Lore appears to show that the main reason High Charity fell to the flood so quickly was due to the schism and chief distracting the Covenant. That and we see in Warfleet that High Charity has a utterly massive catacomb below the city where its likely the flood achieved large amounts of biomass. So without the schism or even the chief on the station, could the Covenant have prevented the flood from claiming their capital once the frigate crashed?
I’m sure they had some sort of containment protocol and method of sealing off sections of the city. Plus if a UNSC frigate could easily fly around inside the city, I’m sure some light cruisers could get inside and start glassing and sending in air-assets to burn from a distance. So depending on how fast the flood were moving through the station and how quickly the covenant could evacuate / quarantine / react militarily would determine the outcome but I’d say they had a 30% chance.
Yeah a non-schismed Covenant should’ve had only minor trouble containing the Flood outbreak. The sole carriers of the Flood infection at that point were In Amber Clad and her assortment of Pelicans. The frigate would get melted down to slag by High Charity’s defense fleet long before it reaches the city. Some Pelicans might make it, but I doubt the defending Covie forces would have much trouble containing any minor Flood incursions.
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> I’m sure they had some sort of containment protocol and method of sealing off sections of the city. Plus if a UNSC frigate could easily fly around inside the city, I’m sure some light cruisers could get inside and start glassing and sending in air-assets to burn from a distance. So depending on how fast the flood were moving through the station and how quickly the covenant could evacuate / quarantine / react militarily would determine the outcome but I’d say they had a 30% chance.
The most difficult thing I agree would be quarantining the frigate and preventing even a flood spore from leaving. I would think there may be some “infightting” though between the san shyuum and sangheili on what to glass and what to save.
The Flood didn’t fight to their full potential against the Forerunners, holding back enough to force the Forerunners to pull the trigger on the galaxy themselves, after preserving a bunch of species on the Lesser Ark. The Covenant’s abilities are far inferior to those of the Forerunners, and the Covenant don’t have the benefit of being part of the Flood/Precursors’ grand plan, so no matter what the Covenant do, I expect the Flood would have taken High Charity all the same, because the Flood intended to use it to get to the Lesser Ark to force a “final” confrontation there.
Oh, absolutely. We see that all throughout the original trilogy – whenever the Flood tries to do anything, the Covenant throws everything it has nearby at them, and it proves quite effective. And High Charity, at its peak, is like the Death Star minus the cannon. It’s absolutely covered with sensors and weapons, ensconced in a defense fleet of unparalleled scale. Maybe they have only a fraction of that firepower in the upper city, but I have to imagine that as soon as their sensors detect the Parasite and they get reports that a strange ship crashed in x position and is the epicenter of some sort of attack, the High Council (which is like 50% sangheili) would order a hard burn on that entire area. Maybe even most, or all, of the upper city. And possibly they’d vent it into space.
Sounds extreme, right? But remember, Rtas 'Vadum ordered a sizable portion of Kenya glassed just to stop a single crashed battlecruiser’s contents from spreading. The Covenant is very, very serious about preventing the Flood from getting any toehold, and I bet that their highest authorities would react caustically and mercilessly if they learned that an ancient horror was literally in their safest base of operations.
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> Oh, absolutely. We see that all throughout the original trilogy – whenever the Flood tries to do anything, the Covenant throws everything it has nearby at them, and it proves quite effective. And High Charity, at its peak, is like the Death Star minus the cannon. It’s absolutely covered with sensors and weapons, ensconced in a defense fleet of unparalleled scale. Maybe they have only a fraction of that firepower in the upper city, but I have to imagine that as soon as their sensors detect the Parasite and they get reports that a strange ship crashed in x position and is the epicenter of some sort of attack, the High Council (which is like 50% sangheili) would order a hard burn on that entire area. Maybe even most, or all, of the upper city. And possibly they’d vent it into space.
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> Sounds extreme, right? But remember, Rtas 'Vadum ordered a sizable portion of Kenya glassed just to stop a single crashed battlecruiser’s contents from spreading. The Covenant is very, very serious about preventing the Flood from getting any toehold, and I bet that their highest authorities would react caustically and mercilessly if they learned that an ancient horror was literally in their safest base of operations.
Quite true, I can see the council giving that order, but you also have the san shyuum who may not be as quick to act and may interfere.