UNSC Pillar of Autumn Production information Class Halcyon-class light cruiser Manufacturer Reyes-McLees Shipyards Modified by ONI, Sinoviet Heavy Machinery Technical specifications Length 1.17 kilometres (3,800 ft) Width 352 metres (1,150 ft) Height/depth 414 metres (1,360 ft) Engine unit(s) Fusion drive Slipspace Drive Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine Power plant One primary fusion reactor Two secondary fusion reactors Hull 2 metres (6.6 ft) Titanium-A armor plating Sensor systems Radar Spectroscopes Targeting systems Shipboard AI Countermeasures Emergency thrusters (port & starboard) Armament 1 Magnetic Accelerator Cannon (modified) Shiva-class Nuclear Missiles 3 HAVOK Tactical Nuclear Weapons 300 Archer Missile Pods 40 50mm Point Defense Guns Complement Longsword Interceptors (1 Squadron) Pelican Dropships (15) Scorpion Tanks (8+) [1] Warthogs (40+) Rhinos (previously)(9+) Lifepods (63+) Crew 300-400 Naval personnel 920+ Marines: 1 ODST battalion, 1 Marine battalion (79th Infantry Battalion) Other systems Two warship AI Usage Role(s) Warship, special operations, makeshift thermonuclear bomb Commissioned No earlier than 2509 Earliest sighting February 9, 2531 Destroyed September 22, 2552 Present for battles/events Battle of Arcadia[2] Fall of Reach Battle of Installation 04 Affiliation Unified Earth Government Known owner(s) United Nations Space Command UNSC Navy Known crewmembers See below Known commander(s) Captain Jacob Keyes

[Source]

"There was only one ship."

— Thel 'Vadamee

"One? Are you sure?"

— Prophet of Regret

"Yes. They called it the Pillar of Autumn."

— Thel 'Vadamee

The UNSC Pillar of Autumn, (Hull classification symbol C-709),^[3][4] was a Halcyon-class light cruiser in the UNSC Navy. It was informally referred to as the Autumn, and its name abbreviated to "PoA".

Prior to the Fall of Reach, Pillar of Autumn was selected to support a SPARTAN-II operation to capture Covenant leaders. Captain Jacob Keyes was placed in command. The operation was forestalled by the Covenant assault on Reach and the cruiser was one of the few UNSC survivors and fled the system having lost most of its intended SPARTAN-II passengers.

The cruiser was guided to the Soell system by the AI Cortana. There it was engaged by a Covenant fleet guarding Installation 04. Keyes crash-landed the ship on the installation where the surviving crew continued the battle against the Covenant and later, the Flood. The ship's sole remaining combat effective SPARTAN-II, John-117, was forced to detonate Pillar of Autumn's fusion reactor, destroying the ship and the installation to prevent the installation from firing.

HistoryEdit

Human-Covenant WarEdit

Pillar of Autumn was constructed at the Reyes-McLees Shipyards on Mars in 2509.^[5]

It saw action during the First Battle of Arcadia against the Covenant in February 2531. The cruiser was heavily damaged engaging two CCS-class battlecruisers.^[2] The cruiser contributed experimental M-145D Rhino to the ground fighting.^[6]

The cruiser was decommissioned with the remaining Halcyon-class cruisers, but was reactivated as the war worsened and was refitted in 2550 to serve in Zeta Doradus.

A chariot for SpartansEdit

By 2552, it was obvious to the UNSC that the war could not be ended with conventional military action. A desperate plan was conceived to end the war by capturing the Covenant's leadership and forcing the enemy to the negotiating table. SPARTAN-II commandos would commandeer a disabled Covenant ship, locate the Covenant homeworld and abduct the targets. The Pillar of Autumn was selected on August 25 by the AI Cortana to disable an enemy ship and deliver the Spartans aboard; the ship was selected for the Halcyon-class's durability, despite its class's usual lack-luster offensive capabilities.^[7] Command of the ship was given to Captain Jacob Keyes.

