UNSC Puerto Rican Star

UNSC Puerto Rican Star (: CFV-138), formerly the CAA Morningstar, is a in service with the . Constructed for interstellar colonization efforts, the Morningstar returned to its birthplace docks to continue life as a warship during the Insurrection. Contracted to the UNSC Navy and Puerto Rican government, the former Morningstar was rechristened to reflect a bilateral agreement for national auxiliary starships. As part of the contract, the Puerto Rican Star was prohibited from seeking conflict and relegated to logistic and civilian support missions.
Crewed mostly by Puerto Rican-born sailors, the Puerto Rican Star was a safe posting in exchange for low-risk action like humanitarian missions to colonies and post-collapse as part of Task Force Hestia. The Puerto Rican Star was made an unfortunate participant in the theft of the UNSC Eternal Flame while responding to a humanitarian crisis.
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==Service History==
===Rescue at Point Sarpedon===
In late June 2558, the Puerto Rican Star received orders to return to the after performing another 'good will' tour of recovered and rediscovered colony worlds along the frontier of human space with Task Force Hestia and UNSC Frontier Command. A rather underwhelming but unfortunate situation on Europa ballooned into a local humanitarian crisis.
Due to a loss of trade and material support during the Covenant invasion of the Sol system, isolated colonial communities in extreme localities known as "Scuttlers" were left to fend for themselves through the despite proximity to the richest worlds in human space. Without the fragile and uninterrupted flow of supplies, communities beneath the kilometers-thick ice crusts of Europa noticed accelerated infrastructure decay to an already failing series of tunnels and man-made caverns. Requests for assistance were set aside for other, more prioritized communities and ones more easily reachable. Due to the oversight, a cascading cave-in erupted in the Undercity between Kilometer Depths Ten and Twelve stranding hundreds of residents and risking thousands more.
The Puerto Rican Star was put on assignment to assist and armed with a material-prepared fabrication plant to provide material and equipment necessary for assessment, repair, and rescue operations headed by the . Early attempts at operation revealed a substantial degradation in the undercity's central elevator making attempts to reach the trapped difficult. Continuous digging in the shaft site also appeared to further degrade the weakened local infrastructure and risked further cave-ins, leading to a suspension of operations in the undercity and a mass evacuation of all residents above the ten kilometer depth. Any able individuals below the cave-in and able to receive radio transmissions received guidance to go further below the crust in hopes of avoiding further cave-ins or reaching the sub-ocean submersibles at the bottom of the damaged elevation well.
The Marine Corps of Engineers resorted to drilling an entirely new elevator shaft 120 kilometers west of Katreus designated "Point Sarpedon," a brother of the character Katreus in Greek mythology. The new shaft employed directional drlling with a horizontal, relatively shallow arc of a long curvature to reach the cave-in zone from a lateral position. While the boring process proved uneventful with few hiccups, a totally unrelated incident over the nearby Jovian Moon of halted operations.
At the orbital breakage plant over Io, the UNSC Eternal Flame was on schedule for decommissioning after a year in drydock following its involvement in the creation fiasco of SPARTAN-III Delta Company. As part of a seizure of Delta Company-related operating assets, the Eternal Flame was stricken from the UNSC Naval Registry. A former Lieutenant Commander who served aboard the Eternal Flame and a major player in Delta Company's formation, the disavowed Jefferson Korn emerged from his year-and-a-half hideaway in Rio de Janeiro's Low Benefaction refugee district with intention of stealing the starship from its final destination and escape the Sol system. With coordination from his Smart AI Kathy, Korn escaped prison after turning himself in. He mustered his forces in the Sol system for an assault on the breakage plant kicked off by the desertion of Daniele-D003 and Roxanne-D107 at the , setting the entirety of on edge.
The Puerto Rican Star was ordered to suspend operations and hold in place, putting the stranded Scuttlers communities and ice miners at risk as the UNSC Navy and Office of Naval Intelligence scrambled to figure out what Korn and his allies were doing. Between the chaos at Voi Portal, stolen military equipment, and an unexpected access of the allowed a force of fifty so-called 'Insurrectionists' led by Korn to arrive on the breakage station and seize the ship from SinoViet's port security. Employing a engineer Too Variable to Measure and Kathy, Korn had the Eternal Flame underway in record time and masking its position in a multi-spectrum cyberwarfare attack.
Masked in the rebroadcast of local spectrum radio communications, the was left confused in the area of operation due in part of the cyberattack and the heavy interspace traffic saturating the gas giant's orbit. Knowing of the particular presence of the Puerto Rican Star over Europa, Korn ordered his ship to perform a low flyby on the Puerto Rican Star's position to further confuse other UNSC warships due to the Puerto Rican Star and Eternal Flame sharing an Phoenix-class commonality. The Puerto Rican Star did not waver from its post, avoiding a gunfight it was unequipped for as the stolen starship passed within visual range and performed a slingshot maneuver out of the Jupiter gravity well and jumped to Slipspace.
In the aftermath, the seventeen-hour stall in rescue operations due to the Eternal Flame incident killed an estimated 543 individuals from cold exposure and icequakes brought on by the initial cave-in. The efforts of the Puerto Rican Star and the UNSC Marine Corps of Engineers rescued some 24,000 stranded people, among them 5,818 with severe injuries and another 5,412 dead bodies from the initial incident. It was the single worst loss of life on Europa since the twenty-second century . By early August 2558, resettlement efforts were underway for refugees from the abandoned Krateus Undercity with Point Sarpedon to become a new place of residency overseen by the UNSC Army. The crew and ship of the Puerto Rican Star won a UNSC service star for its rescue efforts.
===An Act of Protest===
Despite aligning with Cortana's Created...
==Task Force Hestia==
==Trivia==
*Halo Fanon veteran suggested the name Puerto Rican Star when discussing starships hailing from the legacy of Puerto Rico.
==See Also==
===Notable Links===
*Puerto Rico
===Literary Appearances===