant

The Pillar of Autumn was refitted with an improved nuclear fusion engine that featured two smaller reactors around a larger one, which were capable of boosting the overall power output by 300% if needed.

Fusion reactors generate extreme heat which must be removed in order for them to remain active without overheating. The Autumn's overhauled reactors were an especially severe case of this. Usually, the excess heat was conducted to a chemical agent which would then vent into space. However, the Autumn's upgraded specifications also included an upgraded cooling system, which featured a "a laser-induced optical slurry of ions chilled to near-absolute zero", which is far more efficient than the typical method and removed the reliance on expendable chemical temperature-control substances.

In essence, the amount of excess heat removed by the new system increased as the reactors' output did. This self-regulating and self-cooling power plant was critical in combat since it virtually eliminated a commander's concerns about overheating and slagging a ship's engines.

Armament

The upgraded Pillar of Autumn received several refits, including several to its weapons systems. Eventually, it was host to a very powerful armament; far in excess of the original Halcyon-class ships.

  • One MAC Cannon which was capable of firing three consecutive shots on one charge, each round weighing 600 tons.
  • 300 Archer Missile Pods which were arranged in thirty columns and ten rows. Each pod contained 26 individual devices, equaling 7800 missiles[6].
  • Three Shiva Nuclear Warheads, one of which is loaded on a remote-controlled Longsword interceptor.
  • Forty 50mm MLA Auto-cannons with overlapping fields of fire for point defense against single ships. These cannons were later scavenged by the surviving humans on Installation 04 for Alpha Base.

It is quite curious that this ship would be given so many powerful weapons. A nuke inside of a ship's shielding would effectively destroy it. While effective for destroying a Covenant ship, the mission the Pillar of Autumn was designed for was to help the SPARTAN-IIs "disable" a Covenant ship to be commandeered, not destroyed. However, since the Autumn was going on this mission alone, it needed plenty of firepower.

Engine Room

The Pillar of Autumn's engine room, or just "Engineering", was a large, three-deck high chamber allowing access to the fusion engine core. Side passages allowed for movement from the bottom deck all the way up to the catwalks on the third. The manifolds into the cores were suspended above the second deck. Controls on the third retracted these manifolds, exposing a vent that led directly into the core. It was using this method to expose the core via the vents that the Master Chief ultimately destroyed the ship and "Halo". This room is the largest room in the Pillar of Autumn with the exception of the hanger bay and the "Leap of Faith" room.

File:Pillar2.jpg
The Pillar of Autumn.
Cortana, the AI, found aboard the PoA.
File:Halo-14.jpg
The crashed Autumn in the Desert of Halo, seen in the level The Maw.
File:Pistola.jpg
Crew members in the "Autumn".

Airlocks

Airlock 31: The Lifeboat of this airlock was destroyed by the Covenant to make way for a Boarding Craft.
Airlock 32: The Lifeboat of this airlock was destroyed by the Covenant to make way for a Boarding Craft.
Airlock 51: The Lifeboat of this airlock managed to make it out of the vessel, but was destroyed by unseen Covenant artillery.
Airlock 52: The Lifeboat of this airlock managed to make it out of the vessel.
Airlock 53: The Lifeboat of this airlock managed to make it out of the vessel.
Airlock 61: The Lifeboat of this airlock managed to make it out of the vessel with the Master Chief, Cortana, 9 other Marines onboard and the Bumblebee pilot.
Airlock 62: The Lifeboat of this airlock managed to make it out of the vessel.
Airlock 63: The Lifeboat of this airlock managed to make it out of the vessel.