The cruiser received another refit for the new mission, including a state-of-the-art fusion power plant.^[8] Cortana was transferred to handle the shakedown.

Also on board was a Pelican dropship that had been modified by the Spartans. It had double the armor plating, grappling attachments, and a serrated titanium ram. Spartan John 117 used this Pelican to land on Space dock Gamma along with Linda and James. However it was destroyed when it crash landed on the Space dock.

Fall of ReachEdit

Main article: Fall of Reach

Pillar of Autumn was prepared to deploy on August 30. However, before it could depart the Epsilon Eridani System it was recalled to Reach; the UNSC fleet was mustering in preparation for an imminent Covenant attack on the planet. Cortana remained in control as the ship's normally assigned AI was not yet operational.

The UNSC hoped that an opportunity to capture an enemy ship would present itself, however the course of the battle forced the Spartans to deploy on other missions. Blue Team went to Reach Station Gamma to enforce the Cole Protocol while Red Team went planetside to reinforce the Orbital Defense Generators. While the cruiser performed well, the battle was lost as the Orbital Defense Platforms fell silent. There was only time to recover the remnants of Blue Team, John-117 and the clinically dead Linda-058, before the ship was forced to flee the system.

During the space battle over Reach, Pillar of Autumn defeated a Covenant supercruiser on its own that even few UNSC carriers could not defeat, proving Pillar of Autumn to be one of the most durable warships ever built by UNSC Navy.

At some point during the conflict, Pillar of Autumn returned to drydock at the Aszod ship-breaking facility to rescue any survivors on the planet and retrieve a package. Shortly before the ship fled the system, the remnants of Noble Team were tasked with delivering a fragment of Cortana's data chip to the Autumn. The ship left drydock immediately afterward. It was nearly destroyed by a Covenant battlecruiser before it could take off, but the Cruiser was destroyed by Noble Six with an Onager.

Pillar of Autumn was supposed to have made a random Slipspace jump in accordance with the Cole Protocol. However, Cortana surreptitiously guided the ship to the Soell system and, ultimately, to Installation 04 instead. The AI used coordinates obtained from a Forerunner artifact on Sigma Octanus IV.^[9] The Covenant pursued along the cruiser's exit vector and arrived at Soell first with a battle group of CCS-class battlecruisers.

The Battle of Installation 04 Edit

Main article: Battle of Installation 04

Pillar of Autumn was immediately engaged upon arriving at Threshold. The cruiser was spared destruction by the Covenant's commanding Minor Prophet who feared stray Plasma Torpedo fire might damage Installation 04. So the Covenant made to board and capture the ship instead. Pillar of Autumn destroyed four ships and damaged the Truth and Reconciliation before boarders disabled its Magnetic Accelerator Cannon with an Antimatter charge.

Captain Keyes ordered the crew to abandon ship. John-117 was given Cortana for safekeeping, and ordered to keep the AI out of enemy hands. The crew left the ship for the ring in whatever craft were available and the cryo pods were jettisoned. Keyes directed the Pillar of Autumn on a course to crash land on the ring. The Covenant finally began hitting the ship with plasma torpedoes, but the cruiser survived the landing reasonably intact. The survivors would later transfer supplies from the ship to Alpha Base.

The release of the Flood added an unexpected dimension to the battle. Monitor 343 Guilty Spark was preparing to fire the installation in response to the outbreak; in conjunction with the entire Halo Array this would wipe out all sentient life in the galaxy. John-117 and Cortana returned to the Pillar of Autumn to destroy the ring by detonating the still-functioning fusion reactors. An attempt to activate the cruiser's self-destruct from the bridge failed due to 343 Guilty Spark's interference. The Spartan was forced to manually destabilize the reactors with tactical ordnance.

