Tragedy of the Silent Stretcher

The Tragedy of the Silent Stretcher is an event that took place during the Human-Covenant War on the planet Chi Ceti IV. During the Battles on that planet Covenant and Humans alike would find hideously disfigured and distorted bodies of soldiers that were apparently tortured and mutiliated by some kind of sick killer. Both teams initially blamed the other for the killings, but they both soon realised that the killer was hunting both Humans and Covenant, and a truce was called to investigate the matter.

The Yautja were next to be blamed, but scans reported no Yautja activity in the area at all and very little in the surrounding systems. Nevertheless, the killings continued.

Alarmed and growing increasingly worried, the Covenant forces pulled out of Chi Ceti IV and retreated back to their nearest base, the space station ''Apparently Safe. ''The Covenant decided to also abandon their attempts to take the Human Colonies on Chi Ceti II, Chi Ceti VI and Tau Ceti Minor. However, the killings continued to affect the Covenant, even on their space station. Meanwhile, the killings stopped on Chi Ceti IV, and no further murders were reported on any other planets in the system.

Realising that the offender was one of their own, the Covenant abandoned the station and actvated the self-destruct. However, at the last second the self-destruct system overloaded and exploded, and the station began to fly away. Shocked, the Covenant realised that the killer had just hijacked their station. Panicking, the Covenant leaders initiated a pursuit of the station but it simply turned its weapons around and annihiliated the fleet, before flying away. The station, and the killer, was never seen again. Since the killings on Chi Ceti IV had stopped, the Humans celebrated a victory but also held memorials for their Covenant enemies that had been so brutally killed by this sick monster.

Apparently Safe was later rediscovered, crashed on an ocean moon near the Y'tias System. There was no sign of the killer on board, and all of the escape pods had been launched, so many believe that the Silent Stretcher may be out there somewhere, biding their time, waiting for another chance to strike...