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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

Powerplant:

Three fusion reactors

Slipspace drive:

Yes

Armament:

Complement:

Crew:

  • 300-400
Service information

Destroyed:

Battle of Installation 04

Participated battles:

First 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 Halcyon-class Cruiser that has seen decades of service. It was informally referred to as the Autumn by UNSC personnel. An aging but sturdy vessel, and one of the smallest cruisers in the human fleet, the Military High command chose it specifically as an inconspicuous launch pad for a covert offensive against the Covenant. Genetically-engineered cyborg soldiers were supposed to board a Covenant vessel and locate the Covenant home world. A surprise Covenant attack on the human military base on the planet Reach annihilated all but one of the SPARTAN-II soldiers. The remaining SPARTAN-II, known only by his rank of Master Chief, was stored in a cryosleep chamber upon the Pillar of Autumn shortly before the ship made a blind jump across the galaxy In a desperate effort to lead the Covenant away from the Earth. Master Chief was the best soldier aboard the Pillar of Autumn, but many of the UNSC's finest marines also call the ship home.

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.[2]

A vessel which appears to be Pillar of Autumn pushes through the Covenant blockade and escapes Reach.

The Pillar of Autumn saw action at the Battle of Reach and was one of the two 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, unbeknownst to the crew, purposely guided the ship to the planet Threshold based on map coordinates extracted from a Forerunner artifact.[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.

A brief and uneven battle against a Covenant battle group of a dozen superior CCS-class Battlecruisers 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 most 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.

Upgraded Specifications

The refitted 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, capable of boosting power out by 300%. 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 depleteable 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 upgraded Pillar of Autumn received several refits, including several to its weapons systems. Eventually, it was host to a very powerful armament.

  • One MAC Cannon which was capable of firing three consecutive shots on one charge.
  • Three-hundred Archer Missile Pods which were arranged in thirty columns and ten rows. Each pod contained 26 individual devices, equaling 7800 missiles[4].
  • Three Shiva Nuclear Warheads
  • Forty 50mm Autocannons for point defense against single ships. These cannons were later scavenged by the surviving humans on Installation 04 for Alpha Base.

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.

File:Pillar2.jpg
The Pillar of Autumn
Crewmen under attack by Covenant boarders
Cortana, the AI, found aboard the PoA

Crew

Pillar of Autumn Command Crew

Other Naval Personnel

Marines and ODSTs

Individuals

Units

Others

Trivia

[Image:PoAPoster.jpg|left|thumb|200px|The Bulletin Board]]

  • 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.
  • The length is said to be 1.17 km long, which is the ID number of Master Chief, 117.
  • In reference to Halo: The Flood, when Master Chief is to escape after blowing the engines of the Autumn, the Grunt Yayap said to his superior that he will need to escape Exit E-117. 117 is another reference to Master Chiefs number John-117.
  • 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, hot tea, hot chocolate, iced tea, and Chef's Surprise.
  • The Pillar of Autumn was capable of reaching sublight speeds of 1,454 meters-per-second.
  • While The Fall of Reach mentioned the Autumn having a command chair, in Halo: Combat Evolved, such a chair is absent.
  • In cutscenes the Pillar of Autumn never moves, it is just a piece of BSP geometry. However, the cameras moved in a way that would seem like it moved.
  • For a ship of it's size, the Autumn's bridge is strangely undersized, and is placed in a tactically poor position.
  • The Pillar of Autumn and other Halcyon Class Cruisers bear resemblance to the newer Marathon-class Cruiser.
  • The Pillar of Autumn is escorted by at least eleven Longswords.[5]

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 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.
  5. ^ Pillar of Autumn, first cutscene]],
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