TORQUE

Commissioned by Lethbridge Industrial in 2555, Auriga Station served as one of the company’s preeminent research and development facilities. Its staff of human and AI researchers were kept busy decrypting Covenant and Forerunner records, searching for naval depots and resource caches. Fitted with the latest in UNSC fabrication systems and Sangheili-procured forges, the station could also carefully disassemble, analyze, and rebuild nearly any piece of recovered technology to aid in reverse-engineering efforts. It was this latter capability that brought Auriga Station to the attention of Cortana and her Created. Stripping bare Lethbridge’s vast archives of secrets and making a mockery of their counter-cyberintrusion suites, Cortana quickly repurposed the loyalties of the station’s resident AI and removed the human crew. Beating hearts have now been replaced by the inflamed obsessions of caretakers eager to use the station’s tools to harvest, decompile, and rebuild new tools and weapons to be wielded by constructs advancing Cortana’s plans across her growing ecumene. Meanwhile, an audacious plan has been hatched to deny the Created their prize: board Auriga Station with Spartan operatives, disable or steal the manufacturing systems on board, and wipe the AIs still bound to its holographic storage systems. In order to train for the assault a perfect recreation of a critical area on Auriga’s habitat ring has been constructed in War Games, codenamed “Torque.”