The Spartan and AI escaped the subsequent detonation and the ring aboard a Longsword fighter still docked in Launch Bay 7. The effort to destroy Halo with Pillar of Autumn succeeded, sparing the universe from the Flood and a Halo activation.

SpecificationsEdit

Pillar of Autumn was roughly 43 years old at the time of its escape from Reach and its later destruction on Installation 04. It was a cruiser of the Halcyon-class, the third largest in the UNSC Fleet at the time.^[5] Like other Halcyon ships, the Autumn was equipped with a honeycombed internal bracing structure that allowed it to function even after sustaining critical levels of damage.

Power plantEdit

Pillar of Autumn was refitted with an improved nuclear fusion engine that supported the two smaller existing reactors around a newer larger one, which were capable of boosting the overall power output by 300% for a short time 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 "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.

Pillar of Autumn's reactor was able to be overloaded by explosives, either grenades or rockets, destroying the vulnerable vent cores. Once these were destroyed, the reactor began to go critical, resulting in temperatures of over 100,000,000 degrees and a thermonuclear explosion large enough to tear apart a Halo Installation.^[10]

ArmamentEdit

The upgraded Pillar of Autumn received extensive 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.

• With extra power capacitors and power recycling systems, Pillar of Autumn's MAC gun could fire three consecutive shots per charge.
• The MAC gun fired lighter projectiles compared to most ship grade MACs, but these rounds worked much like Shredder Rounds. Each charge was able to fire 3 rounds.
• 300 Archer Missile pods, arranged in thirty columns and ten rows. Each pod contained 26 individual devices, equaling 7800 missiles^[11]
• One Shiva-class Nuclear Missile, loaded onto a remote-controlled Longsword interceptor.
• Three ship-launched HAVOK Tactical Nuclear Warheads.^[12]
• Forty 50mm MLA Auto-cannons with overlapping fields of fire for point defense against single ships. Two of these cannons were later salvaged by the surviving humans on Installation 04 and were used to defend Alpha Base.
• Multiple Prototype Plasma Rhinos in 2531.
• Multiple M808B Main Battle Tanks.
• Multiple Warthogs.
• Multiple D77-TC Pelican.
• Multiple GA-TL1 Longsword-class Interceptor.

Engine roomEdit

Pillar of Autumn's engine room 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 John-117 ultimately destroyed the ship and Installation 04. This room is the largest room in the Pillar of Autumn with the exception of the hangar bay and the "Leap of Faith" room.

AirlocksEdit

Airlock 31, 32: Lifeboat destroyed by the Covenant to make way for a Boarding Craft.

Airlock 51: Lifeboat was destroyed by unseen Covenant artillery as it departed from the airlock.

Airlock 52, 53, 61, 62, 63: Lifeboats managed to make it out of the vessel.¹

¹Airlock 61: the Master Chief, Cortana, nine other Marines on board and the Bumblebee pilot.

