- StealthSlasher2
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- Exalted Mythic Member
Brains beats brawn get used to it
Fear the Red Comet
Variety is the spice of life.
Long live games.
Death to all fanboys.
My theory is two fold.
First off I believe that Anders' father's claims that ONI partially knew of the Spirit of Fire's actions. The Spirit of Fire was declared lost with all hands by ONI simply after they came to the conclusion that the ship's crew had something to do with the "huge upset in Covenant war plans" mentioned here, and that whatever they had done subsequently caused the SoF's annihilation in the process.
Second off, (in the realm of rampant incredulous speculation and poor story making rather than theory making based off snippets of detail and facts) I'd like to imagine that in the Spirit's haste to get off the Shield World quickly they have accidentally picked up live Flood forms that chose to bide their time before infecting the crew. Due to whatever reason that may be, they don't come into effect and start infecting the crew till power begins to fail or something, who knows, but some point many many years down the line they finally make their move prompting Serina to wake up the remaining crew, particularly Cutter, Anders, and the Spartans.
After a series of engagements and other edge of your seat moments in the Flood controlled SoF they happen to end up on Arcadia just cause. Or heck let's say precisely because of they took Anders or some crew member of importance that was especially fond of that planet. The ship eventually crash lands on that planet whilst the survivors reach the surface safely via Pelicans or some other craft stored in the ship. Course now there's a flood problem on Arcadia, so Anders (assuming she'd still be alive at this point) or some other person who comes up with crazy insane plans decides to do the one thing that can stop the infection in its track, glass the planet. But being UNSC, they don't have that technology, so they decide to fake a signal of surrender offering whatever original artifact the Covenant sought on Arcadia so long ago prompting them to arrive, land on the planet, assess that it's a "trap" filled with Flood, and thus proceed to glass Arcadia in response to the threat.
In the chaos the surviving crew which at the very least includes all the Spartans make it onto a small slipspace capable civilian craft and high tail it back to human controlled space. ONI gets a debrief about the flood (but is unable to do anything without samples/where to find them), and the reduced crew size and Spartans makes it easy for them to keep things hush over the next few years.
The end.