Known Crew

Pillar of Autumn Command Crew

Other Naval Personnel

Marines and ODSTs

Individuals

Units

Others

Trivia

The Bulletin Board
File:1219939910 Avatars Halo Pillar of Autumn-2.jpg
  • The Pillar of Autumn is approximately 1.17 km long.[7] This, however, contradicts the final level of Halo: Combat Evolved where the player must drive along a 3 km long service corridor that supposedly runs the length of the ship. This was probably for generating the tension and atmosphere necessary for the level. It is also possible that due to the many twists and turns, the service corridor is stretched along several levels of the ship, making it possible for it to be that long. This is also the Master Chief's serial number.
  • The Marathon logo is prominently displayed on the Pillar of Autumn's starboard and port sides. The ship's official emblem has the Marathon logo as well. The marathon logo was also visible in the window of the ship in the opening cutscene of the level The Maw.
  • Master Chief escaped with the airlock number 61,6+1=7, another 7 reference.
  • The bulletin board just outside the bridge of the ship contains a number of amusing clips, some throwbacks to Marathon. These can be examined on the first level of Halo: Combat Evolved. The board has a flier for a missing cat called Jonesy. This is a reference to the Alien movies, where the cat's name was Jonesy. Also, there is a poster that exclaims "Marines, Keep It Clean," which is a possible reference to the Superintendent, a character in the recently announced Halo 3: ODST.
  • In Halo: Fall of Reach, Dr. Halsey asked which ship Cortana chose for the original mission to capture a Covenant Prophet. Cortana chose the Pillar of Autumn for the skeletal structure, designed by Dr. Robert McLees. "...At the time, deemed unnecessarily overmassed and costly due to series of cross-bracing and interstitial honeycombs... Halcyon-class ships, however, have a reputation for being virtually indestructible. Reports indicate these ships being operational even after sustaining breaches to all compartments and losing ninety percent of their armor." This, obviously, implies that the Pillar of Autumn can take an immense beating, therefore being a good choice on Cortana's part.
  • The Pillar of Autumn mess-hall offered a choice between turkey, hamburgers, cheeseburgers, hot dogs, meatloaf, and a dish named Chef's Special. Beverages included cola, water, lemon/lime, lemonade, root beer, coffee, orange juice, hot tea, hot chocolate, iced tea, and Chef's Surprise.
  • While The Fall of Reach mentioned the Autumn having a command chair, in Halo: Combat Evolved, such a chair is not seen.
  • In cutscenes, the Pillar of Autumn never moves, it is just a piece of BSP geometry. However, the cameras and the background moved in such a way that it gave the illusion of movement.
  • For a ship of its size, the Autumn's bridge is strangely undersized, and is placed in a tactically poor position.
  • Although the auto-cannons were removed in Halo: The Flood, they are still visible in cutscenes set after the human raid. [8]
  • The Pillar of Autumn bears a striking resemblance to the USS Sulaco, the main spaceship from the movie, Aliens.
  • On the Level "Pillar Of Autumn", when you walk past Master Chief's Cryo Chamber, if you walk past it a little bit and turn around, you can walk into the room where Linda-058 was monitored.
  • Some believe that Linda's Cryo Tube is placed in the other unvisited section of Cryo B; its control room would be next to that run by Samuel N. Marcus[9]

Sources

  1. ^ Halo: The Flood, page 136
  2. ^ Halo: The Fall of Reach, page 238, paragraph 4: The Pillar of Autumn is forty-three years old," Cortana said. "Halcyon-class ships were the smallest vessel ever to receive the cruiser designation. It is approximately one-third the tonnage of the Marathon-class cruiser currently in service."
  3. ^ Halo: The Fall of Reach, Epilogue
  4. ^ Halo: The Flood
  5. ^ Halo: Ghosts of Onyx
  6. ^ Halo: The Fall of Reach, pages 274-275 Captain Keyes mentions performing a fly-by inspection of the starboard shuttle bay and counting Archer Missile Pods thirty across and ten down, making for 300 Archer Missile Pods. The next sentence then reads "Each pod held dozens of missiles." The count of 128 Archer Missile Pods with 30 missiles each must be a severe under-estimation of the ship's missile payload.
  7. ^ http://nikon.bungie.org/misc/sloftus_poaconundrum
  8. ^ "And the Horse You Rode On", The Maw (Level), Halo: Combat Evolved
  9. ^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlGFA-MjYQQ
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