Known crewEdit

Trivia Edit

• Pillar of Autumn's model is approximately 1.17 km long, a reference to John-117.^[13] The ship's length is exaggerated in the final level of Halo: Combat Evolved to provide a 3 km long vehicular course.
• The Marathon logo is prominently displayed on Pillar of Autumn's starboard and port sides in Halo: Combat Evolved. 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 cut scene of the level The Maw. However, the ship's official emblem is the Seventh Column logo in Halo: Reach as seen on the hull of the Pillar of Autumn and Captain Keyes' ID Patch.
• 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 Jonesey. This is a reference to the Alien movies, where the cat's name was Jonesey. The board also has a flier telling Marines to 'Keep it Clean', a quote later used in Halo 3: ODST.
• Prior to being refit for the Spartan mission, Pillar of Autumn was equipped with Mark II fusion engines (which supplied only 10% the power of modern reactors), and had just one regular MAC gun and six Archer missile pods.^[5]
• In Halo: The Fall of Reach, the Autumn is described as having a command chair. In Halo: Combat Evolved, this chair is absent. Also in Halo: The Fall of Reach, the Autumn seems to have a rotating section in it to simulate gravity. However, in Halo: Combat Evolved, the ship has gravity in areas that could not be in a rotating drum. The bridge is an example. As Halo: Contact Harvest pointed out that Human-engineered artificial gravity was in existence by 2525, it is possible that the Autumn was converted to use artificial gravity as part of its refit package.
• Through an Easter Egg, a SPARTAN-II can be seen on the Pillar of Autumn in Halo: Reach.
• Spartan Nicole-458 in Dead or Alive 4 has a combo move called the Pillar of Autumn
• Although not confirmed officially, in Bioware's Mass Effect 2, during a section of the suicide mission, Pillar of Autumn can be seen in the background of one of the cutscenes.
• The Pillar of Autumn is the first UNSC ship in all the Halo games that you are able to explore the inside of.
• In the beginning shots of The Mona Lisa episode 5, the first part of the ship name "The Pillar Of Au" can be seen floating in space.
• In Halo Wars, when the Covenant assault Arcadia, one of the ships seen defending it is Pillar of Autumn.
• The two screenshots of Pillar of Autumn in Halo: Reach and Halo: Combat Evolved are noticeably different since the two antenna-like protrusions of the ship are positioned in two completely different areas. The older version (Combat Evolved) has its antennas positioned on the very first hexagonal structure,while the newer version (Reach) is located on the second. A defense cannon is placed in the first hexagonal dimension replacing and upgrading the older model.
• In the 10th Halo: Reach Campaign level, if the player does not kill the battlecruiser at the end, the final cutscene will show Pillar of Autumn being cut in half by a glassing beam.
• The crew of Pillar of Autumn were widely credited with being the first humans to encounter the Flood, however the crew of the UNSC Spirit of Fire encountered the Flood decades earlier.
• You can find a trollface on the bulletin board in Pillar of Autumn in Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary. It is located at the bottom left of the "Dark Planetoid Rising."
• When viewing the Master Chief's record aboard the UNSC Forward Unto Dawn in Halo 4, the ship is mistakenly referred to as a frigate.

GalleryEdit

Pillar of Autumn - Halo: Reach. Pillar of Autumn in orbit around Installation 04. Speculative internal schematic by Stephen Loftus of the Pillar of Autumn's honeycomb-like bracing structures. Hull-classification information on the Autumn's outer hull. The Seventh Column symbol is also visible. POA Bridge- Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary. Profile view of the Pillar of Autumn. Cortana, the AI assigned to the Pillar of Autumn. Pillar of Autumn in an asteroid field near Reach, moments before a Covenant ship exits Slipspace and attacks. The outline of Halo Combat Evolved's The Maw level. Pillar of Autumn taking off from Reach during the Fall of Reach. Pillar of Autumn dry-docked in Aszod. Pillar of Autumn under attack. The crashed Autumn in the desert of Alpha Halo, seen in the level The Maw. Pillar of Autumn's fusion reactors go critical. Pillar of Autumn's final moments. The Autumn's bridge. A piece of wreckage from Pillar of Autumn in the Halo debris field. Pillar of Autumn - Halo Combat Evolved. The bridge of the Pillar of Autumn in Halo: CEA A closer look of the outline of the final level. Concept art of Pillar of Autumn being attacked by a CAS-class assault carrier and a CCS-class battlecruiser on Installation 04 Pillar of Autumn concept art Add a photo to this galleryAdd a photo to this gallery

List of appearancesEdit

• Halo: Combat Evolved (First appearance)
• Halo 2
• Halo 3 (Memorial plaque only)
• Halo Wars
• Halo: Reach
• Halo: The Fall of Reach
• Halo: The Flood
• Halo: First Strike
• Halo Wars: Genesis
• Halo Legends
  • Origins
• Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary
• Halo 4 (Mentioned only)

SourcesEdit