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UNSC Pillar of Autumn

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UNSC Pillar of Autumn
File:Poawbkgrd.jpg
Production information

Class:

Modified Halcyon-class Cruiser

Specifications

Length:

1170 meters

Width:

352 meters

Height:

414 meters

Slipspace drive:

Yes

Armament:

Complement:

Service information

Destroyed:

Battle of Installation 04

Participated battles:

Battle of Reach, Battle of Installation 04

Known commanders:

Captain Jacob Keyes

Affiliation:

United Nations Space Command

 

The UNSC Pillar of Autumn was a heavily modified United Nations Space Command Halcyon-class cruiser. It was informally referred to as the Autumn by UNSC personnel.

History

 
The Pillar of Autumn and Longsword escorts.

Mothballed and due to be scrapped like the remainder of the Halcyon-class, the Human-Covenant War saw the reactivation of the Pillar of Autumn. The refit she subsequently received 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.[1]

 
The Pillar of Autumn escaping Reach.

The Pillar of Autumn saw action at the Battle of Reach and was one of the few ships to escape the disaster. Although the Cole Protocol demanded a random slipstream jump the AI Cortana, unbeknown to the crew, purposely guided the ship to the planet Threshold based on map coordinates extracted from a Forerunner artifact.[2] The result was the discovery of Installation 04, or "Halo".

File:Pillar.jpg
The Pillar of Autumn taking enemy fire at the Battle of Installation 04.

A brief and uneven battle against a Covenant battle group in near-Threshold space resulted in critical damage being inflicted upon the Pillar of Autumn. Enemy boarding parties disabled the Magnetic Accelerator Cannon'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 harm "Halo", which had religious significance to the Covenant. The ship was then crash landed onto "Halo" by her captain, coming to rest upright and balanced over a cliff on a barren peninsula.

Prior to the crash much of her crew had taken to the escape pods, including the Master Chief whose suit was carrying Cortana in a bid to prevent the AI's capture. Others evacuated by Pelican dropship or even in drop pods, as was the case for a complement of ODSTs. Despite the confusion a significant portion of the crew survived to reach "Halo" and engage Covenant ground forces. Pelicans were employed to retrieve munitions from the crashed ship to sustain this effort.

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 the Master Chief and Cortana 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 a destabilization of the power cores the Master Chief 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 fragment.

Upgrades

 
The refitted Pillar of Autumn
 
 
File:POA-Full-Int-Ext-pers3.jpg
File:POA-Full-Int-Ext-pers1.jpg

Power Plant

The Pillar of Autumn was refitted with an improved nuclear fusion engine that featured two smaller reactors around a larger one, capable of boosting power out by 310%. An upgraded cooling system was also retrofitted, featuring "a laser-induced optical slurry of ions chilled to near-absolute zero" that removed the reliance on depletable chemical temperature-control agents. In essence, the new system provided increased waste heat removal as power output increased. This self-regulating and self-cooling system was critical in combat since it virtually eliminated a commander's concerns about overheating and slagging a ship's engines.

Armament

The primary weapon was a single Magnetic Accelerator Cannon capable of firing three "shredder shots" on a single charge.[3] Available ordnance included 4 Shiva Missiles and 300 Archer missile pods containing dozens of missiles each[4], enough for over three massed salvos of 1000 missiles. Finally, point defense was provided by forty 50mm auto cannons.

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".

File:Pillar2.jpg
 
 
 

Crew

Pillar of Autumn Command Crew

Other Naval Personnel

Marines and ODSTs

Individuals

Units

 

Others

Trivia

  • The Pillar of Autumn is approximately 1.17 km long. [1] 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.
  • 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 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.

Sources

  1. ^ 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."
  2. ^ Halo: The Fall of Reach Epilogue
  3. ^ 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.
  4. ^ Halo: The Fall of Reach, page 272
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